Six years ago today, I gave birth to a baby boy for a couple who weren’t able to have kids of their own. The parents and I did had a baby-share arrangement for the first five months of his life so that Colin would have a chance to still be breastfed. At the time, I had no money. I mean really, no money. There really wasn’t a whole lot I felt I had to give, but I did have time on my hands and a womb that seemed to be constantly finding itself an occupant. Being a surrogate mother seemed like a good idea.

Now, I have money but no time. I am starting a really exciting new project, as if this website wasn’t exciting enough, and I have a one-year-old who is, um, busy. I found myself lamenting the fact that I didn’t have time to volunteer anymore. (Quick aside: you really don’t want to hear me lament. It’s a long, arduous, whiny and argumentative process. I’m not absolutely certain why my husband married me, but it probably has something to do with penance for past sins.)

Finally, after a whole lot of listening to me bitch, Jamie asked a quiet question:

“If you don’t have time, what do you have?”

And I call myself the brains behind this operation. Thinking about it, and I’ll make this one short because it’s Friday, there are always things that you can give. You can make an extra sandwich when you’re making your kids’ lunches and give it to a homeless person. You can adopt a child from Africa. You can do anything in between. The only thing you shouldn’t be doing is nothing. Here are some starting points:

At some point, you should think about getting fit. Sitting in front of a computer all day does not a svelte person make. If you’re going to be doing something physical, why not do it for a good cause? If this dude is willing to swim in a river in New York, for God’s sake, I’m sure you or I could manage a walk-a-thon or two. The comments on this post are pretty cool, too.

You probably watch TV. Can you do something worthwhile at the same time? Do not think this is about dolls. This is far bigger than dolls. This is about comfort and caring and nurturing and something far too big for any of us to really understand. Children with AIDS are getting buried with these dolls, people. It’s a pretty big deal.

Odds are, credit card companies are throwing themselves at you in a vile and embarrassing fashion. Why not put your shiny new card to good use instead of buying yet another pair of uncomfortable shoes? Two hundred and fifty bucks gives a child surgery that will stop them from starving to death from not being able to physically eat. Is that a cool way to die? Personally, I don’t want that on my head.

(Note: The last two links are from Sonia Simone’s blog, Remarkable Communication. Sonia’s blog is also the place where Seth Godin told me, directly and by name, that I while I would likely get probation for not reading his new book, The Meatball Sundae, but I probably wouldn’t be arrested. Because of this, even if she becomes a gun-toting, gas-guzzling Republican, Sonia’s blog will always hold a very special place in my heart.)

The bottom line is, there is no excuse for not contributing something. I don’t know if I believe in God or not. What I do know is that if there is a God, I don’t want to be stuck at the Pearly Gates saying I would have given more, but CSI was on and I heard Grissom was going to propose to Sarah. Not cool.

Thank you, everybody, for joining me in the first week of IttyBiz’s home business tutorial. And happy birthday, Colin. I hope six is better than you could have ever imagined.

***

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By Naomi Dunford - Oct 19, 2007 in Time Management for Home Business
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Somebody I love very much is dying and he will probably pass away quite soon. I haven’t had a shower in about a week because the baby has been sick and Jamie and I have been run-off-our-feet busy. We’ve been eating frozen lasagna and pasta because it’s fast and easy and I would like nothing more than to just eat a salad. With fresh vegetables. Ones that didn’t come out of a bag.

There is a time, in the midst of all of this insanity, that you have to put your foot down and say, “Enough”. There is a point when you realize that if you don’t start taking care of yourself, both physically and psychologically, you will burn out. Hopefully my post today will help at least one person realize that time before it happens.

Think about the term “burnout” for a second. We throw it around so much, not even taking the time to think about what it means. Imagine a candle when you first light it. The flame is bright and solid and strong. It gives off so much light. It keeps you warm, it lights your room, it sets a mood. Later on, when it has given us its best, it starts to drown in its own wax. It struggles and fights to keep going, to keep itself alive, but it can’t. It gives off a paltry light, doesn’t heat worth a damn, and sometimes you can only see the little blue bit at the top of the wick. This is what happens when you try to keep yourself going for too long.

What was effortless becomes a struggle. What was helpful becomes wasted.

The physics of candles indicates that when they have been burning for too long, they can’t burn any more. If you can’t burn anymore, stop. Just stop. Regroup. Do whatever it is that you need to do to get yourself to a place where you’re at your best again.

