Rising Star Systems

Productivity – First Pillar

Debra Russell — Tue, 14 Oct 2025 19:13:53 +0000

Mindset of Productivity

I’ve spent more than 20 years and worked with hundreds of people around time management, project management and all the areas that feed into productivity.

The first Pillar of Productivity must be Mindset. Of course, all four Pillars are intertwined. And if we don’t address mindset, the rest becomes much more difficult.

Areas of challenge in Mindset include (not a complete list):

The 3 P’s of Productivity:

Procrastination,
Prioritizing,
And Perfectionism

Plus:

Overwhelm
Decision Making and Decision Fatigue
Boundaries
Pacing and energy management

What I’ve found is that mindset challenges are often a combination of habits of thought and behavior plus a lack of skills.

For example, priority setting is a skill set. And making those decisions about your priorities is also a habit.

There are additional unique challenges for those who are neurodivergent because of the differences in the way you process information, make decisions and your abilities in those areas. These challenges can be overcome. And it will take some experimentation to discover what are the best methods for you, if you are ADHD, for example.

You can get started today on addressing overwhelm and procrastination by working on the exercises in my book:

Move from Overwhelm into Action; A Guide to Shift from Procrastination into Productivity

What are your biggest mindset challenges? Leave me a comment and I’ll address your questions in future blog posts!

Overwhelm – Is It Avoidable?

Debra Russell — Sun, 29 Dec 2024 19:40:16 +0000

What is Overwhelm?

Overwhelm is a mindset characterized by feelings of dread, helplessness and uncertainty. Sound familiar?

It tends to trigger the fight or flight response. So we feel on guard all the time. We become easily angered or frustrated. We react without thought. And often we can freeze like a deer in the headlights.

Of course freezing, which often looks like procrastination, only digs us deeper into overwhelm!

Triggering overwhelm can be a tactic used to keep people distracted, distraught, and helpless.

Whether it’s through piling on so much work, creating so much struggle you can’t see a clear path through to calm and clarity, or rage baiting on social media, or horrifying news that leaves you feeling helpless and in despair about the world.

And this is important – when you are in overwhelm, it is very hard to think strategically or see clearly what’s really happening. It feels impossible to stop for a moment to create a plan of action.

Instead, you feel like you have to go go go and do do do because that feels like the only way out of the overwhelm.

But that keeps you trapped in the overwhelm mindset.

The real path through is to stop and recognize the thought patterns of overwhelm for you. Everyone is different and the thought patterns that trigger overwhelm for you may be different than for others. (What are yours? Write them in the comments!)

How do you do that? How do you understand your thought patterns when they feel like reality? The first step is to recognize that your thoughts are not right, real or true. I know they feel real. They feel true. But they aren’t. They are just thoughts – mind constructs to make sense of the world around you.

And here’s the rub: you can’t address the real issues of your circumstances from within the overwhelm mindset. The overwhelm mindset keeps you stuck in overwhelm, stuck feeling like there’s no way out, stuck in being the victim.

Stuck!

Recognizing that your thoughts are simply constructs, if they aren’t right, real, or true – then you have power. You have choice. You can look at your circumstances and choose to think about them differently.

Shifting this mindset, so you can think and see clearly, will enable you to plan, strategize, and act.

How do you shift that mindset? This is what we will cover in the first phase of the Ultimate Productivity Revolution – Turn Procrastination and Overwhelm into Productivity: Transform Obstacles into Action. Check it out!

The Ugly Truth About Time Management

Debra Russell — Sun, 04 Feb 2024 01:36:12 +0000

“Don’t say you don’t have enough time. You have exactly the same number of hours per day that were given to Helen Keller, Pasteur, Michelangelo, Mother Teresa, Leonardo da Vinci, Thomas Jefferson, and Albert Einstein.”
– H. Jackson Brown

If we all get the same amount of time, why is it that some people seem to be incredibly effective and get tons of stuff done, while other people struggle to get anything done and most of us kind of fall somewhere in the middle?

I remember watching my Mom as she managed 4 kids, a full-time job, and at one point going to school at night for her Bachelor’s to get her CPA degree, and just being dumbfounded at how she pulled it off. How did she do that? How did she manage her time so well?

Even with a beautiful model of time management efficiency, I’ve struggled my whole life with time management. Just observing her wasn’t enough to give me the skills I needed. Because she didn’t actually teach me HOW to do it.

I guess I must have forgotten everything I learned in my time management class at school… Oh, wait…

We weren’t taught time management in school – we were just expected to get our homework in on time, right? And if we didn’t, no matter the reason, we were punished for it and often shamed and embarrassed for it as well.

But even when we are taught time management by our parents, we’re taught what worked for them, which may or may not work for us.

Because we’re all different, and our relationship with time is unique. So, you need to design a time management system (affiliate link) that works organically the way your mind and biorhythms work.

The Truth About Time Management

When I teach time management in a live class, I always ask:

What Are Your Time Management Challenges?

Without fail, I get the following Top 5 answers:

Procrastination (Usually a symptom of something deeper going on)
Overwhelm (To much to do!)
Difficulty prioritizing (knowing what to do when)
Fear
Interruptions (lack of boundaries)

Pretty much every answer fits into one of the top 5. And here’s what I tell them:

The truth is, you cannot manage time, because time just is.
BUT, you can manage how YOU use time.

Time Management is a SYSTEM

You can buy time management systems and products – physical calendars, virtual tools that work on your tablet or phone. You can take classes and courses. You can read books.

What I have found is that these systems will only work for you,
if you make them yours.

