CLIP's Tips

I tend to get discouraged easily when it comes to goals that I set, especially at work.  Sometimes they can seem so difficult to attain, and it is easy to give up.

If you want to achieve your goals, learning the skill of self-motivation is absolutely necessary. 

In that light, I want to provide you with a helpful article about motivation.  The article is written by mega-successful personal growth blogger Leo Babauta.  The post contains 8 Ways to Motivate Yourself From the Beginning and 20 Ways to Sustain Motivation When You’re Struggling. 

Read it here: 

The Ultimate Guide to Motivation – How to Achieve Any Goal

Application Action:  The article is long.  I don’t necessarily recommend reading the whole thing right now, unless you feel like it.  This is what I want to encourage you to do:  Print and file or save this article somewhere where you will be able to find it .  Then, put a note on your calendar during the middle of each month on your 2010 calendar that says, “Read Motivation Article".”  Regularly reviewing something like this has the power to create unexpected motivation in the midst of the daily grind.

Here are some of the tricks that work best for me.

Commit publicly. None of us likes to look bad in front of others. We will go the extra mile to do something we’ve said publicly.  For example, when I wanted to run my first marathon, I started writing a column about it in my local daily newspaper. The entire island of Guam (pop. 160K) knew about my goal. I couldn’t back down, and even though my motivation came and went, I stuck with it and completed it. Now, you don’t have to commit to your goal in your daily newspaper, but you can do it with friends and family and co-workers, and you can do it on your blog if you have one. And hold yourself accountable — don’t just commit once, but commit to giving progress updates to everyone every week or so.

Just start. There are some days when you don’t feel like heading out the door for a run, or figuring out your budget, or whatever it is you’re supposed to do that day for your goal. Well, instead of thinking about how hard it is, and how long it will take, tell yourself that you just have to start. I have a rule that I just have to put on my running shoes and close the door behind me. After that, it all flows naturally. It’s when you’re sitting in your house, thinking about running and feeling tired, that it seems hard. Once you start, it is never as hard as you thought it would be. This tip works for me every time.

Read about it. When I lose motivation, I just read a book or blog about my goal. It inspires me and reinvigorates me. For some reason, reading helps motivate and focus you on whatever you’re reading about. So read about your goal every day, if you can, especially when you’re not feeling motivated.

Go for mini-goals. Sometimes large or longer-term goals can be overwhelming. After a couple weeks, we may lose motivation, because we still have several months or a year or more left to accomplish the goal. It’s hard to maintain motivation for a single goal for such a long time. Solution: have smaller goals along the way.

Photo Credit: Thorne Enterprises

If this has ever happened to you, lifehacker.com has An Exhaustive Guide to Saving Your Smartphone’s Battery.

This would also be something to share with any of your crews who are using CLIP2GO to extend the battery life of their PDA’s or Smart Phones.

Here are the first two tips:

Keep it cool and out of pocket: If you’re outside, don’t leave your phone facing the direct sunlight. If you can pull it off without looking like a hyper-aggressive real estate agent, belt-clip your phone, or generally keep it out of your pocket and away from close quarters with your body heat.

Switch off 3G when it’s unnecessary: It’s faster than EDGE or GRPS and can deliver both voice and data in a continuous stream to your phone. It also uses up quite a bit more power. When you’ve got good coverage and plan to mostly talk, or just get occasional email updates, you don’t need such wide wireless pipes. Switch to EDGE/2G usage in your settings, preferably with a widget or shortcut.*

Check out the whole article.

*If you don’t know how to do this, check out your phone manual.

Photo credit: bossco

If you are anything like me, chances are that you find yourself using multiple computers in the course of any given week and it can be a challenge to keep track of all of your files between your office pc, your laptop, your home computer, and your mobile device.

