The other day I read the story of a woman walking along with three little girls at the airport.  They were skipping and singing excited to meet Daddy coming home on a jet.  Their eyes shining with eagerness and anticipation.

When the passengers started streaming in you could pick out their Daddy immediately because their eyes were completely glued on him.  But Daddy’s first look was for his wife and the first words out of his mouth were, “Why the heck didn’t you bring me my top coat!?”

The story goes on to say, “You see, here was a man who had an opportunity to be great, and he didn’t recognize it.”

How many times do we have an opportunity to be great, and pass it by?

How many times do we do what’s urgent instead of focusing on what really matters most?

Several months ago I told you about a simple tool that helped shoot my focus and therefore my productivity through the roof.  If you didn’t catch that post you can read it here:

The Multi-Tasking Myth Debunked

I also told you I would be revealing to you another  tool I have been testing that helps you easily and effortlessly track how productive you are on the computer so you can banish distractions and…that’s right, you guessed it…

focus on what matters most!

It’s called Rescue Time and you can  sign up for ‘nada’ by clicking here.

With this tool you can:

• set goals that will nudge you in real time
• block distracting sites for short or long bursts of focus time (this one is my favorite)
• see ‘purty’ colored graphical breakdowns of the time you spent on apps, sites, or documents you use
  Bright blue = “good” time.
  Red = “bad” time.
• and for the twisted minds amongst you I suppose it could also be used to see where your significant other or kids are spending their time online.
  (Although for this you will have to upgrade to the pro version so your own personal stats aren’t affected OR just turn tracking off whenever you’d like.)

Here’s why I hate this tool:

It’s not always pleasant to see an unbiased look at where you are REALLY spending your time.

In this respect, Rescue Time, can turn into a nagging mother looking over your shoulder with a look of disapproval.  But let’s face it, you can always count on momma to smack you right in the face with the truth when you need it the most and least ask for it.

And here you were, smugly thinking you were so productive when in reality after looking at your stats you’re forced to say, “WHAT!!? I spend THAT much time frolicking on Facebook looking at old Grandpa Joe’s pic’s of his weekend out with the ladies?!”

Hmmm, see what I mean?

Not exactly the picture of an entrepreneurial peak performer is it? ;-]

Now for the reason I love this tool.

Ready?

You’re forced to say, “WHAT!!? I spend THAT much time frolicking on Facebook looking at old Grandpa Joe’s pic’s of his weekend out with the ladies?!”

Yup, that’s right.  I love it for the same reason I hate it.

Because trust me, the next time you reach to check your email or social networking site for the umpteenth time unnecessarily, you’ll think of good old momma Rescue Time watching your every move.

And that my friends can be a good thing.

So there you have it.

Here’s the link to sign up again:
http://yiselg.com/go/rescuetime

And remember…

Be great!

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It is said in marketing you should be the red elephant in a room full of grey elephants.  Hmmm, sounds like sane advice.  After all,  you want to be noticed,  differentiated from you competitors and “Stand out“, right?

Not so quick.

Standing out for the wrong reasons can be worse than not standing out at all.

Two perfect examples…

It was Saturday night and hubby and I where watching the US Open expecting to see and hear the usual sights and sounds of an elite level competition.

What we didn’t expect was how Serena Williams “stood out“.

Not by winning or giving a full out effort to the end, but by going ballistic on a line judge, dropping a few F-bombs and letting the judge know what part of her anatomy she would be shoving the ball into.

Tsk, tsk, tsk, tsk.

Disappointing to say the least.

Not exactly the behavior you expect from a ‘CHUMP-ion’.

Then, the next evening, LIVE at the MTV VMA awards, yet something else “stood out“.

Just as Taylor Swift is giving her acceptance speech, Kanye West rips the microphone from her to give a performance of his own by squawking about who he thought should have gotten that award instead.

Can you spell NO SHAME or should I say NO BRAIN?

But the story wouldn’t be complete without ONE more example.

You see, later that night, as Beyonce accepted HER award, she graciously called Taylor Swift on stage to let her have the moment that had been stolen from her before.

Finally, amongst the madness, another way to stand out.

Yet this time with real class and for the right reasons.

That’s the difference.

Now go stand out the right way!

P.S.  The totally new approach to standing out with your marketing on Twitter that I told you about is closing the doors tomorrow (Tuesday Sept. 15) at midnight EST.  This is your last chance for the FREE DVD offer.
http://www.budurl.com/twittermethod

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I wasn’t sure wether I was going to tell you about this or not, but since I’m on the front page as one of the featured videos, I figured I wouldn’t be able to keep it a secret.