Because these systems were invented by someone who developed their own personal time management system and said, “Well if it works for me, it’ll work for anyone.”

Except that’s simply not true when it comes to time management, because we all work differently. Our biorhythms are different. The way we think about things is different.

So thinking that there is a one-size fits all system for time management is a recipe for failure. The biggest mistake I see people make in creating their time management systems is that they try to impose somebody else’s system on themselves. They don’t do the work to discover what’s actually going to work in their unique mindset and circumstances.

The best time management systems are ones that are organically generated, that work with your natural tendencies and existing habits.

If you design a time management system based on how you “should” work, or what’s “supposed to” work, without examining your personal relationship to time, you will be doomed to failure. And what’s worse, you may then decide it’s your fault – that you’re hopeless and just no good with time.

But you’re not broken, nor are you a failure, you just haven’t yet designed a system that works the way you work.

Time Management is a SKILL.

To actually address and solve your individual challenges with time management is going to take time, effort, very possibly several weeks or months of real implementation and practice, just like any other skill. You have to design a system and hone it and polish it.

You also have to develop your skills in

Decision making,
Estimating how long things take,
Effective planning,
Prioritizing,
The ability to recover from mistakes, and
The emotional intelligence skills of persistence, discipline, resilience and determination.

It’s not about doing more stuff.
It’s about doing the right stuff at the right time… for YOU.

Learn the skills and create the structures that you need to function optimally. The details will be different for every person because we’re each unique and different. That’s a good thing! Embrace your difference, and create a system that works for you!

Time Management is a HABIT.

Finally, once you’ve created your system and developed these skills, you have to build the habit of using this system that you’ve created.

I’ve seen it over and over in myself and with clients. We think that we should be able to just change everything and have it work. And when that fails, we blame/shame ourselves and often give up.

But it takes time, attention and commitment to build a new habit. You don’t just decide to do things differently and voila you’re perfect. You must decide over and over and over again, each day to use your new system. If you commit to taking the time, keeping your attention on your new system and implement it, one day you’ll realize that you just did it, without thinking about it. That’s when you know you’ve created your new habit.

You may still need to tweak things from time to time. You may still need to make sure you maintain the habit when times are stressful. If you create the habit now, it will be much easier to return to it if overwhelm makes you slip back into old habits.

If you got value from this blog post – or you hated it and disagree with everything I said – please let me know in the comments!

The Top 5 Priority Pitfalls

Debra Russell — Wed, 31 Jan 2024 23:00:31 +0000

One of the most important success and leadership skills, in the time management area, is the ability to create clear priorities and align your choices with those priorities.

Making these fundamental decisions are part of our executive function. And with the amount of stress, overwhelm and challenges in our everyday lives, knowing and honoring our priorities becomes more and more complicated and important.

In business, priorities and strategy are inextricably linked.

There are 3 levels of priorities:

Big Picture Life Priorities – What are your dreams for your life? (Or the life of your business)
Medium Term Priorities – What are your big hairy goals for the next 1-5 years?
Short Term Priorities – What’s due in the next week, month, quarter?

The brain is hardwired to focus on short term priorities. What am I doing now? What do I want/need now? How do I get it, now?

This makes defining clear priorities challenging. I see those challenges manifesting in multiple ways in myself and for my clients.

When you look at the three levels of priorities – the most important thing to notice is, are they aligned with each other?

Do your short term priorities feed your medium term and long term priorities and goals?

Here are the Top 5 Priority Pitfalls:

Perfectionism – everything is equally important
Overloading schedule
Lack of clarity on goals
Failure to delegate or ask for help
Ignoring personal well being

5 – Perfectionism

When it comes to perfectionism, it can infest every area of your life and may look different depending on the context.

With regards to prioritization, perfectionism looks like making everything equally important.

Because perfectionism (often a coping mechanism based in an insecure childhood) demands perfection in everything you do. So, it all must have equal importance and urgency.

4 – Overloading Schedule

When you are not clear on your Big Picture Life Priorities, it can be easy to say, “Yes” to everything. Because you don’t have any criteria with which to evaluate the opportunity in front of you. So, other imperatives (being liked, for example) can drive your choices.

Remember, when you say, “yes” to one thing, you are saying “no” to a lot of other things.

Overloading your schedule so that you can’t keep your promises is also a passive-aggressive way to say what you really want to say, which is, “No.”

Knowing your priorities at all three levels and being clear on your goals will enable you to make strong, aligned decisions when taking on a project or request, keep your promises and commitments, and stay focused on what is most important to you.

3 – Lack of clarity on goals

It is extremely hard to look at a huge list of To Do items and prioritize that list if you don’t know what your goals are. Or if your goals are vague and without deadlines. Don’t feel bad if you aren’t able to do this. I’ve personally never met anyone who can clearly prioritize a task list without knowing what the end game is.

When we don’t know what our goals are, everything looks equally important and urgent. And if we have some external driver (work deadlines, family needs, etc.) then we tend to do the urgent (what’s important to someone else) over the important, but non-urgent (what’s important to us).

When everything is equally important because we haven’t organized our tasks by goal or goal area in order to perceive the correct order of actions within that context, we tend to do what’s easiest, most comfortable and gives us the quickest shot of success endorphins.

These actions, while giving instant gratification, often do not tie in with our big hairy goals. And as a result, we actively avoid doing what is most important in the big picture.

2 – Failure to delegate or ask for help

As I quoted in an earlier article, “No man [or woman or child] is an island.” The bigger your goals and dreams, the more you will need to build a team around you to realize them.

