#10 on my 104 goals for 2012 is to make a monthly donation to a non-profit I care about.

I have selected Connecting Congo as the non-profit I'm going to donate to each month. I actually donate $5 per paycheck to United Way, but I want to do something a bit more meaningful for me.

My best friend, Mary Manda, and her husband, David Suze Manda, founded Connecting Congo. It is an incredible organization and in addition to helping maintain their website, I want to find new ways to support them.

I'm committing to sending $35 each month. I even added it as an automatic payment from my checking account. So now it'll just happen automatically! The only thing I need to be aware of is when Mary moves to DR Congo permanently. I will likely need to change it to an electronic transfer.

I hope this will inspire someone to make a monthly commitment to an organization they care about. And if you don't have one, pick Connecting Congo! They rock!

"Our Week" – Weekly Calendar and Dry Erase Board made from a photo collage frame. I LOVE this. I think it will look great under our monthly calendar in the kitchen/dining room.

http://pinterest.com/pin/170010954652909985/

1/4/2011: I'm going to pick JoAnne up from the airport tonight after work, but if I have time, I'd love to go to Walmart to get some lunch items for the week and see if they have one of these collage frames.

February Pinterest Craft

Coming Soon…

Here are some tips on how to be more productive (no matter where you are).

1. 45/15 Split

My background in psychology and experience as a learner and worker has taught me that people have an optimal range of time of which they can learn, focus and be productive. The typical time range is 40-55 minutes. What this means for you: start paying attention to time when you're working. About how long into a task do you start to "fade" or does your creativity or productivity diminish? For me, it's about 45 minutes.

I like to start my work "on the hour" so I can easily do a 45/15 minute split. I start working at 7:00 am and at 7:45 am, I take a planned break. Knowing that I get to take a break helps me focus because I don't create excuses to not work.

When you let yourself expect a break, you'll be more productive in your 45 minutes than if you just take random breaks, get frustrated, and then stop working altogether for a couple hours.

2. The planned break

Before I start my 45/15 split, I have a plan for how I'm going to spend my 15 minutes break. That way, I don't waste time thinking about what I'm going to do when I should be working, or wasting my break time by trying to decide how I want to spend it. For example, I know that in 20 minutes I'm going to get a snack and play with our adorable cockapoo, Mazie. She likes to sleep in, so I won't wake her for a little while.

3. Timing my tasks

Measure, measure, measure! That's how you know if anything is successful. I measure the time I spend every day by using an automatic time tracker. Gone are the days of writing down what you're doing (especially if you spend 80% of your work day at the computer). I use a cool time tracker that lets me add new tasks and then set the timer on them when I start working on them. At the end of the day (or week, month, etc), with a click of a button I can see where all my time went. It also helps me bill clients because it's organized by client profiles. It's a breeze to use, and I've noticed that on the days I don't use it, my productivity plummets. There's something about seeing that little timer on my screen that shouts to me: GET TO WORK!

Another cool feature about the little tool I use is that I have it set so that if a certain amount of time goes by where I'm not timing a task, it pops up and asks, "Should you be timing a task?" Whenever that comes up, I feel all guilty and my productivity gets back on track. It also alerts me when I've spent more than 10 hours working a day (a customizable time limit). I figure if I spend 10 hours a day working, I definitely need a long break and a big pat on the back.

4. Large, visual task list with 3 tasks

I have a great big whiteboard hanging on the wall, and to help myself stay on track, I write the 3 biggest tasks that need to get done. Typically, my work day involves about 14 tasks, but I NEVER write them all on the board like that (they're in my time tracking task list). If I were to look up and see 14 different tasks, I would feel way too stressed and overwhelmed to get started.

I used to be one of those people that would have a mile long task list, but then I realized that it was hurting more than helping. With 3 tasks, I feel in control because I'm confident I can complete those three tasks. Sure, I know that have 11 more tasks after that, but when I focus on just a few, my productivity definitely increases (I have the time sheets to prove it, too – measure, measure, measure!).

5. Don't let emails, texts, or social media alerts interrupt your work

Impulsively checking email, texts and social media is going to reduce your productivity dramatically. I'm way too connected and dedicated to responsiveness to actually give up checking these throughout the day. One way to prevent it from interrupting your workflow is to adjust your 45/15 split to a 40/5/15 split:

• 40 minutes: super-focused work
• 5 minutes: check your email, texts & social media
• 15 minutes: break time

If you MUST respond or reply because it's work or client-related, do it in the first 40 minutes of the next round, and be sure to time the task so that you don't spend more than 10 minutes replying. And even though it may be tempting, don't eat into your break time by responding either. Break time is vital to the next hour of focus. You need to get up, move around, do something fun, and get your brain ready to dive back in.

