It seems that Bill (former NBA star for the Knicks) had trouble finding other kids to play basketball with growing up, so he came up with some unorthodox ways to practice. He executed jumps with weights in his shoes, put cardboard in his glasses so he could not look down, and dribbled through stacked chairs that stood in for opponents. These simple innovations allowed him to excel at common tasks in the sport and take his game to a new level.

As I thought back to my days in high school playing basketball with friends, I was intrigued by how cool Bill’s ideas were. I remember that by finding better ways to execute common plays, a short player like myself could have a decided advantage over taller opponents. I wish I would have thought of those cool “hacks” while practicing at home.

It’s with this “innovative” thought in mind that I would like to share with you three quick tips that can take your daily “productivity” game to a new level.

1. Clean Off Your Desk. If you are like me, you probably find yourself inundated with junk mail, bills, advertisements, notes, and a whole list off assorted items that for some unexplained reason all end up on the top of your desk. To battle this “in your face” enemy takes planning and a can do attitude. In this helpful video post, I’ll take you through a quick process of creating a recycle bin to quickly overcome this scourge.

2. Set a Daily Plan. Productivity starts with a plan. While there are many solutions on the market, I’ve found that having a simple daily planner on my desk lets me get started quickly. I just write down my top priorities for the day and then quickly put together a to-do list. It only takes a few minutes but can save me hours of frustration later. You can download our new Top 6 Daly Planner here and learn how it works.

3. Work in a Focused Manner. Once your daily plan is completed, take one of your major items and work on it in a focused manner. Our 48 minute solution will cut out distractions, and get you reaching your goals quickly and easily. You’ll just need a timer and the quick instructions here.

Overall: Finding some innovative tips and tricks can help you make the most of your day.  The downloads are free and you can be up and running in just a few minutes. Why not take a few minutes now, grab some supplies, fire up the printer and get started.

Question: What innovative solutions have you found to increase your productivity?

Every day started at zero.

No matter how well I did the day before, I always started the day with a blank order form.

This made it hard to get out of bed in the morning.

Facing zero was tough.

Social media is the same way.

I fire up my machine to a blank line.

My mind goes blank… what am I going to say?

Maybe it’s just me, but I don’t like zero. I fight zero. I hate zero…

Zero does not inspire. Zero does not motivate. Zero gives me nothing.

So what is one to do with zero? Can we fight it, control it, destroy it, or maybe employ it?

Some of the great salesmen that I knew fought with zero. They got out of bed in the morning with a dagger in hand. They needed to kill zero before 8 am. They couldn’t leave the house with zero on the pad. They were on the phone, with passion in their eyes. Call after call, rejection after rejection… they were driven…

The clock would tick, their fingers would dial, the raging battle was on… Zero was toast…

But not for me. Zero controlled me. It depressed, agitated, and sometimes destroyed me.

It was never ever fair. Zero had a power unlike any other. There was nothing I could do.

Until one fateful day, late in May, with a customer named Ray, did zero die.

It was all by mistake. I hadn’t planned to do it, it just happened.

I forgot to send an order in at the end of the day.

When I awoke from my bed, it said hey.

There was no zero that way.

I simply said… Yea!

I had found a way, to start the day, that really was OK!

I had discovered a buffer. If I held an order back, I could go on the attack.

Zero would die… and that’s not a lie!

So every day, I would hold back one order… in order to silence zero. I woke up with a smile, with power in my step, out the door and on to sell more. There was no zero to deal with, no depression to overcome. It was a simple but effective way to kill nothing.. nada.. zero.

Here is the exciting news. Now you can kill zero in Twitter and Facebook.

You can literally wake up and have had tweets and posts sent on your behalf.

Just sign up for the Bufferapp service and you can schedule your social media in advance.

And say goodbye to zero for good!

Question: Have you tried Buffer Yet?

1. Platform: Get Noticed In a Noisy World by Michael Hyatt. This book is a great place to start when building an online presence. Michael is the Chairman of Thomas Nelson Publishers and has developed a very popular blog over the past few years. Through this experience, Michael has put together a step-by-step guide that anyone can follow to create a powerful online platform. His book is divided into five sections.