Learning how to delegate, not abdicate, and how and whom to ask for help are critical success and time management skills. Very often its also a financial consideration. And there are ways around those challenges.

The most important area to explore around delegation and asking for help is to answer the question, “Am I the RIGHT person for this job?” Just because you can do a job, doesn’t mean that you are the right person for that job.

Is it your core specialty? Is this the part of your business that you love the most? Or could your energy, mind and creativity be better invested in other activities.

1 – Ignoring your personal well-being

“You can have all the riches and success in the world, but if you don’t have your health, you have nothing.” Steven Adler

This is a fundamental truth. Take it from someone who has spent half of her life either seriously ill or seriously injured.

Prioritizing self-care is challenging, especially because our society looks down on it. We should all just be able to pull ourselves up by our bootstraps and get on with it, right? If you are healthy, count your blessings. And know that if you don’t take care of yourself, there will come a day when you aren’t.

Don’t wait until your body gives you no other choice. Prioritize taking care of yourself, so that you won’t ever be faced with the choice – your life or your life.

Think of prioritizing self-care like making sure you fill your car with gas. Because without gas, your car won’t go. And without self-care, eventually neither will your body.

To create real success in your professional life, personal life, and spiritual (whatever that means to you) life, get clear on your Big Picture Life priorities, and align them with your values.

Then create long term goals (5 years at most) in order to define your medium term priorities.

Then work backwards to 1 year, 9 months, 6 months and 3 month goals that will keep you on your path to the Medium Term goals you’ve set. Once you have your 3 month goals, then your short term priorities become obvious, real, and concrete.

In the Time Management Mastery Intensive program, I will teach you a simple way to prioritize your task list, get clear on your big picture priorities and build them into your time management system, task management system, and skill mastery. A new program will be starting soon. Register today to gain mastery on the most fundamental success skill that all other skills depend on.

Top 5 Task Management Essentials

Debra Russell — Fri, 26 Jan 2024 20:14:44 +0000

Today’s blog is the third installment of my Time Management Mastery series. If you missed the first 2 in the series, you can find them here:

If you find them valuable, please leave a comment and share them out to your community. I appreciate it!

In the first 2 posts in this series, I’ve been talking about Time Management and how critical having a functioning system is for your productivity, wellness and satisfaction with your life.

But without a task management system, your time management system is hollow – what do you put inside it?

A well-designed task management system that works the way you think, organically, will not only improve your productivity, it will also improve your lifestyle and levels of satisfaction and well-being.

I’ve seen many styles and designs of task management systems and often, when a client’s life is dysfunctional, the task management system has major gaps or flaws that cause many of their problems.

Clients have increased their income, created stronger relationships with family and friends, felt more in touch with their spirituality and created greater well-being and happiness in their lives, simply by creating a functional task management system that fits seamlessly into their time management system, and then creates the habits that maintain both.

In my upcoming Time Management Mastery Intensive, we’ll be spending time designing and implementing your task management system.

In the meantime, here are the Top 5 most important elements of a task management system that will support your productivity, lifestyle and well-being:

Top 5 Most Important Elements of Your Task Management System

1. User-Friendly Interface:

Your task management system needs an intuitive and easy-to-use interface that facilitates quick task entry, organization, and tracking. Whether your system is analog or digital, you need to be able to work with it easily and effortlessly. The learning curve needs to be short and fast.

2. Task Creation and Editing:

You need to have the ability to easily add, edit, and delete tasks, including options for setting due dates, priorities, and other relevant details.

It may seem like writing a task on a post-it or making a list on a notepad offers those abilities. But how many times have you lost the post-it or it got buried under a million other post-its? And how many times have you had to rewrite your list because you’ve added to it and crossed stuff out and it’s become unreadable? And how many versions of that list do you have piled up on your desk? And how long is that list? Pages?

A big list is a sure way to create overwhelm. It also wastes time.

For example, you have a spare 15 minutes and want to cross one thing off your list – how much time do you spend reading your list deciding which thing to do?

You may prefer analog – but digital eliminates many of those issues.

3. Organization and Categorization:

A system with features that allow users to categorize tasks, assign tags or labels, and create folders or projects for better organization is critical.

Every task should be connected to a specific goal and/or project. Tasks that are not connected will be forgotten or resisted and resented.

You need to be able to look at only one project or goal area at a time. This will quickly eliminate overwhelm by allowing you to focus in on your priority for this block of time.

Your system needs to have the ability to break large tasks (or goals) into small enough chunks that you can work through them in the block of time you’ve got available.

Your system also needs the ability to easily sort by priority, due date, start date, and estimated time of completion.

This way, when you have 15 minutes, knowing the goal you’re focused on, you can quickly sort out only the tasks that you can complete in 15 minutes by priority and choose which one to tackle.

4. Prioritization:

One challenge people have is feeling like everything is a top level priority. If you’ve organized and categorized your tasks by projects and goals, then you can assign more accurate priorities (or order of action) to each task.

A system with the tools for assigning priority levels to tasks will help you focus on the most critical and time-sensitive items.

In the Time Management Mastery Intensive, I will be teaching you a very simple prioritization system that will clearly identify the most important (and urgent) items on your to do list.

5. Due Dates and Deadlines:

Until you’ve chosen what date and time you’re going to address a specific task, you are essentially blind to that task. Setting due dates and deadlines needs to be part of the functionality of your system.

And this is an area where people really get into the weeds. Because often one task depends on the completion of another task and sometimes you’re waiting on other people performing those tasks.

But it also depends on your ability to know how long a specific task takes. This is a critical time management skill that many people struggle with.