6. Everybody is different: do your own A/B testing

Everybody is different and may respond to different tips and ideas differently. I recommend completing your own A/B testing to start evaluating what really makes you more productive. Make a list of ideas you'd like to try and start completing your own A/B testing. For example, I was just wondering if listening to music actually helps me get more done. So here's what I'm going to do (and don't worry, I realize this is very far from scientific testing, or even A/B testing that can be done with websites):

For the next 10 business days, I'm going to alternate every 2 days between music and no music, and at the end of 10 days I'm going to see which days had a higher percentage of task completion.

Now, it's possible that I could totally throw off my own results by favoring one over the other, but I'm going to try my best to just work hard and see what happens. Maybe for me, music doesn't make a different, but eating breakfast before 9 am does.

7. Don't be afraid to stop in the middle of something to take a break

I'm about 2 minutes away from my break, and I'm thinking, "I can't stop. I'm not finished." It doesn't matter. Take the break and come back to it. Even if you're in a really good flow, you'll be surprised how much better the flow will be after you get some fresh air and spend a few minutes not staring at the computer (or doing whatever you were doing). I find I usually think of a great solution or better way of doing something while I'm away from the task. Then when I come back, my work is even better than "the flow" I was in.

Just be sure to save any work before you step away. Kind of a no-brainer, but if you're new to taking breaks, you may need to create a new habit of automatically saving.

8. Organize your work space

Spend a few minutes at the end and beginning of each day organizing your work space. Working in a tidy environment will help reduce feelings of stress and chaos. It will also make it easier to find things when you need them. If you spend just a few minutes every day, it won't every turn into an unmanageable task. One rule I have is to never leave a pile of papers at the end of the day. Even the smallest pile of papers can quickly accumulate into a mound of unmanageable mess.

9. Have access to healthy, quick and easy snacks

Humans are designed to be grazers, not gorgers. Let yourself snack throughout the day to keep your energy up as well as keep a good flow of oxygen going to your brain (we breathe more when we're snacking). Let your blood sugar tank until you get the "shaky hungers" is not only bad for your body, but it's bad for business. As an employer, it may be worth supplying some health fruits, vegetables, yogurt, cheese sticks, nuts, etc. for your employees to snack on if it keeps them productive throughout the day. Definitely don't discourage employees from snacking at the desk if the want to (just go over the rules for cleanliness expectation, like don't eat an orange and put your stick fingers all over everything).

10. Love your job

The easiest way to stay motivated and productive is to love your job. If you don't love your job, and love waking up every morning to go to work, it's time to find a new job. When you have a passion for what you're doing, productivity becomes more of a "how can I do more?" instead of "how can I get through the day?" If you find you start losing that feeling for your daily work, start reflecting on why that's happening. It may just be an issue of your attitude or work environment – both of which are things that can change for the better.

What do you do to increase your productivity?

The 5 Love Languages

The following ideas are inspired by Dr. Gary Chapman's book, "The 5 Love Languages." If you don't own this book already, one of the best gifts you can give your relationship or marriage is buying this book today and committing to reading it and discovering your love languages. It's currently on sale at Amazon for only $6.59. That's a pretty cheap gift that says, "I commit to loving you the way you need to be loved."

Words of Affirmation

If your partner's love language is words of affirmation, you have it pretty easy on Valentine's Day! Here are some ideas to get you started:

1. Write a letter

You have tons of ways you can choose to write your letter: handwrite it, type it, use fancy paper, make it look old and roll it into a bottle, draw a picture on it, fold it up like you're in middle school, frame it, etc. The key is to just sit down and express your love in writing. Feel free to talk about how you met, why you fell in love, why you're still in love, why that person means the world to you, etc.

2. Create a video

Whether it's a flip camera, your phone, or a fancy camera, film yourself saying all the important things your partner deserves to hear. I suggest taking some time to write down what you'd like to say and maybe even practice it a couple times. Then just sit yourself in front of the camera and go for it. Another video idea (if you have a little more time and some video editing software like Windows Movie Maker) is to create a a slideshow of pictures of the two of you and then record what you'd like to say (maybe even with their favorite song in the background) and put it all together. This will end up being a cherished gift for a long time to come, especially for the person who needs their love tank filled with words of affirmation.

3. Make a poster

Buy some posterboard at your local dollar store or craft store and start cranking out your creativity. This doesn't have to look professional or even that good. Just get creative and express yourself: use paint, markers, crayons, magazine cut-outs, candybar wrappers, pictures, etc. For an added touch to keep this memory long after the poster gets thrown out, take a picture of it and frame it (to be delivered later).