In The Four Agreements, Miguel Ruiz says that we should always do our best, but know that our best will change from day to day, from hour to hour. If you’re pulling an all nighter, your best at 4 pm will be very different from your best at 4 am. Sometimes there’s nothing wrong with that. But each of us has a point when we know our best really isn’t good enough.

At that point, we just have to quit for a while.

During your regrouping process, pay attention to the things you need to do in order to feel better. For me, trashy magazines and sleep tend to do the trick. As for Jamie, he likes video games. For Jack, he gets his downtime by smashing plastic blocks on his parent’s faces. Extended bathing rituals, whether you go in for showers or baths, are always a good idea in that you get to relax and you stop offending everyone in a fifteen foot radius with your stench. Eat some good food. Have a glass or six of wine. Whatever works.

Do your thing. Take a break. Come back refreshed.

I very fervently hope that none of you are experiencing burnout right now. If you’re not, count your blessings, and here are some ways to make sure it doesn’t happen.

Schedule time, every single day, to relax somehow.

Like in the list above, what works for my loopy neighbor isn’t what’s going to work for you, so put some time in and think about it.

Keep your reserves up.

I’m not talking about esoteric reserves, I’m talking about real, physical ones. Keep toilet paper in your cupboard, snacks in your fridge and casseroles in your freezer. Whatever you need frequently, keep a lot of it around.

Work towards a greater purpose.

Time that is spent working towards something bigger than just paying your mortgage is inherently less draining. We’ll talk more about that tomorrow, too.

Remember the point.

Why are you running a home business, anyway? To die from the stress of it? Or because it gives you more freedom? A person working themselves into the ground at the expense of all else is not free. Take the necessary steps to experience that freedom you’ve been working so hard for.

***

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By Naomi Dunford - Oct 18, 2007 in Time Management for Home Business
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Let’s say, hypothetically speaking, that you’re behind. Maybe very behind. So behind that there’s a very good chance you’re going to lose this job if you don’t get it done soon.

Let’s also say that you have ignored all sage advice to the contrary and have left this particular task until the last minute and now you don’t have enough time to get it done. Your only choice is to pull an all nighter. (Obviously we’re talking about you now and not me because I’ve never been in this situation in my life.)

When I Googled the phrase “How To Pull An All Nighter” I got a lot of tips that sounded like absolute garbage to me, but when I talked to the resident test market, he said some of the stuff would really work well for him. This led me to a groundbreaking discovery. Maybe, just maybe, we humans aren’t all identical. Maybe different things work for different people. Maybe the reason all the advice you’ve been reading isn’t working is because the guy writing it wouldn’t know you if he woke up in bed beside you.

So how do YOU pull an all nighter and minimize the impact? Here is my patent-not-pending know-thyself method to doing it without being totally useless the next day.

Give yourself as much notice as you can.

Obviously, you’re not going to know a week in advance. But if 4 o’clock in the afternoon rolls around and you know there’s a good chance you’re going to have to work through the night, start preparing yourself as early as you can. Deciding to stay up all night sucks. It sucks even more if you make your decision at midnight.

Figure out if caffeine helps you or hurts you.

Some very smart people say not to use caffeine as a stimulant because it always precedes a crash. I’m sure there’s solid science to back that up, but I couldn’t do it without tea. I drink coffee in the day time, but if I have to stay up late or stay up all night, I drink several cups of tea. For Jamie, it’s chocolate. Chocolate wires him up like a monkey on speed, so that should be his drug of choice.

Eat lightly.

Keep yourself fed, but try and eat in small doses throughout the night. If you’re staying up, it’s because you need to focus and get something done. You can’t focus if you’re starving. You can’t stay up if you’re stuffed and sluggish. Eat lots of small snacks.

Front-end load your protein.

Carbohydrates are not your friend in this situation. They’ll make you sleepy now or they’ll make you sleepy later. Either way, not a good idea. I’m not saying you have to go all Atkins on me, but try to keep your snacks protein heavy. Yogurt, nuts, berries, and veggies are all good choices.

Get good light.

By good light, I mean good for you. Some people do the obvious, which is light up their office like a Christmas tree to eliminate any associations with sleep. For me, dimmer light works a little better because I associate the time when everyone’s in bed with productivity. I use a lamp and candles.