In the Time Management Mastery Intensive, you’ll create a functional task management system that is built into a broader time management system.

I’ll be teaching you how to implement new habits, behaviors and structures in ways that befit how you organically and intuitively think and function. You’ll explore what task management system best fits your style. And you’ll test and implement that system.

This program isn’t about forcing you into how someone else thinks you should manage your time because it worked for them.

Finding the right task management app may take some testing and practice, because there are a lot of them. But once you understand what your needs are, it becomes a lot easier to evaluate the tools available.

In the Time Management Mastery Intensive program, we address most of these 10 issues – because they are critical to creating a time management system and skill mastery. A new program will be starting soon. Register today to gain mastery on the most fundamental success skill that all other skills depend on.

Top 10 Causes of Procrastination

Debra Russell — Wed, 24 Jan 2024 19:52:07 +0000

I’ve been putting off writing this blog post on procrastination… (only slightly kidding)

Let’s talk about procrastination – procrastination is an overwhelmingly common time management problem:

20-25% of people procrastinate chronically.
88% of workers procrastinate 60+ minutes daily on the job.
80-95% of college students procrastinate to some degree.
75% of people consider procrastination a personality trait/problem.
Procrastination costs the US economy an estimated $70 billion per year.

https://www.zippia.com/advice/procrastination-statistics/

So what is procrastination, actually? According to Merriam Webster:

transitive verb
: to put off intentionally and habitually
intransitive verb
: to put off intentionally the doing of something that should be done
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/procrastinate

While there is a lot of shame/blame associated with procrastination and a lot of shoulding all over ourselves, it is important to remember that procrastination is a symptom.

Focusing on the symptom will only deepen how stuck you feel. So, let’s look at the top 10 most common causes of procrastination:

Impaired Executive Function
Preference for Instant Gratification
Task ambiguity and a lack of accountability combined with external pressures
Decision Paralysis
Lack of Clear Goals
Avoidance Coping
Overwhelm
Poor Time Management
Task Difficulty
Perfectionism

10 Impaired Executive Function

Challenges in cognitive processes like planning and organization can contribute to procrastination. Clinical issues such as ADHD, autism, depression, Alzheimer’s, etc. can cause impaired executive function.

But executive function is also deeply affected by emotional intelligence, and personal and professional development.

I’ve found in working with clients that executive function can be improved with training and practice. And even those with functional decision making challenges can create time management systems that significantly improve their executive function.

9 Preference for Instant Gratification

When you prefer instant rewards over long-term benefits, it can result in procrastination, especially when facing a larger project.

Often the procrastination is justified using a lack of necessary resources or feeling ill-equipped or ill-prepared as an excuse. So preparation and gathering of resources far beyond what is necessary for the favorable outcome can result.

This is also called over-functioning.

This preference can be overcome using short-term intermediary goals and getting very clear on what resources and preparation you really need.

8 Task ambiguity and a lack of accountability combined with external pressures

There are several aspects to this source of procrastination that can combine in different ways.

For example, feeling pressured to do something without clear instruction and little to no external support can make us feel resistance and resentment, and uncertain of our ability to complete the task (with an accompanying fear of failure).

These combine to make us not only procrastinate, but feel fully justified in our procrastination – a deadly combination! An example of when internal shame can convert to external blame, both of which cause us to stop in our tracks.

7 Decision Paralysis:

Also known as analysis paralysis, decision paralysis is a difficulty in making decisions which leads to postponing actions.

The truth is sometimes you’re actually not ready to make a decision. You’re missing critical data or need to develop skills and structures in order to move forward with a project.

But fear can shift this logical postponement into procrastination until you can’t move forward even on the actions that will give you the data or skills you need.

Understanding exactly what you need, and creating a functioning list that you can check off as you accomplish the intermediate tasks will help to break this log jam.

6 Lack of Clear Goals:

When your goals are unclear or vague you may have difficulty initiating, let alone completing tasks. This can look like a lack of interest or boredom in the activity, a lack of motivation and/or feeling easily distracted from these activities.

Once you’ve connected them to a clear, specific goal, even mundane tasks like cleaning your home or doing laundry, can feel more important and gratifying.

5 Avoidance Coping:

We humans often use avoidance as a way to cope with stress or negative emotions. Whether its conflict avoidance, avoiding anticipated pain or struggle, or avoiding some other negative emotion, including boredom, procrastination is a common coping method.

Self-awareness is key to shifting this source of procrastination – because once you get really clear on what you’re avoiding, you have the power to shift your coping methods into something more productive.

4 Overwhelm:

Facing a large workload or many tasks simultaneously can be paralyzing. Decision paralysis can also contribute to overwhelm – simply deciding which thing to do first can be paralyzing!

Chunking tasks down to their smallest steps, deciding to do one thing for only 15 minutes, giving yourself rewards for doing the hard stuff can all help to minimize overwhelm.

But the real trick is to narrow your focus until you feel able to move forward.

3 Poor Time Management:

Including the inability to prioritize tasks and allocate time effectively can all contribute to procrastination.

This becomes even more disruptive when it applies to a lack of a productive routine. The absence of established routines can make it challenging to initiate tasks consistently or accomplish them in a timely manner.

2 Task Difficulty:

When a task seems too challenging or complex, we often delay starting it.

When a task involves new technology or acquiring any new skill, the anticipation of the pain of the learning curve is often blown out of proportion to the point where it seems so impossible, why even bother trying.

Understanding the 4 stages of learning and recognizing where you are in that process can often ground you and return your experience back to a manageable task.