4. Portable love card

Express yourself on a card the size of a business card and have them put it in their purse or wallet so whenever they're missing you or just need a little reminder that you love them, they can pull it out and look at it. It's an easy & portable "word of affirmation" that can go where they go.

5. A year of "I love you" journaling

Start today for NEXT year's Valentine's Day. Buy a beautiful spiral-bound journal. Every day, write something to your partner about what happened during the day that made you love them even more. The key to the surprise of this gift is keeping it hidden for a year, which can be the greatest challenge of all. To get around this, you could write an electronic version and keep the document hidden on your computer until your print it out and get it bound at your local printing shop. This is a powerful gift that shows an entire year of planning and forethought.

Stay tuned for future gift ideas for the other love languages…

Really? Too busy to take 15 minutes to post a new blog? Probably not. So here's to a new challenge to add one new post every day for 30 days straight. I'd like give myself a 100-day challenge because I think those are more substantial and fun, but let's start with a more manageable 30-day challenge.

And to give myself the motivation to get those posts written every day, here's a list of 10 reasons why blogging consistently is good for you:

1. Stretch your mind. It's one thing to sit and have a chat with a friend about something, but when you sit down to write something, you're going to stretch your mind much more. You have to organize your thoughts and communicate in a way that will connect with people.

2. Do better in Google. Search engines love fresh content. If you want to perform better in search engines and grow a larger following, you need to write consistently so that Google will rank your blog better.

3. Maintain reader loyalty. If you're writing just for yourself, then this one doesn't really apply to you. Usually people are writing for an audience – friends, family, or strangers. If you want those people to stay loyal to your blog, you need to give them content to keep coming back to. If you let your blog sit without an update for 6 months, no one is going to be paying attention!

4. Challenge yourself. Ok, so this is kind of like stretching your mind, but seriously – stop being so lazy and give yourself a good challenge. With something new to accomplish every day, you're going to push yourself more than just sticking with the "same old, same old."

5. You'll eventually learn something new. When you write consistently, you will eventually learn something that you didn't know. And learning makes you a better person.

6. No matter what the topic is, writing can be therapeutic. Even if you're blogging about something technical that doesn't have anything to do with how you feel or your emotions, the act of writing and producing something is therapeutic. There's something really positive about looking back on a huge collection of work that is there only because of you. Creating stuff is good for the soul.

7. Become an expert. As you start writing about your niche on a consistent basis, you're going to start feeling more confident about your subject, which is going to get you closer to being a true expert in your field. This goes hand in hand with learning something new. When you write consistently, you learn consistently, and when you're consistently learning in your field – you are one step to becoming an expert.

8. Keep up with the times. There isn't one field of study or industry that isn't constantly changing. By blogging consistently in your realm of expertise, you're going to be forced to stay current with current trends, research, opinions and changes in your field. It makes you look really smart to know what's going on.

9. It makes you cool. Yes, there are millions of blogs sitting in cyberland right now, but there aren't millions of people who have the dedication to keep their blogs current and up-to-date. By becoming one of those people, you join an elite group of bloggers – which makes you kind of cool.

10. Why do you think blogging consistently is good for you?

If you’re needing a way to cheer up, I encourage you to rent/Netflix/etc. his movie Kickboxer. It will cheer you up immediately. Just check out some of the reasons this movie is awesome:

1. 1980’s martial arts movie. Need I say more? The 80’s are filled with so many fun classics, and Kickboxer is one of them. If you love 80’s movies, you’ll love Kickboxer. It has a definite 80’s vibe to it: terrible dialogue, crazy awesome fight sequences, and a rockin soundtrack.

2. Drunk dancing and fighting scene. I don’t even need to defend this reason. Just watch this clip and you’ll know that this movie is the kind of movie that you’re going to have fun with.

3. It’s terrible. And it’s terribly awesome. Both at the same time. I could probably write a total of 20 reasons this movie will cheer you up, but they’ll all be centered around this theme of terrible awesomeness. When you watch this movie, be sure to watch it with some friends and enjoy making fun of it. It’s bad, but it’s funny bad.

BONUS (and slightly inappropriate): BALLS.

That’s right, BALLS.

..see? Aren’t you ALREADY getting cheered up?

