A friend got me thinking about the term “turtling” that I sometimes use to describe the process that people go through to hide out and feel secure. We all turtle up in different ways, and one of the challenges of being a coach is to figure out when the turtling is instrumental and when it’s detrimental.

The reason why this is so tricky is because one of the things that coaches have to do is to make people uncomfortable so that they’ll grow. Creative tension isn’t particularly comfortable, but it’s from that position that positive change happens. Yet if you make people too uncomfortable, they’ll turtle up and start resisting you and their own growth.

And some people have a tendency to get overwhelmed and not let me know about it. Their turtling process is a coping mechanism – instead of engaging with the things that are overwhelming them, they shut everything off. If you poke at them in the wrong way when they’re turtling up, they just ignore you until something breaks. But if they’re not telling you they’re overwhelmed, you don’t know that they need help.

In other cases, people need to turtle up so that they can process what they’re feeling and figure out what they need to do next. It’s not that they’re scared or overwhelmed, but merely that they have a tendency to turtle up, plot, and then run like hell when they’re ready. If you don’t let them do their thing, they’ll never take off running, yet you also have to be careful that they don’t put their blinders on once they start running. (This is me, in case you’re curious.)

Of course, to make things even trickier, you sometimes have to recommend that people turtle up so that they don’t do things they’ll later regret. This is especially true for people who wear their heart on their sleeves. Their emotional intensity can be too much for some people to handle, and many people aren’t nearly as forgiving of the things that are said during emotionally intense times as the people who process their emotions socially and openly. It’s easy for them to resent the fact that you’re asking them to play it cool because they can’t process things by playing cool, yet you know that them emotionally unloading on other people will only make matters worse. Even though you’re saying “not here and not now,” they hear “not ever.”

Turtling up is neither good nor bad, and we all need to do it sometimes. The real question is not about whether you’re turtling, but instead, whether your turtling is helping you grow or keeping you from growing. If you’re too secure and comfortable, you’re not growing in the ways that you could, but if you’re not taking the time to process and integrate experiences – or to give people space away from your emotional intensity – then you’re also not growing as much as you can.

How do you turtle up? Can you tell when it’s instrumental or detrimental? If you know that your turtling is detrimental, do you know how to come out of your shell?

Please share this with a friend who needs to hear it.

Photo credit: Rami

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Last night it occurred to me that I’ve been holding out on you, and doing so has been a disservice to all of us.

I’ve had a brainwedgie around what to do about reviews for quite some time now, I used to do them regularly but I just stopped because I went through a heavy consumption period, and I’ve been building up a pile of Stuck every since then.

What I forgot, though, is that the reviews helped people. It let you know about the good stuff I ran across and helped you decide if it was worth your time and money. It helped the good people whose products I reviewed put food on their table. And when there was an affiliate program for the product, it helped me put food on my table and have more time to help other people. We all lost out on this.

About five weeks ago, I made up my mind that I’d start writing reviews and having them go up as pages on the blog so that I could get past the Stuck without there being a barrage of reviews on your end. But it occurred to me that this really wouldn’t be helping you any unless I told you they were there, and that created more awkwardness than just doing the reviews as posts.

I also realized that “the barrage of reviews” was mostly a myth conjured up by insecurity; though I have a backlog of good stuff to talk about, it’s unlikely that it’ll come out in a short amount of time. Or maybe it will, in which case I can clear my head and focus on other stuff.

So, if you see a bunch of reviews and recommendations hit the blog in the near future, you know what’s going on. The reviews themselves will be valuable, but if you don’t want to read them, just skip them and be patient with me as I do what I should’ve been doing for the last few months.

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I used to think, “if it’s worth doing, it’s worth planning to do.” Though the phrase is sticky, it’s not quite right.

I was thinking about this in reference to Julie’s Mindmapping Different Kinds of Time, wherein she wrote about her experience of combining mindmaps with ideas similar to the ones presented in Create, Connect, and Consume. Integrating the ideas from the 3C post was a game-changer for me, and Julie’s work really took those ideas to another level.