Think about noise.

If I’m working I usually prefer silence, but I can sometimes handle music that’s instrumental or not in English. I get too distracted otherwise. (Andrea Bocelli works for me, but that’s largely because Andrea Bocelli and I are sleeping together. He doesn’t know, though, because he’s blind. Shh.) Jamie listens to a lot of classical. The sound of my mother’s computer puts her to sleep, so she has to figure that into the equation. I know some people react well to music with a strong or jagged beat so they don’t get lulled into sleeping. I hear hiphop is good for this. You’ll probably want to stay away from anything too calming like jazz or ambient since their whole purpose in life is to relax you.

Think about naps.

An entire profession of doctors operate very effectively taking cat naps throughout the night. I happen to know that if Jamie took a catnap, he wouldn’t get up for three days. Think about yourself in this situation - are you the type of person who wakes up from a nap refreshed, or do you get disoriented and stupid? Listen to your experience.

Ideally, you’d have thought about all of these things before you found yourself in this situation. Well, ideally you wouldn’t be in this situation, but you’re the one who sat on your ass watching CSI reruns all day yesterday and didn’t get a damn thing done. However, no matter how much of a time crunch you’re in, taking half an hour or so to mess around with your environment at the beginning of the night can dramatically increase your productivity later. Play with your light, your music, your food and see what keeps you up. Bear in mind, whatever it is that gets you going in the day will probably get you going at night too, so consider employing some of your daytime tactics as well.

I don’t know how long you’ve been on this Earth, but it’s probably been at least seventeen years. In that long or longer, you’ve figured out what circumstances are most conducive to you getting things done. Each specific trick isn’t going to work for everyone, but figure out what works for you and your home business instead of just going by what you read in some blog once.

In completely unrelated news, this little blog went live two weeks ago today. Thank you for your support and your emails and your comments and your Stumbles. Today we came in over 1500 pageviews, which is pretty exciting for a blog so young that if it was a kitten, it’d barely have its eyes open. Thank you very, very much. I’m grateful.

***

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By Naomi Dunford - Oct 17, 2007 in Time Management for Home Business
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Hi everyone. Welcome to Day Two. Today, we’re still talking about time. Oh, did I say today? I meant tonight. For those of you in my time zone (or those of you who are stalking me) you’ll notice it is almost midnight. What can I say? Even for incredibly witty and intelligent home business gurus such as myself, time management is a bitch.

Up until the birth of The Smallest Business Partner (remember him? The one who needs glasses? I should set up a damn donation box), my method of adding an extra four hours to my workday was to stay up an extra four hours. This is a great idea and I completely recommend it for people who have no more than one commitment in their life.

For the other 99.837% of us, I offer these tips.

1. Identify time suckers.

We all spend hours and hours a week doing useless crap. Figure out what your useless crap is. If you can’t figure this out on your own, keep a time log. Actually write down what you do all day for a few days. Read what you’ve written and try not to vomit from the shame of it. Once you’ve identified the activities that have no value, move on to step two.

2. Be brutal. Then be brutaller.

Yes, I’m totally aware that brutaller is not a word so stop typing that nasty email right now. I know.

“Have nothing in your house that you do not know to be useful, or believe to be beautiful.” William Morris said that. Who is William Morris? No idea, but he raises a good point that can be related to time management perfectly.

If something is in your life (a frying pan, an email newsletter, a person) and it neither critical nor delightful, slash it mercilessly. Methodically go through the things in your life that are taking your time and hack at them without remorse. I can’t tell you what’s taking up too much time or space in your life (Leo at Zen Habits has a lot of pretty neat stuff to say about this - check out Haiku Productivity) but I trust you’re smart enough to figure it out on your own.

In my case, today I slashed my RSS feeds (yes, of course I kept yours. Yours is totally the best blog I read.) It was really scary but I did it and I have a feeling tomorrow’s post will be published much earlier in the day than this one was.

3. Get it out of your brain.

There have been many wise words spoken on the topic of getting your to-dos out of your head and into something else. Paper. Backpack. An extremely expensive personal organizer. Personally, I like the Getting Things Done style. Getting Things Done is a really good book which I’m going to review in a few weeks, but for now all you need to know is that it’s awesome. (Feel free to purchase it from the lovely sidebar on your left. I might make forty cents.) The thing about GTD, though, is that it’s kind of a cult. It’s a good cult, I grant you, but it’s a cult nonetheless. Sometimes you can spend so much time surfing Getting Things Done websites that you’re not actually, um, getting things done.