We didn’t want to drive downtown Coeur d’Alene, but we wanted to go somewhere that was open past 10 pm – and so we went to Rusty’s for the first time. Overall, the service & drinks were good. Here’s what stood out to me:

• Down-to-earth service. Our server was friendly, but she wasn’t pretentious, annoyed, or fake. She was friendly and helpful. When asked what she’d recommend, she asked good questions and made good recommendations.
• Variety of music. Other than the times when there was music (which was kind of odd), we all liked the variety of music from contemporary to hard rock to country – something for everyone.
• Drinks were priced right. Most of the drinks averaged $3.75 – and that’s without having any specials.
• Variety of seating. There’s the bar, some high bar tables, tucked in booths, and a couple couches. Again, a little something for everyone.
• Sports on the TV. This is sort of a given since it’s a Sports Bar, but whatever. I like having some good old sports on the television so I can have additional entertainment other than friends and drinks.
• It’s in Hayden. For those of us that don’t want to go downtown Coeur d’Alene (or to some of the scary bars I haven’t tried), Rusty’s is the perfect solution.

I was so excited to get $10 free dollars to Auntie’s. Tyler and I love that bookstore. Here’s a few reasons why:

• It’s Big AND Local. We haven’t found many local bookstore that have such a huge selection of books at such a big location
• Downtown Spokane. There’s something fun about old downtown buildings. Auntie’s Bookstore is big, open, and old. It’s awesome.
• Great staff. Every time we go there, the staff are friendly and accessible.
• Huge selection of new and used. I love discovering fun little “finds” there – old used books for an affordable price.
• Autographed books. They are always hosting book signings, from local to national authors, including the likes of David Sedaris, Jamie Ford, Sherman Alexie and Chuck Palahniuk. If you can’t make it to one of the book signings, you can still pre-order a signed book, or even purchase one afterwards.

I didn’t even know they were there until their coupon showed up last week on Groupon.com. After 8 years of being together, Tyler and I are always on the lookout for new and fun adventures. Last night was just such an adventure.

10 Reasons Chocolate Apothecary of Spokane rocks:

1. Groupon.com participation. Yeah, I know it’s basically for their own promotion, but without their participation in Groupon.com, we never would have known about them. Using effective marketing makes them smart (and I like smart businesses).
2. Chocolate Dream Tour Engineer. That’s not exactly what she called herself, but it was something awesome like that. She did a great job of presenting the process of making chocolate and the experience of tasting.
3. 14 different chocolates. By the end of the chocolate tasting, I was on an incredible chocolate high. It was fantastic.
4. A little to-go baggie. Once I started getting a chocolate overload, I wasn’t able to eat the whole piece of the samples. They planned ahead and had cute little to-go baggies so we could save our leftover chocolate. Brilliant!
5. Water. Water is fantastic, and we had plenty of it to cleanse our palate between tastings.
6. Journal & Pen. At first I thought it was silly that they offered a journal and pen, until I realized I wanted to take notes on all of the chocolates we were trying. Great idea!
7. Chocolate and espresso cafe with tables and chairs. People don’t have to just stop in and buy chocolate. They can stop in, have a drink, relax and enjoy themselves. The atmosphere was great!
8. Delicious souvenirs. Nothing like purchasing a souvenir that’s so delicious.
9. Perfect length. An hour event was perfect – not too long, not too short. It seemed to go really fast, which is a good indicator that we were enjoying ourselves.
10. Chocolate High. I felt amazing after munching down on so much chocolate. I could tell from the look in Tyler’s eyes that he was feeling mighty good as well. (He had this big grin on his face, despite feeling kind of sick earlier in the day).

Bottom line: Chocolate Apothecary has a fun Tasting Class that I would recommend to anyone who enjoys chocolate and wants a fun date.

Here are 7 reasons why (my UNHappy List of the month).

1. Miniscule pay raise. I actually worked full time for the whole year and we earned a little more money since I wasn’t going to school. But that leads to #2.

2. No longer a student. Those tuition credits came in handy.

3. Debt Settlement = Taxable Income. So poor that I defaulted on a student loan and settled the debt for about 50% of what I owed. Turns out that counts as “taxable income.” Because that makes sense.

4. Making Work Pay Credit (thank you President Obama). The government chose to withhold less money out of every paycheck as a brilliant way to stimulate the economy. It turns out we would have been better off without the extra $10 in each paycheck. Thanks Obama. I thought you were supposed to be helping poor people!

5. Not a homeowner. We haven’t been able to afford to buy a home (we wanted to be one of those responsible people who waited until it was a smart choice to avoid the risk of ever facing foreclosure). The reward? Nothing.

6. Haven’t pumped out lots of kids (yet). Again, waiting until we can actually afford it turns out to be a bad idea. Better to just have them and take the government’s tax credits for them.

7. Didn’t contribute to a retirement plan. Why do all the credits come from doing things that just benefit you?

So what are we going to do this year? Buy a house and have a kid. We should fair much better next year in the tax realm.