For me, the biggest benefit of switching to thinking about ToDo lists in more open ways is that it’s led to a much more holistic, intuitive understanding of what I “need” to be doing. Rather than thinking “I must read this particular chapter,” I can instead focus on reading something that’s a) worth reading, b) useful, and c) interesting. If “this particular chapter” doesn’t pass that test, then I don’t read it – or, even better, I can focus on the consumption opportunities that are more valuable at this time. At the end of the day, I spend more time focusing on the process instead of particular outcomes; in that sense, every fully harnessed opportunity is a stress-free win.

You’ll see something similar in Julie’s post when she says

I’ve been doing yoga and meditation for many years and reiki for the past several, both of which have helped me develop my intuition. I would like to spend more time than I do now exploring my intuition. So instead of thinking: I have to do yoga, I have to meditate, what about saying, I want to spend time with my intuition — Intuition Time — and that expanse of Time could include some yoga poses, some meditation, some daydreaming, some journaling, etc.

If she tried to make herself do yoga when she felt like doing reiki, then she’s set herself up to miss out on an opportunity to do something she wanted to do that served the same purpose as the activity she didn’t quite feel like doing. Why not be fully engaged in the activity you want to do instead of making yourself do something you don’t want to do for no other reason than it being on a list? A list, I should add, that you made when you were disconnected from this present moment.

Aside: Julie had a goal of “Develop Intuition Time.” It’s possible that in that chunk of time, she feels like doing some creative stuff. If she were to honor her desire to do some creative stuff, then she has, in fact, listened to her intuition. Rather than forcing her intuition into a time, would she be better off to let listening to her intuition be a natural, integrated part of her day? I think so.

There’s planning, and then there’s over-planning. Planning, done correctly, is an awareness-generating exercise. Overplanning is a stress-generating exercise and is generally counterproductive. Sometimes there really are deadlines that need to be met to keep things on track, and planning helps us keep sight of that. But there are plenty of meaningful things to do that would benefit from us learning to trust our intuitions about when when we should do them.

So it turns out that there are some things that’s just not worth planning to do, not because they’re not worth it, but because sticking to a plan sometimes makes us miss out on better opportunities.

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Here are this month’s free planners – just in time for a good monthly review and planning session. Enjoy!

Release Notes:

• Thanks for checking out the Monthly Action Planner! There were 747(!) downloads last month, making this the second-most popular download – second only to the Productivity Heatmap. Speaking of that one…
• The Productivity Heatmap has been downloaded over 10,000 times! I’ll be doing a revision on it soon which will make it a lot more usable. Thanks for the support!
• There are more planners on the way soon - keep your eyes open! (You might also want to join the Newsletter for sneaky peakies – it’s in the right sidebar.)

Wow, it’s November already?! Where did the year go? Be careful with your plans this month and remember that Thanksgiving will have an effect on what you’re able to do. Something else to keep in mind, though, is that it’s not that you’ll have to do less; it’s just that you’ll be doing other important things.

Monthly Action Planner – New!

Basic idea: Projecting effectiveness further into the future requires a more holistic view of your objectives.
Use when: You’re doing your month planning and review – this planner can be used with either the Productivity Planners or the Freelancer Workweek.
For more information: The Monthly Action Planner

Download: Monthly Action Planner - November 2009 (287)

Productivity Heatmap:

Basic idea: We are more productive at some times rather than others.
Use when: You’re trying to figure out when you’re the most productive.
For more information: How Heatmapping Your Productivity Can Make You More Productive

Download: Blank Daily Productivity Heatmap (10227)

The Productivity Planner Series:

Basic Idea: Once you know when you work best, why not plan your weeks and days around that information? Do more work in less time by leveraging your natural rhythms.
Use when: You’re planning your day or week.
For more information: Read the Productivity Planners User Guide (2817)

Downloads:
Daily Productivity Planner (November 2009) (150)
Weekly Productivity Planner (November 2009) (146)

The Productivity Jumpstarter

Basic Idea: Sometimes we’re running around being busy but aren’t really being productive. This aid helps you stop running in circles and start making meaningful progress on your goals.
Use when: You have no idea what you should be doing and are tired of running in circles.

Download:Productivity Jumpstarter (v.2) (4437)

The Blog Post Planner and Calendar

Basic Idea: Brainstorming and planning your posts ahead of time may help you have a more streamlined, consistent, and insightful blog. Your mileage may vary, but it’s worth a shot!
Use when: You want to improve your blogging posts and habits.
For more information: The Blog Post Planner and Calendar – skip down to “How to Use These Planners” if you don’t need to be sold on why to use them.