The ever-cool and super-organized Susan from VoxFortis says:

“I’m a list maker. It actually helps me visualize and keep in mind my top priorities, because if I have too many things going on, I tend to flit from one thing to another and feel overwhelmed the whole time. But I find by just making a list, it organizes what I actually have going on (which is usually less than I think it is) and helps me figure out what I NEED to get done. Otherwise I feel like it all needs to get done right then.”

(If you ever need copywriting and you don’t want to hire me because I use too many brackets and I swear too much, go hire Susan. She rules.)

Whichever method you choose, pick one and use it. A stack of Post-Its that you use is far better than $400 worth of time management software that you don’t.

4. Batch your stuff.

Everyone has small tasks that they have to do repeatedly. (SEO articles, anyone?) Invoicing qualifies. So do responding to emails, catching up on your blog feeds, and folding socks. When you have tasks like these, put them in a batch and do them all at once. Don’t do them again until it’s batch time again.

I could spend hours at a time checking my RSS feeds. Hours. Days, maybe. Because of that, I’ve decided to designate certain times of the day to catching up on blogs and then I shut down my Bloglines until the next time. I’d like to do the same thing with email. If you know me, you’re laughing right now. Oh well, a girl can dream.

Leo talks a lot about batching, too. He’s pretty good at the whole productivity thing.

5. Rethink your leisure activities.

Trent over at The Simple Dollar has a lot to say about eliminating the unnecessary. He says it better than I do, so here’s a quote:

“Here’s an example from my own life. I used to follow a ton of hobbies: video games, baseball card collecting, golf, bowling, writing, reading, and on and on and on. I spent some serious time asking myself which hobbies were really valuable to me - or which aspects of each are most valuable. Now I have a few framed baseball cards in my office that I admire, I basically abandoned many of my hobbies, and now I mostly focus on reading, writing, and some video games. Those are the hobbies I focus on because those fulfill me.”

This is insanely valuable advice and you should listen to it.

6. Choose a time and make it distraction free.

Do not negotiate on this. Do not bend. Find a chunk of time and eliminate all of the things that distract you. Shut down your email or lock up your kids or get out of Instant Messenger or turn the TV off - whatever it is that’s stopping you from getting your crap done, junk it for a period of time. If you take nothing else from this article, take this tip.

So that’s it, folks. That’s what I’ve got for today. If you have tips (and I’m sure you do - YOU’RE not the one posting at practically midnight), don’t be stingy. Leave a comment for the whole world to read. (Jamie’s suggestion is to move to the 28-hour day format. He’s a very linear thinker.)

***

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By Naomi Dunford - Oct 16, 2007 in Time Management for Home Business
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Hey everyone, and welcome to the first day of our four week tutorial on how to run a home business without killing yourself or losing your mind or your friends. Later on, when my computer doesn’t have a virus and I’m not running around madly trying to save all of my professional relationships, I’ll put a link in here showing how to get to the other posts.

For now, though, let’s talk about time.

I come from a family of home business owners. As far as I’m aware, my 68-year old father has never actually worked for an employer. He’s run a mustard business, a newspaper, a copywriting business, a publishing house, and given golf lessons, many of them simultaneously. (I’m not linking to any of his websites because I don’t actually like my father very much and he doesn’t deserve the traffic. He is a very good businessman, however, so we’ll take what we can use.) My mother was a freelance graphic designer while working in a day job as a marketing director. My grandfather ran an advertising agency from his home while raising four kids, basically on his own. This list could continue, but it’s already getting boring and you probably don’t care.

The point is, there are a lot of lessons to be learned from this many years of combined entrepreneurial experience. I’ve learned one lesson that completely changed the way I approach my time and I’ll share it with you here.

Do the job that’s closest to a bill.

The biggest concern that many freelancers and home business owners have is that they are terrified they won’t make enough money and that they’re going to end up living in the box their neighbor’s big screen TV came in, destitute and starving. Prioritizing what to do and when to do it scares most of us senseless. Should you be networking right now? Responding to emails? Commenting on blogs to get your traffic up? Finally sending that invoice? Actually getting some work done? Applying for new gigs?

