improve productivity – Small Business Odyssey

February 15, 2012

How to Overcome Writer’s Block to Improve Your Productivity

Writer’s block is the curse of all writers, whether writing online or offline. Even the great novelists report that at times they experienced writer’s block.

In an earlier blog post, I offered suggestions on how to achieve your daily blogging goal. That blog post on daily blogging focused mainly on creating productive habits and establishing a routine. But what happens if, despite your routine, you are lost for words on a particular day when you want to write? What if, despite your best efforts, no ideas come to mind?

Well, there are a couple of strategies that I use that you might find useful to help you overcome writer’s block and improve your productivity.

[Photo credit: Writer’s Block by orijinal]

Strategies to Overcome Writer’s Block

I have developed these strategies over time while writing both technical and popular articles and blog posts. They have really helped me overcome writer’s block.

1. Talk to the computer

This sounds a bit strange but it is a valuable technique. I learned this approach from a colleague when we were doing an Australia-wide research project on action learning. Whenever we got stuck for writing, he would go to the keyboard and start typing questions like:

What do I want to say here?
Who am I saying this to?
What’s the key message that I want to get across?
Why would I bother to write this?
What can the reader learn from what I am writing?

He would then progressively start to answer these questions as if they were questions asked of him by the computer. Invariably, we would have no trouble progressing once we responded to his questions on the computer.

2. Record yourself – create a podcast

Sometimes the act of writing is itself an impediment to what you want to say – you can’t find the right words to start. What I have done to overcome this particular writer’s block is to use an audio recorder, my smartphone or a program like Audacity or AudioBoo to record what I want to say. When you move to the auditory channel, your natural instincts to edit are turned off, so a natural speaking flow can occur. You can then type from the audio and play around with the grammar and structure. You could use the questions mentioned in (1) to get started. It is amazing how using a different communication channel can free up your ideas (and overcome innate fears that can cause writer’s block).

3. Speed writing

This is a real challenge to the perfectionist who may suffer from fear of failure or fear of success. It is a similar idea to the previous one but here you stick with writing as the primary task. However, instead of concerning yourself with structure, grammar, spelling or complete sentences, you just write any idea that comes into your head about the topic that is the focus of your attention. What you will find is that one idea will lead to another and you will find new ways to develop ideas mentioned earlier in your speed writing. It takes a bit of work to edit the writing, but at least you will have captured the ideas and linkages – you just need to structure them and edit your expression.

Speed writing can really free up writer’s block because it enables you to overcome your lifetime conditioning – having to proceed in a logical way and write perfect sentences. The speed writing approach stresses lateral thinking and randomness, and activates the right brain. Eventually, you need to activate your left brain to impose some order on what you have written. The speed writing process can really help you overcome writer’s block by tapping into a part of your brain (the right side) that you may not use on a regular basis (depending on your type of work).

4. Record a reflection

Yesterday I was lost for a topic, so I reflected on what helped me to become productive with my blogging. This led to my extended post on the how you can use focus to improve productivity. That blog post started out as some random ideas that I thought I could write 200 words on and it ended up as a 7 point article of more than 1,200 words. So even if you are slow to start writing, the very act of starting can loosen up your mind and capture the connections that are already resident there. In the case of the focus blog post, I ended up jotting down some key points that turned into the 7 reasons why focus helps to improve productivity.

This current post came about because I was experiencing writer’s block and was reflecting on how I had overcome it in the past – hence the focus of the article.

5. Don’t try for perfection every time

It’s better to write something, however short, rather than nothing. The more you write, the easier it gets. Not every blog post is going to be a ‘pillar article’. So it’s worth persisting and settling for something that may be good but not great. Action generates ideas and ideas build on each other.

If you want to be productive with your blogging, you need to explore strategies to overcome writer’s block – hopefully, my strategies will prove fruitful for you too.

February 14, 2012February 22, 2012

7 Ways Focus Improves Your Productivity

I’ve been reflecting on how focus has helped me to improve productivity with respect to blogging. Over the last 3 months, I have written 80 blog posts for my Small Business Odyssey blog (from 400 to 1000+ words each), while in the previous three months I wrote only one blog post. This improved productivity is the result of focus.