1 Perfectionism:

Setting excessively high standards can make starting a task overwhelming.

Perfectionism is the enemy of success. There is no such thing as perfect – in art, music or life. Perfection is boring.

Instead of seeking perfect, seek excellence.

Perfectionism is a complex issue and I will deal with it in a future blog. It is often a survival coping method held over from childhood.

If you struggle with perfectionism, contact me. I can help you through coaching or a Personal Breakthrough Session, especially if this coping skill is connected to childhood trauma.

It’s important to note that procrastination is complex and often involves a combination of these factors. Understanding the specific causes for an individual can help in developing strategies to address and overcome procrastination.

And remember, the actual cause of your procrastination may be different depending on the task you’re postponing.

One last note – procrastination isn’t always unproductive.

I often procrastinate when it comes to writing. I’ve discovered that I’m not actually procrastinating. I’m gestating.

So, when I’m ready to write, I sit down and it pours out of me with ease. When I try to force myself to write something when I’m not ready, it’s like pulling teeth!

I’ve learned to allow myself the time to gestate on an idea (unless I have a deadline). I struggle and suffer less and enjoy my writing process so much more!

Top 10 Reasons New Year’s Resolutions Fail

Debra Russell — Mon, 22 Jan 2024 18:02:07 +0000

Why do New Year's resolutions tend to fail? The fact is that the majority of people who set New Year's resolutions are not successful in achieving what they set out to accomplish.

Some 90% of New Year’s resolutions fail and this is such common knowledge that January 19th has come to be known as “Quitters’ Day”! So, here is my list of the top 10 reasons we fail our resolutions:

Lack of specificity (e.g. exercise more)
Not connecting the resolution (an action or series of actions) to a specific goal (your WHAT and WHY)
Too many resolutions (trying to change everything all at once)
All-or-nothing thinking (e.g. resolving to exercise 3 times/week and miss once. Oh, well, I’ve failed!)
External pressure – your resolutions are “shoulds”
Lack of accountability and support
Lack of internal commitment
Procrastination (e.g. I’ll start next week)
Fear of failure
Lack of planning – You didn’t add the resolution to your existing time management system.

Yes, the Number One reason resolutions fail is that we don’t install the new behavior in the well-established habit pattern. We don’t put it on our calendar, connect it to another established habit, or create the time management structure around the new habit.

Let’s explore all 10 reasons a bit further.

10. Lack of specificity

(e.g. exercise more)

Very often our New Year’s resolutions are vague and without measure with words like more/less. Things like:

– eat less
– exercise more
– see friends more frequently
– call my Mom more

Without a clear measure – you can’t know if you’re succeeding or failing and can get discouraged quickly.

9. Not connecting the resolution (an action or series of actions) to a specific goal (your WHY)

Without connecting the resolution (e.g. 100 situps/day) to a clear, specific, measurable goal (e.g. six pack abs by May 1st 2024), any obstacle can derail your action plan.

Because you haven’t stated “what” you want or “why” you want it.

Creating a goal that states your what (objective) and why will empower you to overcome obstacles and keep moving towards your goal.

8. Too many resolutions

(trying to change everything all at once)

It’s not uncommon to make resolutions that contain everything plus the kitchen sink!

We get caught up in the excitement of change. But change goes against human nature and the law of inertia:

“What does the law of inertia state?
law of inertia, postulate in physics that, if a body is at rest or moving at a constant speed in a straight line, it will remain at rest or keep moving in a straight line at constant speed unless it is acted upon by a force.”
Britannica.com

Too much change, too fast will create resistance to that change and keep you moving in the same direction you have been moving. We rarely have the energy to apply enough force to overcome our own inertia in major ways.

7. All-or-nothing thinking

(e.g. resolving to exercise 3 times/week and miss once. Oh, well, I’ve failed!)

All-or-nothing thinking is one of the most common conceptual paradigms – it’s binary thinking. You’ve either succeeded or failed. And it only takes missing your resolution target once or twice to trigger this kind of thinking.

Remember, creating a new habit takes time and repetition.

6. External pressure – your resolutions are “shoulds”

When we make a decision to change a behavior because we “should” do it, or because someone else is telling us we should, the motivation is not internal and therefore lacks commitment.

It often includes shades of shame/blame. Shame/blame keeps us locked in inertia and therefore change motivated by “shoulds” rarely sticks.

5. Lack of accountability and support

Let’s face it. Change is hard. Just making a resolution to add or subtract a behavior that is habitual needs both accountability and support in order to succeed.

“No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main. If a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well as if a manor of they friends`s or of thine own were. Any man`s death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind.”
John Donne

In order to truly succeed at anything in life, we must surround ourselves with people (and coaches) who encourage us, support us, give us perspective and feedback, and hold us accountable to our promises.

4. Lack of internal commitment

You don’t decide to make a change once and then you’re done.

You choose to make that change all day, every day, over and over again.

You choose to make that change in the face of your inertia.

You choose to make that change in the face of other people’s judgements and your own.

That’s what commitment is. Choosing over, and over, and over.

3. Procrastination

(e.g. I’ll start next week)

Procrastination is a much larger subject that I will address in a future installment of this Time Management series. But suffice it to say that procrastination is a symptom, not the root of the problem.

People procrastinate for many different reasons and there may even be different reasons for procrastinating on different resolutions. So you must ask yourself – what is driving your procrastination?

But whatever the reason – putting off starting the new behavior of the resolution will likely cause you to never start.

2. Fear of failure

Often a driver of procrastination, our fear of failure can drive us to avoid the whole thing altogether!