1. Start with WOW
2. Prepare to Launch
3. Build Your Home Base
4. Expand Your Reach
5. Engage Your Tribe

What I love about this book is Michael’s down to earth teaching style. He takes his extensive experience and puts all the pieces together in one easy to follow guide. If you have a product to sell, a business to promote, or an organization to build, pick up this wonderful guide and get started. Michael takes you through his experience building a Twitter following of over 100,000 fans and a blog that has over 400,000 visitors a month. He also shares his secret of getting hundreds of comments daily on his site. As a pre launch incentive, Michael is offering over $375 worth of free bonuses if you sign up on this list.

2. The $100 Startup. Once you have your platform started, you may want to build a business around it. If you have ever dreamed about quitting your day job and doing what you love, you need to read this book. Chris Guillebeau interviewed over 1500 businesses that were started on a shoestring (many for $100 or less) and allowed the owners to follow their passions. From a bicycle mattress delivery business to a guy who makes over $100,000 a year helping people use their frequent flyer miles, you’ll be fascinated with the ingenuity and resolve that these real world businesses have.

The great thing is, Chris shares ways that you can do the same thing yourself. It’s all about finding the intersection between your “expertise” — even if you don’t consider it such — and what other people will pay for.

In this short video clip, Chris shares a few of the business owners highlighted in the book. I really enjoyed reading about the down to earth start-up adventures with little or no capital resources.

3. Free Marketing: 101 Low Cost Ways to Grow Your Business. Once you build your platform and develop a business, you’ll need to find unique ways to market yourself. Jim Cockrum has put together an extensive tool chest of ideas to help you do that. From unique marketing on Ebay, developing a custom email list, all they way down to creating an online membership site, you’ll find amazingly creative ideas here.

This book can help you make money, add traffic, and get the word out about your business with proven strategies. Jim has over a decade of experience with web based businesses which give him unique insights into what works… and what doesn’t. I really like the in-depth coverage and wide variety of ideas. This book is sure to give you some ideas to take your business to the next level.

Overall: These three books are a low cost primer to help you get your platform built, a business started, and lots of ways to market your products. While each comes from a unique point of view, the combination will give you a powerful understanding to the opportunities that are available today.

Question: What type of business and platform do you want to build?

To develop my voice, I found that reading and critiquing other people’s work really helped. I looked at sentence structure, word usage, vocabulary, flow, as well as individual content.

In my early days of blogging, I referred to other bloggers in my genre for inspiration, including Steve Pavlina, Merlin Mann, and Rosa Say. Each one had a different style. Steve was always pushing the limits with very extensive and somewhat confrontational writing, Merlin had humor, and Rosa brought structure and organization.

I discovered early on that boring posts would not find traction. Reading and reviewing popular personal development books by authors like John Maxwell, David Allen, and Stephen Covey gave me substance.

However, it wasn’t until this year that my writing took on a new dimension.

I discovered that something sinister was holding me back.

It caused me to pick words with caution and care.

It affected my subjects and content.

It kept me from expressing myself.

It was subtle, yet overwhelming.

Some days,it stopped me cold.

I instinctively knew it was there.

But I didn’t know how to fight.

Then I read something new.

I began to see the enemy.

And the enemy was me.

Confronted by FEAR.

What changed my outlook, was something very simple, yet profound.

I never had expressed to myself one simple fact.

I am a writer and I write.

I don’t have to hold back.

I now have permission to fully express myself.

I can put powerful words on paper that make a difference to the world.

You see, I met someone who gave me permission to be my true self. Someone who told me in no uncertain terms, without a doubt, that I am truly a writer. Now all I have to do is…

Write

In his new ebook, You Are a Writer, Jeff Goins shares his struggle with fear and how he overcame it. I learned…

• Why most writers struggle with confidence
• How to stop waiting to be picked and start choosing yourself
• The secret to getting your work published and your brand noticed

This work is truly a game changer. If you put words on paper, you need to read this book.

Jeff has a unique style and he will confront you about your fears, excuses, and procrastinating ways and help you get your true self on paper. If you want to take your writing to a new level, pick up this profound and motivational book.

Question: Have you found your writing voice?