One of my early posts on this blog was about the benefits of focus for small business marketing. In this current blog post, I want to discuss how focus improves productivity – as it has obviously done for me with regard to blogging.

[Photo credit: Close Focus Lens by SqueakyMarmot]

7 ways to improve productivity through focus

There is no doubt in my mind that focus was one of the key means that helped me to improve productivity. In reflecting on this, I identified 7 key ways focus contributed to my productivity improvement:

1. Focus builds momentum

Early definitions of ‘momentum’ described it as ‘the power residing in a moving object’. You know yourself that once you get a heavy object moving, it gains momentum and is a lot easier to push (e.g. trying to push a broken-down car). For me, momentum is the key benefit of focus. Once I decided that I would focus on writing a blog about small business marketing, I began to overcome the resistances (the heavy objects) that were residing in me – the barriers to productivity. Once I started writing blog posts with my new-found focus, I began to gain momentum – writing blog posts became easier and I looked forward to writing them.

2. Focus is motivational

Once you become focused, you start to achieve things that seemed impossible before. You become more disciplined, avoid distractions and build sound habits that help to improve productivity. The sense of achievement you gain is motivational – it provides the intrinsic reward, a sense of satisfaction, that keeps you going. Extrinsic rewards, in the form of increased traffic and revenue usually follow, but it is the inner sense of achieving a worthwhile goal that provides the initial impetus. Focus enables you to gain this sense of achievement and the resultant motivation that leads to improved productivity.

3. Focus channels energy

Focus brings an alignment of your energies (mental, physical, emotional) so that you are able to pursue a single goal or direction with increasing energy. You know yourself that a lack of focus dissipates energy – you are ‘all over the place’. Focus, on the other hand, results in harnessing energy towards a single goal. I think of the analogy of using a magnifying glass to focus the energy of the sun’s rays to burn a hole in a piece of paper (as we used to do as kids). The sun’s energy is there all the time, but it is unfocused unless you capture it with a magnifying glass (or nowadays with solar panels to produce electricity). It is the focus (or the focusing instrument) that channels and concentrates energy. This channelled energy helps you, in turn, to improve productivity.

4. Focus creates a new significance

Lou Tice, famous organizational psychologist, used to talk about the power of organization vision to ‘create a new significance’ – visioning is about focusing on a desired future state that you want to work towards achieving. He explained that the process of visioning, focusing of some desired future, activates a part of the brain called the RAS (reticular activating system) which is responsible for arousal and activating the conscious mind. So, for example, you may be driving to work in a ‘mindless state’, almost on remote control. Then suddenly you see the rear lights of the car in front of you turn read (the brake light). It is the RAS that tells your body to take evasive action (your brain has recognised the significance of the red light – you are going to crash if you don’t stop or swerve away). TheRAS brings you back to a heightened state of consciousness. And so it is with focus in any arena of life, especially in small business marketing. The consequence is that you start to see things you did not notice before, new resources come to your attention, and you recognise new resource people – your brain has created a new significance around your focus and this new consciousness helps you to improve your productivity because you become better resourced and informed.

5. Focus attracts productive people to you

Other people value focus because it demonstrates commitment and achievement – a goal that many people aspire to but cannot achieve. People who have achieved in life are attracted to other productive people and recognise their expertise. Here’s a simple example from my own experience. I decided a few years ago to spend a year acquiring expertise in Squidoo and eventually attained the level of Giant Squid100 (100 excellent Squidoo lenses determined by Squidoo itself). This enabled me to write many blog posts about Squidoo and create an e-book on Squidoo Marketing Strategies which I sold via Paypal. As my expertise developed I came to the attention of Mari Smith, Facebook expert, who asked me to run a webinar for her on Squidoo for her Social Media Certification Course. This gave me increased exposure and access to resources and contributed substantially to my visibility, branding, motivation and productivity. Mari is a great example of how focus attracts others, builds expertise and increases personal productivity.

6. Focus improves efficiency

Efficiency is about achieving more in less time – the hallmark of productive people. With focus you are able to avoid distractions and use your time better. You can overcome information overload because your focus gives you the basis for ignoring, or attending to, the endless bits of information that you are bombarded with. You can sift through information quickly and attend to only those things that further your goal (your primary focus). As you become more time efficient through your focus, you improve your productivity in terms of achieving your goal.