Drum roll, please!

1. Lack of planning and time management skills

You didn’t add the resolution to your existing time management system (if you have one).

The Number One reason resolutions fail is that we don’t create the plan or structure to implement that decision into our day-to-day world.

We don’t think about what it will take to actually make that resolution real.

For example, if you make the resolution to eat better, when will you go grocery shopping? When will you research recipes? When will you do the cooking? Are you bringing a meal to work? Do you have the storage containers you need? When will you buy them?

Any one of those questions can be a big enough obstacle to cause you to fail on your commitment. And as I’ve said above – it only takes failing once to quit on your resolution.

Why Do Artists Need Professional Development?

Debra Russell — Mon, 20 Jan 2020 20:55:36 +0000

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What is Professional Development?

According to BusinessDictionary.com, Professional Development is:

Process of improving and increasing [your] capabilities ~~of staff~~ through access to education and training opportunities in the workplace, through outside organization, or through watching others perform the job.

[Edits are my own]

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Why Invest in Professional Development ?

If you’ve ever heard me speak, you know I believe that you are a business owner. And that many of your struggles to make a sustainable and prosperous living doing what you love (your art, your music, your novel, your creation) are directly related to how well you function as a business owner.

So, I’m not going to argue that here. If you wish to earn a living, part time or full time, from your creative endeavors, you are a business owner.

Here’s the bottom line – the more you invest in yourself as a business owner, the stronger you will be as a business owner and the stronger, more profitable and more prosperous your business will be.

But it’s not all about the money. It’s about your impact as an artist, right? Making a difference in the world with your creativity, whatever that difference is for you, is why you create.

Otherwise, you wouldn’t be here on this site. You’d just make your stuff in your garage and not care if anyone ever heard it, saw it, or read it. The true essence of art is about communication between the artist and the audience. And how the audience is impacted by what you do.

So, what does that have to do with your business and professional development? Well, everything, really. Because if no one experiences your work, than you are not fulfilling your true purpose. In order for them to experience your work – you have to get the word out (marketing).

No audience, no impact, right?

You have to deliver your work in the ways they want to receive it (fulfillment). And so on – that’s all business.

“And that’s all well and good,” you might be thinking, “But I need a real reason to spend my limited resources on this professional development stuff!”

Have you ever heard the the concept:

Luck = Preparedness + Opportunity

You have limited power when it comes to Opportunities, right? But what you have ultimate power over is your own preparation. In my experience, people often don’t even see or credit the opportunities around them, because they aren’t actually ready to take advantage of them. They aren’t prepared.

The essence of business development IS becoming prepared. So that not only do you see the abundant opportunities around you, but you have the confidence to act on them when you see them.

And you have the trust in yourself to create new opportunities even when you don’t see them!
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The 3 Types of Professional Development

For some careers, continuing education is required to maintain your credentials/licenses. Also called CEUs (Continuing Education Units) or CECs (Continuing Education Credit), these programs generally focus on training directly related to your particular profession – skills that allow you to increase the quality or quantity of your services.

A lawyer learns about a particular aspect of the law. An accountant expands her knowledge of accounting for non-profits. A painter studies plein air painting. A musician studies new forms of music (e.g. a rock musician studies jazz). You get the idea.

But is that enough?

I believe that in order to be truly successful both in your business/career and in your life, you need to invest in 3 areas of professional development.

Professional Skills
Foundational Life and Business Skills
Success Skills

Every business owner (including you!) is best served when they embrace a context of “Always be learning,” and focus on all three areas. (Not necessarily at the same time!)
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Professional Skills

Have you taken classes to become better at what you do? To learn additional skills in your area of expertise?

I’m not going to list categories for this area, because it will completely depend on what your profession is! Most adults have at one time or another expanded their toolbox, if you will, by learning a new skill to better serve their customers, clients and fans.

And when you think about professional development, I’m betting this is what you are generally thinking about. And it is important!

Not only do you always want to be developing your professional skill levels. It’s also important in this rapidly changing world to keep up with new developments in your field. Because if you don’t, there will be others, your competition, who do and they will outstrip you!

Unfortunately, this is where most business owners stop in their thinking about ongoing training. Being a successful business owner, whether it’s just you or you have a staff of thousands, requires your facility with skills in several areas that have nothing to do with the product or service you provide.

Read on to find out what these additional skills might be…
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Life and Business Skills

These are the skills that allow you to successfully function in your art business and in the world. This is a partial list of what might be included in this category:

Life Skills:

Time Management
Money Management
Task Management (one aspect of time management)
Organization of your environment
Communication Skills (including boundary setting and building rapport)
Leadership

Foundational Business Skills:

Marketing and Sales
Business Finances
Communication, Negotiation and Public Speaking
Project Management and Planning
Building and Managing Teams and Delegation
Networking and Follow-up
Developing Systems for Your Business Operations

Some of these skills, like time management and organization, are what I consider meta level skills. When your time management, organization and financial management don’t work, nothing else really does either. In my coaching, I’m constantly amazed at how often clearing up issues around time, space and money have an impact much bigger than either me or the client expects.

Because they’re meta – and they affect everything.
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Success Skills

Success skills are those softer skills that have to do with who you are deep inside and how you engage with your world. This can seem a bit woo woo, I know, and perhaps seem to be more in the “therapy” category.

And yet, as a business coach, I promise you that private clients benefit tremendously in their businesses and in their lives when they commit to expanding their success skills.

From a development perspective, the better you function as a human being,

The better your results will be,
The happier you will be,
And the happier the people around you will be (including family as well as staff).