All men of action are dreamers. ~ James Huneker

Make An Impact: Start With Impossible

All our dreams can come true, if we have the courage to pursue them. ~ Walt Disney

Have An Impossible Dream

Dream and give yourself permission to be the You that you choose to be. ~ Joy Page

I Believe In The Impossible

Dream no small dreams for they have no power to move the hearts of men. ~ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Do The Impossible

Dreams are the touchstones of our character. ~ Henry David Thoreau

3 Ways To Make Your Dreams Come True

In dreams begins responsibility. ~ William Butler Yeats

Unfortunately, it didn’t work.

That hour that I spent on planning was a way to procrastinate.

Instead of actually doing something, I was planning to do a lot of things.

Planning was the key word. I got really good at planning but really bad at doing.

One day, I tried an experiment.

I decided to see if I could plan my day in 5 minutes.

I got a sheet of paper, and made a list of the important things I needed to do.

Then, I looked at the list and picked the top six.

Then, instead of painstakingly planning them out, I did something unthinkable.

I picked one task and got started.

I was actually doing something.

Time elapsed: 5 Minutes.

To make this easy for myself, I designed a simple daily planner with six boxes at the top. I just sit down in the morning and jot the most important things down in these six boxes. Then I make a quick to-do list at the bottom.

Most days, this only takes a few minutes.

The secret is to write quickly and not get bogged down in the details. Getting started is the important thing… Plan, List, Do… They say, dead men don’t wear plaid…

Plaid men get things done…

Here is the Daily Planner.

Plan, List, Do…

Question: What’s on your daily planner?

This is a Guest Post By Chuck Frey. He is the author of Up Your Impact: 52 Innovative Strategies to Add Value to Your Work. Available May 1st.

As someone who seeks to add value to your work, you ought to make a commitment to personal innovation – to seek out new ideas, strategies and solutions to improve what you do for a living. But there are a number of things that you may be doing that cause you to unwittingly diminish your potential for personal innovation. These unseen barriers may be the reason that you feel stuck in a rut – which one wise person once described as “a grave with both ends kicked out.”

Here are some tips to help you free up your creative energies and realize your potential for personal innovation in your work and life:

Eliminate limiting self-talk

Everyone has a steady, internal stream of “self-talk” – those beliefs and messages you tell to yourself. Examples of limiting self-talk include “I’m not creative” and “That idea will never work.” To free up your creative potential, you need to realize that you were born with the most important creative tool ever devised by the Creator – your marvelous brain, which is more powerful than any computer ever created.

Your brain can make intuitive leaps, associations and combinations that are truly stunning. Stop reading for a moment and take in your surroundings. Realize that everything you see that is man-made started out as an idea in someone’s mind.

To begin realizing your full creative potential, adopt more positive, creative self-talk. Examples include “I AM creative!” and “My brain and its ideas are the source of my future success!”

Lack of time for creative thinking

It’s one of the perils of the Modern Age: We fill up nearly every waking moment with activity. When we’re driving, we have the radio on or we’re cranking tunes on our portable music players. When we’re walking, we’re talking on cell phones or listening to music. When we’re eating breakfast or lunch, we’re reading a newspaper, book or magazine. And each time we have a few minutes to spare, we’re checking Facebook or Twitter on our smart phones. All of this ceaseless activity doesn’t give your mind much time to incubate ideas – one of the things that it does best.

Think about the times during which your best ideas come to you. Chances are that they are the times when your mind is disengaged, and able to drift freely from one thought to the next. For many people, these times include taking a shower, mowing the grass, walking or when you’re trying to fall asleep at night. To be more creative, you need to take longer showers! (Just kidding!)

Actually, you need to take time for think time. Go to a quiet spot. Turn off the radio when driving. Turn off your music when walking. Forget about Twitter and Facebook for a few hours. Let your ideas begin to bubble up and enjoy the fruits of your creative brain!

A lack of understanding about your brain’s operating system works

Your subconscious mind is like the giant, submerged part of an iceberg – the unseen and little understood part of your brain where most creative thinking takes place. You don’t need to know a lot of brain science to benefit from the awesome power of your subconscious mind, any more than you need to know the principles of electricity to turn on a light in a room.

