No one can ever say that having a home based business is boring! Between quieting barking dogs, refereeing your children’s fights, and answering the phone and the doorbell, it can sometimes be hard to get anything done — no matter how well you visualize, set goals, and plan your day.

And it can be equally easy to be too hard on ourselves, blame ourselves for not being more organized, focused or motivated. But that just increases the pressure — it doesn’t solve anything!

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We dream of spontaneous trips to the beach, month-long vacations, all while making six or seven figure incomes. Sure it’s possible…but the probability is that in your journey to “home based business nirvana”, you’ll log some serious hours in the office.

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If you’re a creative woman entrepreneur then chances are good you’ve labeled yourself as someone who just can’t seem to get, or stay, organized. Popping up with new ideas for your business or about how to help people? Easy! Figuring out a filing system or how to get those piles of paper up off your floor? Ugh…well, that’s a different story now, isn’t it?!

What organized people don’t understand about creative souls is that the thought of being organized seems to be in conflict with our creative spirit.

Accurate or not, creative types feel that if everything is neat and tidy then their creativity will be contained as well.

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I have a personal fetish about keeping my inbox down to “one scroll”, which means roughly 20 emails. Any more than that makes me anxious — I start imagining the time bombs waiting to go off at any moment!

Evidently I’m not alone! Sandra de Freitas, Tech Coach, invented a new game that makes cleaning out your inbox a fun activity rather than a chore! Read her blog post, My Email Challenge for how to turn 15 minutes into a whirlwind reply-delegate-delete fest!

Q: “How to stay focused?”

A: One easy way to get and stay focused is to have less to focus on!

As solo entrepreneurs, we usually have waaaay too much to do. Keeping a list of all those tasks and projects can make order out of the chaos — but that same list can also be quite long and overwhelming. The same goes for when you have lots of ideas, but find yourself circling and not really getting any of them done! Read the rest of this post »

I had the privilege of being interviewed by Solo-E Certified Expert Laura Howard West for her Joyful Business Podcast bi-weekly series. Surf on over and listen in on our casual conversation about choices, letting go, practicing, and getting to happiness as a Solo Entrepreneur (20 minutes).

What aren’t you going to do today?

Chances are you have more on your to-do list than can possibly be done. Every time you look at it, your stress levels rise, and by noon you know your plans for the evening are in danger. And even if you work half the night, you still won’t be done.

Am I close? Read the rest of this post »

I’d been thinking/talking/writing about doing it for a while now. I’d start, only to relapse. But then something nudged me the right way a few weeks ago…I’ve finally kicked this habit and boy does it feel good!

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Andy Wibbels interviewed Timothy Ferriss, author of the just-released book, The 4-Hour Workweek. It’s relatively short (just over a half-hour), and imho, a must-listen-to. It includes some really provocative ideas along with a few specific tactics that address what I would call the Solo Entrepreneur Lifestyle.

Some wonderful quotes from the interview:

"I’m not proposing that people choose between money or a less-stressful existence…people feel as though they have to choose between high-stress high-reward or low-stress low-reward…it doesn’t have to be that way."

"Don’t work for the weekend and don’t work for retirement!"

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Laura Howard really tickled my funny-bone when I recently read her version of the daily "to-do" list.

She’s got an absolutely delightful idea that truly turns "work" into "play" — complete with the laugh-out-loud fun factor.

Read more about her Daily Focus and Flow cards