So, what are some of these success skills?

Most of these fall under the larger heading of emotional intelligence. EQ is a complex subject, so I won’t get into it here. But suffice it to say, research has shown that above a certain minimum of IQ, EQ is actually more predictive of success both personally and professionally.
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Finally, you can buy a class through a dozen (or more) online sources. You can take the class and you’ll probably learn some stuff. In my experience, however, taking a class rarely significantly changes things in the reality of your business.

Why not?

Because if you don’t implement that learning into your business immediately, it will be gone. As the Curve of Forgetting graphically shows, humans don’t retain new information unless it’s put into use within 48 hours!

Don’t get me wrong – classes are great! In fact, if you clicked through on any of the links above, you’ll see that most of them are classes that I teach for the ArtistsMBA program. Acquiring new information in areas that you would like to strengthen is important. AND if you don’t have support to implement that information in a regular way, your business will likely not benefit.

For this reason, I recommend coaching, whether privately or in a group setting, to support you in actually taking clear specific action to implement the learning on a consistent basis, and hold you accountable for following through.

I offer professional development training in 3 formats – the Artists Marketing & Business Academy (online podcast format classes, and not just for artists anymore!), the Marketing & Business Academy Mastery Lab (group coaching) and Private Coaching. Please feel free to reach out if you are looking to expand your skills and increase your success.
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This article was inspired by an article I wrote for my Debra Russell Coaching website. You can read the original article here.
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The Power of Habits

Debra Russell — Fri, 12 Apr 2019 01:34:13 +0000

Here it is the beginning of the second quarter of 2019. How are you doing with your New Year’s Resolutions? Did you make them? Have you kept them?

No? Well, you’re not alone.

“Studies have shown that less than 25% of people actually stay committed to their resolutions after just 30 days, and only 8% accomplish them.”
Forbes

In the above quoted article, the author recommends that you turn your resolution into a goal. Now, I’m a big believer in goals, but when most people make resolutions, they aren’t looking at creating a particular goal.

Generally, people are looking to shift their day-to-day behavior. And when we’re talking about shifting every day behavior, we are always talking about habits not goals.

What is a Habit?

Definition of Habit
a settled tendency or usual manner of behavior
an acquired mode of behavior that has become nearly or completely involuntary
a behavior pattern acquired by frequent repetition or physiologic exposure that shows itself in regularity or increased facility of performance
Merriam-Webster

This is exactly why most people fail with their New Year’s resolutions. Because they think that all they have to do is decide once, on January 1st, to make this change. But a habit is behavior that you don’t think about! It’s behavior you do automatically.

Obstacles to Better Habits

In my experience, there are two major obstacles to changing your habits:

Your existing habits
Forgetting that you decided to do things differently

You decide on January 1st to do this thing differently, but within 24 to 48 hours, you’ve forgotten that you made that decision and your existing habit takes over.

You may notice that you forgot. You may feel bad about it for a bit and try to remember. But inevitably, your existing habits override this decision and you’re back to doing what you’ve been doing.

See, habits are really powerful. They are your brain’s way of automating everything it can, so it can conserve your energy for the decisions you have to make intentionally. So, your brain creates all these short cuts called neural pathways.

The more frequently a neural pathway is used, the less energy it takes to trigger it. And so the longer you’ve had a habit the easier it is to continue that habit.

Creating a new habit takes a lot more brain power, concentration and intention and most of all memory! You have to remember to do things differently!

Bottom line – you don’t eliminate old habits, you replace them with new habits.

And in order to do that, you must remember to repeat the behavior over and over and over until you no longer need to think about it. Until your brain has hardwired the new neural pathway.

I’ve heard that it takes 21 days to create a new habit. That has not been my experience. I think if you can remember to do it every one of those 21 days – by the end of that three weeks, it may have reached the level of automation that makes a habit. But because people forget, and then they have to remember again, it usually takes longer.

Why Are Habits Powerful?

When we study people who are highly successful and look at what they do and don’t do, what we find is that the only difference usually between them and us is simply a matter of their habits. Whether its a behavior or a habit of thought, it is very often a person’s habits that create their results in their lives.

And so many of us who are on this crazy journey called life try to emulate those habits. We make New Year’s Resolutions to incorporate those habits into our lives.

Benefits of Strong Habits

Reduce decision stress
Create consistency of behavior which generates momentum
Requires less energy

Strong habits reduce decision stress. Because the essence of a habit is that the decision’s already been made. Once something is a habit, you don’t have to think about it. You don’t have to weigh the pros and cons. And you don’t have to be “in the mood” to do it. You just do it, without thought, automatically.

And doing this behavior automatically generates momentum. Every time you have to pause to think about a decision or make a choice about a behavior, you sap your momentum. The better your habits the better your productivity, your satisfaction with your results and your enjoyment of your life.

How often have you felt like changing things is a bit like Sisyphus pushing that boulder up the hill only to find the boulder back at the bottom of the hill the next day. It’s exhausting! But once that behavior is a habit, it becomes easy, effortless and obvious. Of course, I brush my teeth every night before bed. I don’t even have to think about it…

For example, effective time management is essentially a mix of strong structure and effective habits.

Think about it, most people don’t really think about planning or scheduling – they just do. It’s a habit. People with effective time management habits are more productive. People with poor time management habits struggle with procrastination, being chronically late and stress about their deadlines and obligations.

When I work with clients on effective time management (which is the MOST common goal area), we essentially create a strong structure and then I hold them accountable to their new time management habits!