7. Focus taps emotional energy

It is very difficult to sustain a focus unless there is some emotional attachment to the goal underlying your focus. So in my case, the focus on small business marketing contributes to two key goals of mine – the promotion of my own HR consultancy business and the development of a future stream of revenue when I wind down from running workshops. I have a very strong, emotional commitment to both these goals which are interrelated and intertwined. This enables me to tap into the emotional energy involved in my focus and to improve my productivity. The positive emotional energy sustains me when the going gets hard – writer’s block, downtime on my computer, the pressures of my offline business and illness. A key lesson here is to align your focus with a goal you find emotionally energizing and your focus will help you to sustain and improve your productivity.

For further information on ways to enjoy the benefits of focus and learn to improve productivity in your small business marketing, subscribe to my free e-course on how to be productive.

February 9, 2012February 10, 2012

How I Created an Animated Music Video from my Montville Photos with Animoto

image of Animoto HD video - View from Montville

Animoto is a state-of-the-art program that enables you to very easily convert photos into animated, music videos. In a previous post, I discussed three levels of membership of Animoto – Free, Plus and Business.

In this post, I want to focus on how I created an Animoto video from photos taken during my recent visit to Montville. First let’s look at how Animoto can make you look professional and improve your productivity.

Creating an animated music video from your photos with Animoto

I had taken 35 photos at Montville with my Panasonic Camera and I wanted to present them as a group under a theme. I had previously taken out Animoto Plus membership ($30 per year) so I can now create as many non-commercial videos of whatever length I want. So here is the process:

Decide the theme and title for the video – I chose, ‘View fromMontville’
Upload the photos to Animoto – I uploaded the folder with the photos and Animoto assigned spots for them and progressively uploaded them. This can take a while if you have a slow connection. While I have a fast connection, I was still able to use the waiting time to clean up some of my email.
Decide the sequence of the photos for the video – you can move the photos around to change the sequence (drag-and-drop). I left the photos in the sequence in which I took them.
Highlight photos to stand out as stills – this was a simple process of highlighting a photo and clicking on the ‘highlight button’. This facility enables you to have a few photos that feature (they will be stills during the animated video and one will typically come into focus at the end – a really cool feature).
Add a text slide – this comes with a headline and a single text line. I chose to use the video title. ‘View from Montville’, and the sub-title, ‘Sounds of Mountain Birds’ (there is a limitation on the number of characters). Again you can locate the text slide where you choose (via the drag-and-drop option).
Decide the accompanying music – Animoto provides a music library covering a range of genres. I chose to use my own audio – the MP3 I created by using Audacity to edit the recorded sounds of birds (developed through the voice recorder on my Samsung Galaxy S11). One of the tricks here is to match the chosen audio to the length of your video (determined by the number of photos). I had to expand my previously recorded audio to cover the number of photos involved. I originally uploaded a 1.18 minute audio and Animoto identified about 8 photos that would not be included in the video because the audio was too short. So I expanded the MP3 to 2.15 minutes (I had lots of recordings of bird sounds via my Samsung phone). The resultant video is 1.24 minutes long. A rule of thumb then that you can use is 2.15 minutes of audio to cover 35 photos (there is obviously some compression of the audio which is done automatically by Animoto).
Decide the quality you want for your video – I discovered that there are some relatively new options for this. The basic quality (350p) comes at no additional cost. At the moment you can improve the quality by choosing the 480p option ($3) or the high definition 720p option ($6). I chose the latter because it really makes a difference to a video that involves mainly scenes taken from a distance (the HD enhances the depth perspective and the color).

While the basic quality video (380p) comes with two formats (for computer and smartphone), the HD quality option comes with four different formats that are suitable for:

viewing on a computer (MP4)
viewing on a HD television (ISO)
using with a HD projector
burning as a Blue-ray disc (or as an AVCHD encodedDVD) for playback on a Blue-ray player

The 480p quality option includes formats 1, 2 & 4 above and adds formats for playback on standard resolution TV’s and smartphones. However, the HD quality option automatically incudes access to all the lower quality formats.

In my next post, I will have the completed HD Animoto video available for streaming on the blog and I will explain how I was able to install the video.

Meanwhile, visit the Animoto site and be inspired by what you can achieve in terms of improved productivity and creativity.