A hot trick for productivity right now is to start small habits that lead to big results. People love it for the obvious reason that doing small things is easy, and the idea that making your bed every morning would lead to the corner office and a six-figure salary is pretty awesome.  

There are many tricks and tips for jumpstarting your productivity. Some, like “eat the frog” are great and I live by them when I can get myself to (ahem). Others, like making your bed every morning, made no sense to me because I’ve always made my bed almost every morning and it hasn’t translated to my becoming a productivity goddess and total world domination.

But I’ve stopped ignoring this tip, and here is how my small habits helped me. Continue reading →

What if you’re not meant to be the best?

When you look around on social media, the news, blogs and everywhere else it can seem like everyone is living their very best life but you. It looks like everyone is making the most money or the best kids crafts (and pinning them of course) and climbing all the important ladders to the tippy top. It can be easy to get swept up in that way of thinking; that we need to strive for absolute greatness and anything less is failure.

I fall into this trap all the time when I see bloggers making 6 or 7 figures while working part-time with kids and I can barely find the time and energy to sit down and write for twenty minutes each week. Continue reading →

How to Achieve Optimal Mental Focus

We live in a world with so much amazing and fun information. We also live in a world with so many important things to do – get the kids signed up for summer camp, walk the dog, make 10,000 appointments for, well, everything, and even just seeing friends and enjoying life. While there is so much to consume and do, it’s important to not let these not tasks get in the way of the “big rocks” – the Most Important Things that we need to do to achieve our goals.

I just love wasting time reading articles, taking tons of free courses, doing chores around the house, making to-do lists, etc, etc, etc. Anything to avoid doing the actual work I need to get done. This has been one of my biggest challenges. My brain loves to be distracted from hard, important work by shiny notifications or easy-but-not-very-important tasks that can be easily ticked off. Continue reading →

We all wake up every morning with the wonderful possibility that a new day brings. Now if you’re rested and refreshed this possibility feels wonderful and endless. If you’ve been up with your kids all night, didn’t get to bed until late, or couldn’t “turn your brain off” and spent much of the evening with worries racing through your head, all that possibility can feel wasted before you even throw back the covers.

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I am not the kind of person who normally buys into something that seems so woo-woo on its face, but I have found affirmations to be incredibly helpful. Not in a Secret kind of way where manifesting something will make it come true (but I guess that can’t hurt!), but in a way, I was totally unprepared for.

Creating affirmations helped me to define my goals and outline the kind of person I want to be in all the important areas of my life.

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In the beginning, there were good intentions.

Since Adam and Eve made that fateful choice with the direst of consequences we humans have been not reaching our goals, falling off our wagons, and promising to start again Monday.

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