How to Build a New Habit

First choose a habit. When you choose the new habit think about these questions:

Make this new behavior as simple and as clear as you can.
Think about how it fits into your life.
When will you do it?
What will come before and what will come after this new habit?
Why do you want to do it (what’s the benefit)?

Then, once you’ve chosen your new habit and defined it very specifically, then you must implement it. Set up reminders. Ask for support to help you remember. Set up whatever structure you need to make it easy to remember and maintain.

For example, my New Year’s Resolution for 2019 was to reduce and eliminate my use of single-use plastic. It was a very clear, simple behavior. And I’m clear about why I’m doing it – to reduce my footprint on the planet.

I looked at where I was currently in the habit of using single-use plastic items and set up some structures for the new behavior. For example, I purchased a refillable water bottle for my car and now I refill it every morning when I packed my lunch for the office. I put my reusable shopping bags in the car and purchased reusable vegetable bags, adding those to my shopping bags. When I go grocery shopping, I put the shopping bags with my purse in the front of the car, so I don’t forget them.

I have also told a few people about it, so they could help me remember.

And what do you know, I’ve been doing really well with this new habit.

So what new habit would you like to implement in your life? Tell me about it in the comments below!

Choose a Theme for the New Year

Debra Russell — Thu, 21 Dec 2017 19:11:12 +0000

This time of year you hear a lot of talk about New Year’s Resolutions. Do they work? Don’t they? Everyone has a theory. I’ve written about methods I recommend for creating a successful New Year’s Resolution in the past. And, of course, I’ve written a ton about setting goals and creating plans.

But this year, I’m going to try something a little different for myself. See, over the last few years, I’ve noticed that my years seem to have themes. The theme isn’t readily apparent at the beginning of the year, but I can usually identify the theme by mid-year. Some years have been about health. Others have been about family and relationship. Some years I’ve really focused on my business.

But whatever the theme turns out to be, it hasn’t really been a conscious intentional choice on my part.

So, this year, instead of setting New Year’s resolutions, I’m choosing a theme intentionally and then I’m going to use that theme as a focusing tool as I go through the year. Rather than letting the theme choose me in an unconscious way – I’m picking my theme for 2018 and using that as my guide for my goals, my time management, my choices. And I invite you to come along on this journey with me.

How to Pick a Theme

I’ve spent the last few weeks asking myself:

What do I want this coming year to be about?
Where do I want to put my focus?
What kinds of endeavors do I intend to pursue and is there a common motif, topic, question or issue?
What opportunities are showing up for the new year – and again – is there a common theme?

When I looked at it from this perspective, the theme became really clear to me – 2018 will be about education – my own learning and myself as educator. (Stay tuned for some cool announcements about the opportunities aspect of this.)

So, what is your theme? What will your coming year be about? Please share with me in the comments!

Use Your Theme as a Guideline

So, great, you have a theme. Now what?

Set Your Goals

I recommend posting that theme where you will see it often. Then, sit down and make your goals for the coming year, and work backwards so you have quarterly goals. As you’re considering your goals, ask yourself, “Are these aligned with my theme? Do they share a focus?”

If your answer is, “No!” Then ask yourself:

Is this a “should”? (If it is, what do you want to pursue?)
Is this truly something I’m committed to for the coming year?
Could I reframe this goal in light of my theme? (This might just be a language reframe, but it could also be a complete shift in focus.)
Is this goal an outlier? (If it is, do you want to put the energy into it this year? And if so, how will you make sure you get to it? So often we make outlier goals, but we just don’t get to them. Because … outlier)

Not to say that you can’t have goals that don’t fit perfectly within your theme – but I think you’ll find this a useful tool of inquiry.

Create Your Time Structure

Now that you have a theme and goals – you need to set up your days so you actually work on them! For me, I will need to build time into my schedule for activities like:

Study, reading and class projects (for me as student)
Research (both as student and educator)
Class Content Creation (both for Debra Russell Coaching as well as upcoming teaching opportunities)
Writing (Blog, book, articles for others)

When I first started thinking about this, I felt really resistant and overwhelmed. But when I put it in context of my theme for the year – I found myself actually anticipating spending my time this way. I came into alignment with the demands instead of overwhelmed by them.

Support and Accountability

Now that you know your themes and your goals. And you’ve created a plan for how you will incorporate this focus into your day-to-day life. You will need to find ways to be disciplined and maintain your theme focus through out the year. I recommend:

Working with a coach (I mean, you knew I was going to say that, didn’t you?)
Accountability partners (perhaps meeting once a week, perhaps more frequently)
Sharing your intention and focus with your significant other, family and business team.
Checking in at the end of each month and each quarter – how did you do? Did you maintain your plan? What are your goals for the next month/quarter?

It will be important in the coming year to manage other people’s expectations of you – as you make this shift into clear focused action. Particularly if you work from home and/or others are used to you being available or easily distracted by what they want you to focus on.

Remember the best way to manage other people’s expectations is to under-promise and over-deliver. Teach them to expect less. And then when you can, you surprise them!

Can you see how choosing a theme goes way beyond setting New Year’s resolutions? I’m really curious, myself, to see how I do with this. And I’ll be curious to hear from you what theme you choose and how it goes for you – please share in the comments and check back over the year to let me know how you do!

Create Mastery in Your Business for 2018

If your Theme for 2018 is taking your business to the next level or improving your systems (such as time management, finances, marketing, etc.) Let me help you make 2018 your BEST YEAR EVER!

Toward that end, I am running a ridiculous sale on the Marketing & Business Mastery Lab for a limited time!

Check it out!