What’s important to know is that your subconscious takes in everything you read, hear, see and experience and stores it. That means one of the ways you can become more creative is to feed the “raw material” pile of your mind with a variety high-quality ideas and insights from varied sources.

Your subconscious mind relentlessly smashes together different ideas and concepts, and serves up those that are most intriguing as hunches or flashes of insight – the legendary “A-ha!” moment. Many people tend to ignore these hunches, but the creative person develops a great respect for them and seeks to capture them quickly – before they get away.

That’s one of the curious things about ideas: they tend to bubble up into our conscious minds when we least expect them, but they fade away just as quickly. And that leads us to the next obstacle to personal innovation…

A lack of tools to record creative ideas

Great ideas tend to get away – unless you quickly record them. Creative people always carry tools with them to record these flashes of insight, such as a small notebook and a pen, or a compact voice recorder. This enables them to go back to those ideas later and consider them further, add to them and DO something profitable with them!

One of my favorite tools is Evernote, a note-taking app on my iPhone. Using the Dragon Dictation app, I can dictate an idea into my iPhone. Within seconds, it’s translated into text, which I can then copy and paste into Evernote. I also like to use a small Moleskine notebook to record my ideas and insights – it’s very portable and durable, and even has a small, expandable pocket inside the back cover where I keep a folded-up sheet with creativity prompts, which I use to generate new content ideas for my websites.

Getting stuck in patterns of behavior

We human beings tend to be creatures of habit. We drive to work the same way. We listen to the same music, watch the same TV shows, read the same magazines and hang out with the same people. To be more creative, you need to jolt yourself out of your mindless routines, and expose yourself to fresh stimuli – which we’ve already heard are the raw materials of new ideas! Drive to work a different way. Read different magazines and books than you normally do. Travel somewhere that you’ve never visited before. Have lunch with one or two new people per month to share ideas. Inspire your mind with some fresh, different input – your brain will thank you for it!

Chuck Frey is the author of Up Your Impact: 52 Innovative Strategies to Add Value to Your Work (http://upyourimpact.com), which will be published on May 1, 2012. Chuck is the publisher

1. Scrivener: If you are an entrepreneur, small business person, or blogger, you know the importance of writing a book. A book will give you credibility, provide an alternative income source, and give you a great marketing tool to increase your audience. The problem is, in 2012, there are so many publishing options, where do you start? Currently you can…

• Go through a traditional publisher and publish in hard cover, paperback, and Kindle
• Self Publish in paper based print on demand format, epub format, and Kindle format
• Create a standalone e-book in PDF format that you sell on your website
• Create an interactive textbook for the iPad using iBooks Author
• Create an audiobook

If you have ever tried to output your document in multiple formats, you know the utter frustration of the current technology. Most programs, such as Word and Pages, offer minimal output options. Worse yet, they don’t offer any way to keep secondary items, such as graphics, photographs and videos organized in any way. If you are working on a multi-format project you’ll soon find yourself with an organizational mess.

This is where Scrivener shines. Scrivener is a content-generation tool for writers that allows you to compile and organize long and complicated documents.

Scrivener allows you to edit and combine multiple documents at once. This allows you to easily cut, paste, and revise all on one screen. With the built-in outlining tool, you can re-arrange chapters and sections with ease.

The corkboard tool allows you to see a synopsis of each section at a glance to easily compile a document to your specifications by simply moving cards around on a corkboard.

To get an idea how to use this useful tool. take a few minutes and watch the instructional video above. You’ll be amazed how this can help your writing workflow. The output features allow you to create documents formatted for conventional publishers as well as output for self published books using Amazon’s CreateSpace. The new version will also output in popular e-book formats such as epub and Kindle. Overall, this one tool can turn you into a full featured book author and publisher in no time.

2. iBooks Author. This innovative program for the Mac allows you to create interactive textbooks for the iPad. The included editor allows you to create galleries, video, interactive diagrams, 3D objects and more. While this type of file is only viewable on the iPad, with the growing base of users and it’s interactive nature, this is the future of textbooks and seminar workbooks.