Plus, how good a friend would I be if I didn’t tell you about something I personally reviewed and found to REALLY work.

If you’ve been around the online marketing world any length of time, you’ve definitely seen the hype by marketers surrounding Twitter and all the mumbo jumbo about getting tons of followers and following.

Well, I’ve done it all and this is by far the best I’ve seen.

You don’t have to have a bunch of followers.

You don’t have to follow tens of thousands of people.

You don’t need a product.

The truth is, if you learn the tactics to place yourself in the right place at the right time, you’re golden!

To see how it’s done, my friend Tom is giving away a  FREE DVD with 7 separate tactics that you can implement immediately without any extra software or services.

There really aren’t very many DVD’s left.  (Sorry, that’s my fault.  I should have told you sooner.)

So if you are interested at all, I would hurry.

Get Your Free Twitter Toolkit DVD Here

P.S.  I’m the one on the first video below the fold on the right.  Yes, the one with the terrible lighting and shadows.

P.S.S.  I haven’t forgotten about a free tool I promised to tell you about that I learned from Tim Ferris, the NY Times best selling author.  I’m loving it and hating it. You’ll see why.  Anyway, I’ll send that to you soon.   I just didn’t want you to miss out on this in case you were interested.

Get Your Free Twitter Toolkit DVD Here

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I learned about this video from Tom McCarthy.

It’s only a minute and it speaks for itself.  Quite powerful – enjoy!

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Anthony J. D’angel said, “The only real failure in life is one not learned from.”

Nature has a way of reminding us of what we are truly capable of when we don’t have self-imposed limitations.

Watch the 40 second video and notice how the crow doesn’t quit after his first attempt to get the food out of a seemingly impossible to reach tube.  He just tries a different approach.

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It would make sense to think that the more things you can get done in the least amount of time the more productive you would be.

Heck, if you can do many things at the same time even better, right?

Wrong!

Sure, I’ll admit that at one time it seemed that bouncing the baby on my lap, writing a blog post, listening to a teleseminar and starting dinner all at the same time were a great use of my time.  The more things I could possibly fit in at the same time became like a multi-tasking badge of honor that was somehow indicative of my super mom meets She-ra wannabe persona.

Of course, the burnt dinner, the crying baby, the unfinished blog post and not being able to recall one single thing from the coaching call told quite a different story.

So I’m gonna make it easy for you and sum up the truth about multi-tasking in ONE sentence.

Here it is…

Multi-tasking KILLS your productivity.

Instead of concentrating your efforts like the sun’s rays thorugh a magnifying glass,  multi-tasking spreads the beam of your focus so thin that it reduces to almost nill the effectiveness of what you do.

So instead of doing more things well, you do more things half-arse or not finish them at all.  Which we would all agree is a bad thing.

Instead of feeling confident about goals accomplished, you feel failure at the things still left on your To-Do list.

Instead of being clear about what you are doing at the moment, your thinking becomes muddled and hazy.  What’s even worse is that you develop a habit of erratic thinking that spreads to all areas of your life.

What did I do to overcome this?

I had to re-train my mind to focus.  You see, focus is a skill like painting, or hitting a baseball, or playing the guitar.  And like any skill it improves with practice.

If you can learn to focus on the task at hand,  wether its spending time with your kids, editing a video, writing an email to your subscribers, or simply enjoying a day off away from the computer you’ll be able to accomplish whatever you want.

Which is what being productive ultimately is.  It’s not about being busy for the sake of checking things off your list.

It’s about doing the things that will get you from where you are to what you want. Whatever that is for you.

So today I’m going to share with you two things you can do that will help build your “focus” muscle.

First, get and use a timer.

Using a timer is probably the single most important thing that helped me shoot my productivity through the roof.  You can use a stopwatch, your iPod, an online timer, an old-fashined handheld one, whatever you want as long as you can countdown in increments of time and it gives you some kind of alert when time is up.

Here’s how to use it. Decide what you are going to focus on and set your timer.  Do not work on anything else until the timer goes off.  Turn off the phone, skype, IM, Twitter, email, and any other distractions.

If you’ve never used a timer I suggest you start out with 15 minute increments.  As you get better on focusing you can increase to 30 then 45.  I wouldn’t recommend going past 60 minutes at the most unless you get obsessed with your work and are really hard-core like me.   You know if that is you.

But for most, stick to 30-45 minutes max.

When the timer goes off, take a break.  Physically change what you are doing.  Stand up and walk around, go to lunch, get a drink, whatever works for you to clear your mind.