Dropbox is the best little computer tool that I have found in years.  Check out the short video below to see how it works:

Set up Dropbox for yourself:

1.  Go to www.dropbox.com and create a free account.

2.  Download a copy of the Dropbox program for your computer here.

3.  After the file has downloaded, run the program to install Dropbox on your computer.

4.  During the install process, the program will ask you for your login information.  Enter it.

5.  After the installation has completed, look in your My Documents folder and you will see that a new folder entitled “Dropbox” has been created.

6.  Cut & paste (or drag & drop) any files on your computer that you want to have access to anywhere.  Dropbox will then put a copy of these files on their servers.

7.  Download and install Dropbox on any other computers you use regularly.  Log in using the same information.  Now, whenever you add, change, or remove a file in the Dropbox folder, it will be reflected on all of the computers that you have Dropbox installed on.  The files will also be available at dropbox.com so you can access them from anywhere.

8.  Optional:  download the Dropbox app for your iPhone or bookmark http://m.dropbox.com on any other mobile phone to access files there.

Additional Uses:

- Share files between office and field: Since I can access the files on my phone or internet-connected laptop, I will often have our administrative assistant drop a file that I need into the dropbox folder for me to reference out in the field immediately.

- Working on a document with multiple people:  If you have any collaborative document that that needs to go back and forth for editing, putting that file in dropbox for all users to access is much easier than sending emails back and forth every time there is a change.

- Access your files when you don’t have your laptop or mobile phone:  Just get to any computer connected to the internet, go to dropbox.com, log in, and view or download the file.  (This has saved my hide a few times…)

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Founder of Whole Foods, John Mackey, on why business is good:

“Before I started my business, my political philosophy was that business is evil and government is good. I think I just breathed it in with the culture. Businesses, they’re selfish because they’re trying to make money.”

At age 25, John Mackey was mugged by reality. “Once you start meeting a payroll you have a little different attitude about those things.” This insight explains why he thinks it’s a shame that so few elected officials have ever run a business. “Most are lawyers,” he says, which is why Washington treats companies like cash dispensers.

Mr. Mackey’s latest crusade involves traveling to college campuses across the country, trying to persuade young people that business, profits and capitalism aren’t forces of evil. He calls his concept “conscious capitalism.”

What is that? “It means that business has the potential to have a deeper purpose. I mean, Whole Foods has a deeper purpose,” he says, now sounding very much like a philosopher. “Most of the companies I most admire in the world I think have a deeper purpose.” He continues, “I’ve met a lot of successful entrepreneurs. They all started their businesses not to maximize shareholder value or money but because they were pursuing a dream.”

Mr. Mackey tells me he is trying to save capitalism: “I think that business has a noble purpose. It’s not that there’s anything wrong with making money. It’s one of the important things that business contributes to society. But it’s not the sole reason that businesses exist.”

What does he mean by a “noble purpose”? “It means that just like every other profession, business serves society. They produce goods and services that make people’s lives better. Doctors heal the sick. Teachers educate people. Architects design buildings. Lawyers promote justice. Whole Foods puts food on people’s tables and we improve people’s health.”

Then he adds: “And we provide jobs. And we provide capital through profits that spur improvements in the world. And we’re good citizens in our communities, and we take our citizenship very seriously at Whole Foods.”

Wall Street Journal via What’s Best Next

Business blogger Seth Godin offers the following:

You will never be out of work if you can demonstrably offer one of the following:

• Sales
• Additive effort
• Initiation

Sales speaks for itself. If you can sell enough to cover what you cost and then some, there will always be someone waiting to hire you.

Additive effort is distinguished from bureaucracy or feel-good showing up. Additive effort generates productivity far greater than the overhead you add to the organization. If your skills make the assembly line go twice as fast, or the sales force becomes more effective, or the travel office cuts its costs, then you’ve produced genuine value. That surly receptionist at the doctor’s office–she’s just filling a chair.

The third skill is the most difficult to value, but is ultimately the most valuable. If you’re the person who can initiate useful action, if you’re the one who makes something productive or transformative happen, then smart organizations will treasure you.

Source Article here.