There are so many things you could be doing, and you know you have to pick one. If you don’t know how to choose, choose the one that’s closest to getting you paid.

Here’s an example. I’m getting more selective about the freelance writing gigs I choose, but I still have four older clients that I’m finishing up contracts for. One pays me on the first of the month, regardless of when I get the work in, but the sooner I get the work in, the sooner he gives me more work and the more I get paid on the first of the month. The other three pay me as soon as they get their invoice. Two of those need relatively short articles for relatively small amounts of money and the other needs four major pillar pieces for more money.

What to do first? Write the short articles. It’ll take me about two hours to finish them and then I can invoice and get the money in my account. Then work on the pillar stuff because that’s going to get me a large amount of money very soon. Then do the first-of-the-month stuff because that money is going to come much later.

Keep in mind, this system works only if you don’t already know what you should be doing. If you know damn well that the first-of-the-month guy is going to fire you if you don’t get his stuff in soon, then it’s pretty clear what you should be doing right now. In that case, prioritizing is not your problem. Clearing up more time in your schedule is your problem, and we’ll talk about that later in the week.

The beauty of this system is that it clarifies priorities. I don’t have to wonder what’s most important - the system tells me. It gets the largest number of items off my to-do list as quickly as possible, gets me paid as soon as possible and frees me up to get on with my life.

Let me know your thoughts on this, even if you think I’m full of crap. I like comments. Comments mean people are reading my blog and will help me get a seven-figure book deal. Okay, maybe not, but it’d be cool, wouldn’t it?

If you’d like to read more in this series, subscribe to the RSS feed - there are 19 more days of tips, tricks, and hacks to come!

***

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By Naomi Dunford - Oct 15, 2007 in Time Management for Home Business
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(This post is dedicated to my kick-ass entrepreneur Mom, because it’s her birthday and she has been known to put in some pretty crazy hours. Mom, if you’re reading this at work, go home, for God’s sake. By the way, you don’t look a day over 52.)

What hat are you wearing right now?

The customer schmooze hat? The Accounts Receivable hat? The creative hat? The actually-doing-what-it-says-you-get-paid-to-do-on-your-business-card hat?

As a home business owner, you wear a lot of hats. Sometimes you wear them in rapid succession. Sometimes you wear them all at once. Sometimes you slack off and sit there, hatless, staring at your computer screen.

How are you supposed to get it all done while still sleeping, eating reasonably, watching an occasional movie?

Make certain periods sacrosanct.

Plan certain activities throughout your day, and make those times inviolable. For me, Jack is with his nanny from 9-12 in the morning. That’s when I work. There could be an insect infestation in my kitchen and I would just close the door and deal with it during nap time.

Have a plan for every hour.

You don’t have to stick to the plan, but you need to have one in mind. In my house, between 12 and Jack’s nap, we all hang out and play. That’s it. We read board books and roll around on the floor and see what happens when you try to roll a square block. Yes, if my deadline is insane or somebody died or my stove is on fire, we might not do this. We probably stick to this plan more than 9 days out of 10.

The same thing applies for work. Before Jack gets up, I catch up on my RSS feeds. Once he’s out, the first two hours are for freelance work and the third hour is for blogging. If I’m not done my freelance work by 11, I move on to blogging anyway and the freelance stuff has to wait till Jack’s in bed. That way if I’m behind on one thing, I’m not behind on everything.

Let go.

You know when someone’s in a job interview and they’re asked what their biggest weakness is, and they think they’re all sneaky by saying it’s perfectionism because they think that’s really a positive trait? Um, it’s not. It’s a time sucker. If you can’t do your job well without being a perfectionist, you’re doing the wrong job. Getting an A+ isn’t much better than getting an A and it usually takes three times as long. Go find something better to do with your time than nitpicking about your latest project. Everyone in the world but you knows it’s fine the way it is.

Bookend your day.

When you’re done, you’re done. Turn off the computer. Stop checking your e-mails. Do something that is definitively not work.

Burnout is ugly. You must avoid it.

When you structure your day properly and create a workable, likeable system, you’ll get hours of your day back. You’ll be a more effective worker. You’ll be less stressed. You’ll probably be a nicer person. (Not that my Mom isn’t a nice person. She’s lovely. She’s just been known to work too hard.)

***

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By Naomi Dunford - Oct 2, 2007 in Time Management for Home Business
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