Take a look at the incredible features of this product in the video above. This is the future. I’ve been experimenting with the wide variety of features. While it’s a little daunting at first, the updated version works well. I hope to have a sample workbook out soon for testing.

3. Interactive Video Selections. Imagine watching a video that presents you with an emotionally charged situation. Just at the peak of the excitement, the video stops and you are presented with a menu. You get to choose the ending and the outcome.

In my current book and video project, Relevant Light, I want to be able to show my video viewers what the consequences of their choices will be. They’ll watch a video segment and them choose an action. The video will show them the outcome of their particular choice. I think this will have powerful ramifications with an audience.

While I have worked with this type of product in the past by custom designing video interfaces using Adobe Flash, I’m currently in the market for a solution that will output in HTML 5 for compatibility with iPad and other IOS devices. If you currently know of such a product, please leave a comment below.

Overall: These three programs can help you create a cutting edge book or video project that can help you take your business to the next level.

Question: What type of project would you use these on?

Today, I have some good news.

Daniel Burrus, the author of Flash Foresight, has three great techniques to help you rock your business and do things that no one else is doing.

Yes that’s right!

Instead of following the crowd, you’ll be able to blaze your own path and create products, services, and business relationships that no one else is providing.

Today we’ll look at three techniques that he recommends

Here is how it works…

1. Transform by using technology driven change to your advantage

2. Take your biggest problem and skip it (It’s not the real problem anyway)

3. Go opposite. Look where no one else is looking to find solutions no one else knows about

To get started we’ll look at an example, by taking our Relevant Light Project idea we’ve been working on here at Success Begins Today and run it through these filters.

Let’s start by reviewing our current project idea…

Relevant Light will be a personal development seminar that takes place during a Friday night stage play session and an all day Saturday workshop. It is built around the acronym of LIGHT, Legacy, Impact, Goals, Habits, and Time.

On Friday night, audience members are taken on a journey to the end of their lives, and shown how life choices will affect their Legacy. Through a vivid stage play, taking place in the garage of the deceased, viewers are shown what will endure and what will be thrown away. In an emotional “wheat and chaff” exercise only a few items will remain. These few remnants will outlive their lives.

As the night winds to a close, the garage scene disappears and is replaced on stage with two free standing doors in wooden frames. One says “personal,” the other says “the world.” Above the doors is a sign that says Impossible. The speaker on stage takes a key and tries to open each one. They are locked. He faces the audience and leaves you with a challenge. Come back in the morning with new keys and destinations in mind.

Saturday morning you return. With a cup of coffee and workbook in hand, you get ready to write down your answers, set short and long term goals, create new habits, and schedule your time..

 

So we basically have a personal development seminar that will require quite a few major pieces to pull it all together… Here are the major items…

1. An auditorium to hold the seminar. This can be costly and limits us to one general area for the production.
2. Four actors that will be able to travel where the seminar is being held. Since it is a two day affair, we’ll need to provide meals, and overnight accommodations.
3. Large truck, storage, and a production team to create our stage set. This will include two garage scenes, with boxes, junk, and furniture along with two doors in door frames.
4. Support team to help with organization, marketing, ticket sales, and coordination of the event.
5. Insurance, security, and custodial services.

As you can see from this list, a single seminar will get expensive very quickly. With thousands of dollars in expenses, we’ll need a substantial audience to pull this off.

We can hope for major book sales to drive this seminar, or we can take the three tenets of Flash Foresight and see how they may help us transform this seminar into something better.

Using Daniel’s ideas lets see how this can work

1. Using his tenet of “Skip It,” we look at our biggest problem which is the expense and the size of the seminar. So if we skip it, we can find other alternatives which may cost less.
2. We can examine technology options and see if they might be able to help us.
3. We can “go opposite” and look for alternative solutions that may give us a unique product.

