Productivity Secrets for a Successful Side Hustle

BONUS FREEBIE: Want even more ways to stay organized, productive and less stressed? Click here to get access to my List-Making Starter Kit. It will boost your efficiency and get you back to doing more of the things you love.

When you first start a side hustle you tend to be a one-man band. It means you’re doing all the work, but there’s also plenty of upsides to this:

  • no communication issues
  • no meetings
  • no job descriptions

It’s all you! 

As I learned through the years it’s important to resist doing everything yourself. That will quickly lead to burnout or will cause you to abandon ship on your ideas. 

As you’re side hustle gets more successful you might need to bring in some help.. Managing a small business or side project like this can be quite difficult. I would know, for the past eight years I’ve run Listproducer.com which has become part of my business. And for the past five years I’ve had the help of my fabulous editorial assistant Nicole. Until recently, Nicole has lived in the UK while I’ve been in the US. Plus  for most of that time we both had full time jobs! Read more

Four Steps to Taking a Real Vacation

BONUS FREEBIE: Want even more ways to stay organized, productive and less stressed? Click here to get access to my List-Making Starter Kit. It will boost your efficiency and get you back to doing more of the things you love.

I was recently browsing LinkedIn when I came across this BBC story, that I first thought had to be a joke. Apparently employees in the UK are taking vacation time to catch up on work! 

Isn’t that insane? 

I’m not really sure what’s happening on the other side of the pond. Are you guys okay?

All kidding aside – burnout is a real problem faced in the workplace.

In fact, the World Health Organization now recognizes it as a real condition. I write all about ways to combat this in my new book, Listful Living: A List-Making Journey to a Less Stressed You

And although I’m all for efficiency and hard work  – I would NEVER recommend taking vacation days to do more work! 

Your vacation time should be used as a way to break out of your workplace mindset and come back feeling refreshed. 

That’s the whole point!  Read more

Ikigai: Live a More Fulfilling Life the Japanese Way

What do you do in a typical week?

  • Go to work
  • Spend time with your family
  • Read
  • Meditate
  • Have drinks with friends…

It’s important to have a good balance of work and play, social time and alone time. But at the end of the day, what’s it all for?

There are hundreds of self-help books on how to find your passion or change career path to something more inspiring.

But as my friend Terri would say, window cleaners don’t have that job because they have a passion for clean glass. There’s a certain level of practicality to what we do as well as a need to be financially stable.

So how do we find fulfilment? Read more

Forget FOMO and Embrace the “Joy of Missing Out”

You’ve probably heard of the term FOMO or “fear of missing out” – possibly in the context of someone making fun of millenials who say things like “I can’t believe I’m not going to Coachella this year I have so much FOMO”.

But it’s not just millennials who have this problem!

I used to get FOMO and it drove me a little crazy.

I couldn’t say no to any networking event or opportunity without feeling that if I didn’t go I would not only miss out, but be negatively affecting my business or the launch of my book.

We have this weirdly held belief among entrepreneurs that just around the corner is our big break or big meeting that can turn everything around. We just have to go to enough events or connect with the right people to find it.

It’s technically true but it can drive you insane. Or in my case make your appendix burst.

It’s time we started to admit the truth. Read more

To-Do List Wisdom from Mindy Kaling

It’s graduation season, which leads to plenty of people thinking about their long-term goals, not just college students. Often when we reminisce on the goals we had at graduation we focus on all the things we haven’t done.

But are we being too hard on ourselves?

Mindy Kaling thinks so!

When speaking at the graduation ceremony at Dartmouth College Mindy’s final advice to the graduating class was to “let it go.”

We may have a dozen goals in our head when we graduate and some of them may happen and some might not. It doesn’t mean you’ve failed or strayed from your path, just that life often doesn’t go the way you planned.

In previous posts I’ve talked of the importance of evaluating your long-term goals. It’s okay to accept that a goal might no longer be what you want or that you need to put it on the back burner while you focus on more important things. A perfect example of this is a woman I interviewed, author Karen Rizzo, she continually put “Learn Italian” on her list and guess what – never happened.

When evaluating long-term goals there are a few things to take into consideration:

Priorities – What we think is a top priority and what we actually spend most of our time and energy on can be two very different things. Depending on where we are in life our biggest priority can be different things, focusing on family, career or even our health.

Does your top priority line up with your daily habits? Check out the book Essentialism for ways to do this better. Maybe you want to get a new job, but you haven’t been to a networking event in months. Or you’re trying to take a step back with work, but still find yourself emailing at 10pm! Make sure your actions line up with your priorities. If they don’t then it might be time to reassess.

Diminishing Returns – The law of diminishing returns is used to refer to a point at which the level of profits or benefits gained is less than the amount of money or energy invested.

Essentially the more effort you put into something the less you get out of it. How annoying is that?

It’s good to remember though, when you feel like you’ve been pushing a goal or idea for too long – maybe it’s time to ease up a bit?

For example, how many times have you heard people say they found their romantic partner once they stopped looking? The same can be said for many other goals. I know a few people who have been stuck in the ‘research’ phase of writing a book, because they keep finding more and more information pulling them in different directions. At some point you just have to draw a line in the sand and start writing!

When it comes to your goals it’s as Mindy Kaling said –

“Don’t trust any one story of how to become successful.”

Find the path that works for you, it doesn’t have to look like what your 21-year-old self imagined.