After that, set the timer again and re-focus.  You can work on what you were working on if you didn’t finish or go on to something else.

After some time, something interesting will begin to happen.  You won’t need the timer.

Once you develop the habit of focus, you’ll be able to pull yourself in to that state as easily as putting on a pair of socks.  It just takes a little bit of time and practice. (Pardon the pun. )

I said I would share with you two things to help your productivity and focus, but this post is getting a little long so I will be posting a follow-up to this next week instead.

I’ll tell you about a great sweet little free tool I’ve been testing the past few months that helps you easily and effortlessly track how productive you are on the computer and also my absolutely favorite way to banish distractions in your business.  Probably not what you think.

Be on the lookout next week.

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This is a fascinating video from TED by Clay Shirky on the largest increase in expressive capability in human history – the social web. It’s about 17 minutes long and worth the view.

Favorite quotes by Clay Shirky from the video:

“What matters is not technical capital, it’s social capital.”

“Tools don’t get socially interesting until they get technologically boring.  It isn’t when the shiny new tools show up that their uses start permeating society.  It’s when everybody is able to take them for granted.”

“The moment our historical generation is living through is the single largest increase in expressive capability in human history.”

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Perception is everything.  At first glance the following ad had an entirely different meaning to me.

Then I saw the space between the words “Love” and “Making”.  Ohhhh!!!

Completely different ad don’t you agree? 

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If the front door doesn’t catch people’s attention, they won’t come in.  The headlines of anything you write – blog posts, email subject lines, ads, etc., are like doors.  It doesn’t matter how great the content is inside if nobody opens the door.  So your first job is to get people to want to come inside.  Darren Rowse from Problogger wrote a blog post on 15 Ways To Rework Your Next Blog Post Title.

Obviously the article’s focus is blogs, but I think the 8 tips for writing compelling blog post titles are applicable to all headlines.  It’s really a small and basic lesson in copywriting.  For your convenience I’ve reprinted the first 8 tips, though I recommend you read Darren’s entire post here.

1. Communicate a Benefit – a title should tell readers something that they’ll ‘get’ by reading your post.
2. Create Controversy or Debate – not suitable for every post title but there’s nothing like Debate to get people checking out a post.
3. Ask a Question – in my experience posts with questions in the titles tend to get read more than others – they also are better at stimulating comments from readers.
4. Personalize Titles – for example: using ‘you’ in your post title (and post) can have a real impact and take a post from the realm of ‘theory’ into a more personal post.
5. Use Keywords – keywords that signal to readers and search engines what your post is about can help draw in significant traffic if you use them well.
6. Use Power Words – Not all words are created equal – some evoke a powerful response in readers – words like ‘free’, ’stunning’, ‘discover’, ‘warning’, ’secrets’, ‘easy’ etc all work well in my experience of blogging.
7. Make Claims and Promises – as long as you can back them up in your post – a big claim or promise can get someone’s attention.
8. Humor Titles – be careful with this one – funny can work great but it can also leave your readers very confused if it’s too cryptic…. or if it’s just not funny.

Reprinted from Problogger.net

By the way, all these tips are also applicable to Twitter.  Your Twitter tweets are really just headlines. Posting links to content with creative headlines you come up with is a great way to hone your headline writing skills.

Tracking however is essential to do this so that you can see which headlines get the most response.  Sometimes headlines I think are great end up flopping and ones I think are duds get hundreds of clicks.  So make sure you track!  My favorite tools to do this are Budurl and Hootsuite.

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A few weeks ago I got an envelope in the mail that really caught my attention. It was in a translucent envelope through which I could see the following card:

I pushed the other mailed aside and opened it at once.  I had to see who it was from.  It was from Enthusem, a company that makes sending personalized printed greeting cards as easy as sending an email.

I know of other options that let you send a single printed greeting card but what I think makes Enthusem really ingenious is that you can attach electronic files like videos, PDFs or web pages just like email.  The recipient gets a unique “Pickup Code” which they type online to see.

They even provide reporting that tell you when the recipient sees your online attachment. Which means your direct mail campaigns are measurable.

The cost is based on credits.  The more credits you buy at a time, the less the cost of sending a mailer. Although the cost is reasonable, I wouldn’t use it for mass random mailings. But if you strategically select customers, prospects, or colleagues, the return on investment could well be worth it.

This combination of the card AND the online attachment really make the difference.

Standing out is no longer enough, you also have to be memorable. I experienced it first hand and Enthusem is definitely both.

To give Enthusem a free try, click on the button below:

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