Downloads:
Blog Post Planner (November 2009) (51)
Blog Post Calendar (November 2009) (42)
Blog post Planner-Calendar Set (November 2009) (56)

The Freelancer Workweek

Basic Idea: Some of us work better to task than to time, and we need a planner that addresses how we work rather than making us fit how we work into it. This is a great one for freelancers and entrepreneurs.
Use when: You’re tired of time-based planners and want to get clarity on what needs to be done.
For more information: The Freelancer Workweek – skip down to “How to Use This Planner” if you don’t care about the design methodology.

Download: Freelancer Workweek - November 2009 (84)

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I tweeted that yesterday and it confused a lot of people. It’s cryptic, I know, and the first statement is also really obvious. But I’ll give the context so that we can dig a little deeper.

It’s not uncommon for us to reach a phase in our lives when we have an abundance of good things happening to us. That abundance can be cashed out in business terms, like when something tips our business a certain way and, all of a sudden, people get really interested in what we’re providing. We’re so used to not having enough clients or customers that our natural response to this rush is to try to take everything in all at once. After all, we don’t want to pass up a good opportunity.

The problem is that an abundance of good things can be just as bad as an abundance of bad things. There are only so many people that we can help before we ourselves crack, and the surest way to crack is to take on too much too quickly. At this cracking point, the abundance of good things becomes our undoing, as we have started relationships that we can’t maintain well, and what we often forget is that the only thing worse than having too few customers or clients is having too many customers or clients that we’re underserving.

The main issue here is one of self-trust. Since we don’t trust that we’ll be able to bring about good things in the future, we can’t say “No” to current opportunities. Since we can’t say “No,” we take on too much. A ship laden with gold is a great thing, indeed, but an overfull ship gets sunk by greed.

What if you believed that you could repeat whatever you did today to manifest those good opportunities? What if you knew you could return to the gold tomorrow or next week instead of flirting with being overloaded?

This is not to say that every opportunity can be returned to – some are the momentous kind that present now or never choices. But all too often, we can’t commit to the really good momentous opportunities because we’re too full already. We can’t carry the diamonds of the future because we’re carrying the silver of the past.

Today is two weeks from two weeks ago, just as two weeks from now will be the future’s today. If you’re making things happen now, why do you think you won’t be able to do it then?

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How many clothes are in your hamper right now? Are you desperately trying to make sure that not a single dirty sock is sitting in there, unwashed?

Unless you’re OCD or running low on underwear, you’re probably not too concerned about the clothes sitting unattended in your hamper – I’d have very little traction advocating a Hamper Zero program. When it comes to laundry, we intuitively understand that spending a lot of time making sure there are no unwashed clothes in our hampers would be counter-productive.

Yet many of us don’t make this translation when it comes to email. We forget that email is just a component of our work, and, in many cases, there are far more important things for us to do than clear each and every email message out of our Inboxes. What we fail to factor in is…

Inbox Zero Gets Us On A Loop

Let’s take a second to think about some of those really recalcitrant emails that manage to gum up our Inboxes and actually require a response from us.

Some of those messages are of the simple research variety, in that to get rid of them, you need to click on a link and read something. While these seem easy enough on the face of it, the real issue comes not from the individual email itself, but the fact that it starts you on the Loop. A link here takes you there, and there’s an interesting link there, so you post it on Twitter, and while you’re on Twitter, you start a conversation, and someone shares a link with you, so you check that out, and then someone DMs you or sends you a quick email in response to the conversation you just had…and all the while, you’re no further ahead in your email clearing process. Quite the contrary: you’ve probably made it worse and you’re now 15-30 minutes behind.

But let’s remember that you’re in the Loop not because you wanted to be there, but because you reached a point in which your impulse was to get to zero messages in your Inbox. This is like starting by washing that one dirty sock but ending up cleaning your whole house while you were waiting on that sock to wash and dry.

And those were the easy variety of emails.

Getting Lost in Context Switches

Some of your email messages may require you to do something away from your computer. For instance, a bill reminder may prompt you to walk in another room, grab the bill, your checkbook, an envelope, and a stamp so that you can put the bill in the mail. In case you’re curious here, I’m being fairly detailed about what it takes not because I’m purposefully going out of my way to bore you, but because each separate thing that you’re required to do provides a place for you to get distracted.