Let’s have some fun and run with this…

Let’s skip the big seminar altogether… This will save us a huge amount of money…

Let’s go opposite and include the technology option by using Video Technology to video tape one event and provide a DVD series that can be played or simulcast to different audiences. This has the following advantages…

1. We can video tape the stage play almost anywhere. We can use real garages and local actors. This will keep our costs low and provide a more realistic experience for our audience. Since the actors can be local we won’t have to provide expensive accommodations and meals.
2. We can package the DVD’s with workbooks that can be sold with a leaders guide. This will give us additional products to sell. This will allow this seminar to be presented all over the country at community centers, churches & business centers. We’ll just need facilitators to put the events together.
3. We can provide our seminar by webcast for customers that want to view this at home. We can also use the latest technology to create interactive textbooks on the iPad using the latest iBooks author program.
4. Using the latest video timeline selection technology, we can view different outcomes to our stage play right from the video screen. This gives us options that would not be available in an on-stage seminar.

As you can see, the sky is the limit here. By using Flash Foresight, we can reduce costs, add additional revenue generating items, and provide a unique and exciting presentation for our audiences. This also provides us with the ability to reach a myriad of audiences that our regular seminar could never reach.

All in all… a win, win, win!

Question: How could you use these techniques to change your business?

To set the stage, the stage play takes place two weeks after an imaginary death of the audience member. The funeral is over and the scene is set in the garage of the deceased. The stage has two garage scenes on it. One side has a garage that is relatively neat and clean, with two clean cut actors representing the son and daughter of the deceased. The other side of the stage has a different garage scene, with a real mess and two disheveled actors representing a different legacy altogether.

Having been in this type of situation a few times over the past few years, I can say how difficult it is to go through other people’s stuff, especially when it is a parent or close relative. I anticipate this will be a powerful exercise for the audience.

When my dad died back in 2005, he had over 50 years worth of “stuff” plus items he had brought out from Cleveland when his sister died. After we took care of the funeral, my sister and I faced a huge undertaking. We had some old antiques, lots of furniture, and a massive amount of assorted personal items. Since my dad was a photographer, we had also had boxes upon boxes of photographs to go through.

Unfortunately, like a lot of things in life, no one trains you for times like this. You have to jump in with both feet. I wish I could tell you it was easy. After a few minutes I discovered one big factor I hadn’t counted on…

Almost every item had a sentimental value attached to it.

There were memories on each piece of furniture.

Each plate, each cup, each saucer was special.

A decision had to be made for each piece

Do you keep it, trash it, or Goodwill it.

There was no one else to help do it

One item, one memory at a time

Each move had lasting impact

His legacy was in my hands

A whole life remembered

Picture after picture

Tears flowed…

After hours of this the first day, I was an emotional wreck. I can’t tell you how many times I went back and pulled things from the trash. A rescue here, a memory there. But then reality hit. I had no place for all this stuff.

After days, weeks, and months of this exercise, I came to one conclusion.

My dad was gone. I needed a way to properly remember him.

All the “stuff” was a painful distraction.

Years later I would discover a powerful way to do this.

In 2009, my wife and I were driving down through the coastal town of Carlsbad, when we spied a sign for an open house. This particular property was on top of a bluff overlooking the ocean. After doing a tour of the home, we came out the front door to a gorgeous view of the ocean a half mile away. The sun was just breaking through the clouds, and a huge ray of light shown down from the sky upon the water. Right then a large sailboat crossed through this light. It was like a picture postcard.

Suddenly in my mind thoughts came together. Both my dad and my mom had their funeral ceremonies at sea. During these ceremonies, we went out on a boat with the Neptune society and sprinkled their ashes on the ocean. My last memories of both of them was watching their ashes dissipate into the swirling water with the assortment of flowers we had tossed in with them.

Both my mom and dad loved the ocean. My dad had spent his last years on a couple of sailing trips, One in Alaska and the other off the coast.

That moment of light that day was like God himself was showing me a sailboat with my parents on it. Memories flooded back. The interesting thing was the house was off of Poinsettia drive.

That day at the top of Poinsettia hill, a sailboat went through a ray of light, and forever gave me a powerful way to remember my parents. The flowers, the stirring waters of the ocean, and the light from heaven all came together in a powerful way that day.

I realized I could let all of the stuff go.

The rays of light upon the ocean changed everything.

Someday, I told my wife, I would love to live somewhere with an ocean view. For now though, every time we crest the hill on Poinsettia drive, the memories come flowing back.

The sea, the sun, and the flowers.

The Relevant Light.