For instance, you might open your checkbook to realize that you’re out of checks and have to replace those checks. When you open the drawer where you keep your checkbook, you get annoyed because you’ve been throwing receipts in there and they’re starting to get out of control since you haven’t processed them in the last three months. As you riffle through the receipts to find your checkbook, you stumble across those business cards you stuffed in there to get them off of your table, which reminds you that you need to process them, too…

You’ve just stumbled onto the analog version of the Loop, and, while you’re not prone to start behaviors that lead to more emails in your Inbox, you’re not making a lot of progress on clearing your Inbox. And while you’re fussing with receipts, the clock is ticking and the emails are a’coming.

Giving Email The Best You’ve Got

The last class of email messages that I’ll talk in this post are the ones that require you to do some creative work to process them. For instance, a client sends you a quote request, and, before you can reply, you have to do some evaluation of their project, write some stuff up, and prepare an invoice outside of the email message itself.

The worry with these messages isn’t that they’ll start you on a Loop, but instead that completing them will take up some of your very precious creative time blocks that may be better spent on something else. You may look up and realize that a significant chunk of your day has been taken up processing email messages that didn’t need to be processed today, yet you have other time-sensitive things that do need to be processed still waiting to be done.

Creative peaks and Eureka! moments are precious, and you probably wouldn’t start washing that one dirty sock – or whole loads of socks – during them. The same reasons you’d wait to do your laundry apply to the the way you process email.

Inbox Zero Can Make Us Lose Sight of The Bigger Picture

The heart of the matter here is that, though there are many more important things that could be done, being overly-determined to get to a clear Inbox can be counter-productive precisely because it’s easy to lose sight of the bigger picture.

Let me be clear: I appreciate and celebrate an empty Inbox as much as the next person, and my own email management strategies do focus on keeping as few messages in there as possible. I’m also not suggesting that you let your email build up just to let it build up.

What I’m suggesting is that you consider email management in the holistic context of your work. If you’ve taken care of the time-sensitive email messages that you need to and you have to choose between clearing out your Inbox and creating something meaningful, you’re probably better off creating something meaningful. If your muses aren’t cooperating and you’re still willing and able to process email, then, by all means, process away.

This is why I’m very explicit that the process of Email Triage is not an Inbox Zero program, nor is it explicitly about any number of messages in your Inbox; by Inbox Zero, I don’t specifically mean the process Merlin Mann advocated, but instead the mentality that having a clear Inbox is a particularly desirable endstate. Instead, Email Triage is about getting to a place of calmness, clarity, and perspective about what’s going on in there, so that you can make more grounded choices about what you want to work on rather than having overwhelm and stress keep you in that frustrating middle-ground where you’re neither able to process your email nor clear-headedly work on something else. My level of comfort means that I start getting edgy when I have more than 20 messages that require responses from me – your tolerance may be at 5 or 50. However, the endstate is finding the balance for you that helps you do what you need to do, when you need to do it.

When you have enough clothes to get a good load of laundry in, then go ahead and wash them. But don’t let a few dirty socks in the hamper drive you loopy.

Would you like to hear more about effective email habits that don’t require you to watch your Inbox like a hawk? Check out Email Triage – it’s a packaged set that includes a guided audio program, a 19-page ebook, and a worksheet that has the S.T.A.R. method in a handy 3×5 format. It’ll help you calm email stress and overwhelm in 30 minutes (or less) – and you can pick it up for the reasonable price of $10. Jump on over and checkout Email Triage.

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I’ve been thinking about a few ideas for the last couple of weeks, and rather than launch into what I think, I’d love to hear what you think. So, here we go:

Let’s pretend that I developed a process that will make you happy if you walk through the steps. And, by happy, I don’t mean ephemeral, silly happiness, but something richer like holistic or flourishing happiness. The happiness I’m thinking of is the end of everything else we do.

1. Would you buy the product that walked through the process for $47?
2. Would there be anything wrong with me selling the product

Now, take out the word “happy,” and replace it with “wise,” “enlightened,” or “transcendent.” Do your answers change? Why?

Last switch: replace the word “happy” with “rich” or “successful at business.” Do your answers change now? Why?

If you think there’s no process that yields happiness, wisdom, enlightenment, or transcendence, keep in context the fact that there are institutions, organizations, and practices around just those things.

Edit for clarity: The process is contextualized, in that it’s a process that leads to an outcome that is individualized for you. Holistic happiness, for example, is not a one-size-fits-all type of thing, so the process will have to address your uniqueness.

What do you think? I’m looking forward to the conversation!

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[If you're reading this via email or RSS, you might need to click through to watch the video.]

Today’s video post is about keeping some perspective on the fact that you and your business model are different than other people and their models. This is especially important to remember when you start working with other people or start comparing what you’re doing and able to do with what others are doing and able to do.

As I say in the video, most of the discussion can be filed as “obvious, but easy to forget.”

In case you’re wondering what’s up with all the video: it’s now just as easy (if not easier) for me to record a video post as it is to write one. This is a huge milestone for me because, even a month ago, it was an afternoon affair to get a video post out. Don’t worry – I still enjoy writing, but this gives me an alternative way to share ideas, stories, and information.

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After spending time there for Blogworld, I came to a realization: Vegas is one of those places that it takes a while to recover from even if you don’t do anything that should require recovery.

What does Vegas have to with making room for your business during the holidays? Easy – the holidays can overwhelm you even though you don’t do anything on the face of it that would overwhelm you.

I used to really look forward to the holidays because I got to take off for the holidays and have some fun. Around this time last year, though, things changed for me in that I really didn’t want to be away from work. What happens when you approach the holidays at the same time you’re wanting to grow your business?

Overwhelm caused by us trying to do just as much as we would normally do and stacking work on top of everything else going on. Frustration and unmet expectations because people don’t understand that we’re not off just because they are. In the end, we can’t get everything done that we’ve committed to, but we also can’t let go of it and embrace the season.

It doesn’t have to be this way – we can embrace the upcoming holidays and continue to build momentum in our business. It all boils down to making realistic plans in the context of the holidays, rather than trying to pretend that the holiday season is as regular as the spring and summer.

If you’d like some help with this, come join the Work Party with me and Jen Hofmann. This will be the second time we’ve held a Work Party, and one of the major themes for this one will be making room for your business to grow while giving yourself enough space to enjoy the season.

I’ll not give all the details here since there’s already a lot of information on the Work Party page, but, essentially, it’s a two and a half hour call where we walk you through the process of making room for your business. Jen focuses on your physical workspace, so you can expect a much more peacefully ordered workspace that enables you to work and supports you while you do it. I focus on the intangible spaces where your ideas and business plans live, and we’ll walk through the process of taking those ideas and plans and making them actionable, doable, and meaningful.

You may be worried about the length of the call, which is something that never occurred to me and Jen. Colleen Wainwright, aka the Communicatrix, touches on this point nicely:

Honestly, I had my suspicions going into it that two and a half hours on a conference call was going to be weird at best and ungodly annoying at worst.

You can check out the rest of what she had to see by checking out her writeup of the Work Party, but let me be clear here: it’s not two and a half hours of us just blabbing. Jen will talk about the how and the why behind getting your physical stuff organized, but then you’ll actually start getting your physical stuff while we’re on the call. I’ll talk about ways to think about and plan for your business growth, and then you’ll actually start making your own plans while we’re on the call – I’ve designed a planner for the Work Party, so you’ll know exactly where to put stuff. If you get stuck, have trouble, or just want to ask questions, we’ll be there to help.

If you liked my call on the More Buyers Mastermind, you’ll definitely want to check out the Work Party; you’ll learn exactly how to apply the non-stressful business growth ideas that I talked about with Dave.

You don’t have to choose between enjoying the holidays or growing your business. And the Work Party is the opposite of Vegas, in that you might not expect it to be fun (since it’s “work”), but a lot of stuff will happen without you feeling like you’ve been working.

Interested? Click here to check it out – but hurry, the last day to sign up is Friday, and our last one sold out.

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(If you’re reading this via RSS or email, you may have to click through to watch the video.)

Today’s one-take wonder is a response to a brief Twitter exchange I had with Ali Hale and incorporates a conversation I had with Sonia Simone at Blogworld.

Note the botched ending; I tried re-recording, but, as usual, it didn’t feel right – so I just uploaded it as is.

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