Back in 1998, I had just graduated from a multimedia production program at Algonquin College. In that 6 month, post-graduate course, we learned all about design and development of interactive CD-ROMs, which was still a great skill in those days. The Internet was just starting to become popular, but nobody really knew where it was going at that point. As a result, we had a grand total of 1 day of HTML training in our program. 

The moment I had my diploma in hand, I realized that the Web was probably going to be a big deal. I headed to the bookstore and spent what little money I had on a pile of books about HTML and web site design. I then proceeded to spend the next 6 weeks living off coffee and Ramen noodles, learning everything I could about web design. I did more than just read the books though – I built and launched three web sites by myself as experiments. I sat back, with a sense of satisfaction…but not for long. 3 weeks later I was in demand…people saw what I had done, and now they wanted to have sites set up, and they wanted to know how to do it too. My 2nd career as a web specialist and web design teacher was launched and I haven’t looked back. 

The point is, school didn’t get me my first job in the web industry. Experimentation did.

The secret to learning

Lots of people take courses to learn new things. School is a great way to build a foundation of knowledge, but for me, it’s only how you learn what you need to know. Most people who work full time opt for continuing education. Continuing Ed is great, but the courses are often pretty fast paced. You’re in and out in a few weeks. It’s a great way to pick up some new ideas, but it’s not until you sit down and apply your newfound knowledge that the real learning begins. 

Back in ’98, I could have read all those HTML books and called it a day. But at the end of it, I still wouldn’t have known how to actually build a web site. Instead, I sat down and built three of them. I made tons of mistakes. I ditched hours of work and started over from scratch more than once. I struggled, got frustrated, maybe even shed a few tears. But at the end of it, I knew it backwards. 

The secret to learning is not just showing up to class. It’s what you do with the things you’re taught that makes the difference. Don’t just go to class and take a few notes on how to set up a WordPress blog. Go home and stay up till 3am and set up the damn blog. Mess it up. Break things. Just hit publish. That’s the way you learn.

In my expert opinion

You know all those social media “experts” we are always going on about? The real ones, like Chris Brogan and Mitch Joel and CC Chapman? They didn’t get that way by reading books. They got that way by slogging it out while everyone else was hungover from hanging out at SXSW parties till 4am. They got that way by sitting down and doing the work. And mostly they got that way by experimenting. They were blogging and podcasting and tweeting before those words even made it into the dictionary. They were making mistakes and learning everything they could. They are experts now because they have been there, done that, and they frigging earned the t-shirts.

If you want to really be on top of your business, you need to check your ego at the door, stop worrying so much about what other people will think, and sit down and just do it. Play. Experiment. Build things. Take them apart. Fail. Fail again. 

It’s the only way. 

Test your theories

Last summer I decided to write and publish an e-book. I decided right at the start to offer it as a paid product, not because I was expecting it to become my retirement plan, but because publishing something I expected people to pay money for raised the stakes. I knew it had to be really good and provide real value to people. I new it needed research and editing and formatting. It wasn’t a 20 minute blog post. 

I also did it because I wanted to go through the process of publishing and promoting something on my own. It was a sandbox of sorts. I wanted to see what worked and how people responded. I tried different things, and had a few false starts. In the end, I learned a lot. I am amazed at the support of my community and overwhelmed by the response. And I know what I’ll do better next time. 

I could read 100 blog posts and 3 books on how to write and publish an e-book. But until I actually perform the experiment I am nowhere. Treat your personal projects like a laboratory. Try things out, compare and contrast. Watch closely, and emulate (don’t copy) the people you respect. 

But you have to stop talking about it and reading it in books and sitting there listening to people like me lecture you about it.

This is your experiment. Ultimately, it’s your life. 

What will you try today?

Photo by wader

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The world is a noisy place, and it’s only getting noisier.

If you’re like me, you remember a time when there were only a couple of TV stations (in fact, when I lived in the Arctic as a kid, we only had ONE channel!). You remember a time when you had one telephone, and if it rang, and you weren’t home, it just kept ringing. The caller would just have to call back later. There were no answering machines. If you were on the phone, and someone tried to call you, it didn’t go to voicemail – the caller got a busy signal. Because you were…busy. The mail wasn’t just full of junk flyers and bills. There were letters and postcards too.

25 years ago, our incoming information was manageable. Most of us only had a few inputs – our work phone, our home phone, the mail, and in person. These days, the number of inputs has grown exponentially – we have voice mail at home and at work, multiple email accounts, text messages, Facebook messages, Twitter replies, Google+ conversations, blog comments….there’s seemingly no end to the amount of inputs we have.

For all the noise that our volume of inputs creates now, there’s a lot of good, too. Social networks like Twitter and Facebook enable us to keep in contact with many people at once (imagine having to send an email to 300 of your closest friends every time you wanted to tell them something!). Text messaging is a convenient and quick way to communicate to others. I wouldn’t give up any of our modern ways of communication for the world. It’s made me more productive, helped me grow my business and it’s a heck of a lot of fun!

So how do you manage the noise that all of these inputs create? Well, the truth is, it’s up to each of us to find the best ways to control the information we receive on a daily basis. Here are some things I’ve had success with.

1. Get control of your email. Today.
We are all overloaded with email. I used to be too, averaging 2-300 new messages in my inbox every day. But I sat down and took a good hard look at the email I was getting. Most of it was useless – notifications from Twitter and Facebook, and myriad other social tools. Email newsletters that I’d signed up for but never got around to reading. Blog post subscriptions. The number of important emails I was getting was actually pretty low.

So I went on an unsubscribe rampage. I went to every social tool and turned off ALL notifications. All of them! Now I check my @replies and Facebook messages when I want to. I unsubscribed from all email newsletters except one or two that I get REAL value from. I moved all of my blog subscriptions to Google Reader. I also give out my cell number to people who need to reach me on a regular basis, and ask them to send me a text if their message is short. Now, I average 20-30 mostly relevant emails per day. It’s made a huge difference.

2. Use Twitter more wisely.
I follow over 5000 people on Twitter. When people discover that, they wonder how I can possibly keep up. Well, first of all, I’m not trying to read everything – Twitter is about skimming for me. Second, I take advantage of Twitter lists. I have a private list of about 100 people and sources that I follow on a regular basis. I spend most of my time in that list. (Here’s how to create Twitter lists). I also use tools like HootSuite and Echofon, to help me manage my @replies and messages, and to follow #hashtag conversations. The secret to Twitter is to treat it like a pub or coffee shop – you pop in and only experience it while you’re there. When you’re not there, the conversation continues without you, and that’s okay. You can either catch up later or stop worrying you’re going to miss something (I do the latter most of the time).

3. Turn off ALL notifications.
This is a lesson I learned from Mitch Joel. Turning off email notifications is only part of the battle. You also need to shut off anything that blinks, flashes or beeps on your phone and computer screen. I even turn off my email badge indicators (so I don’t see the email piling up before my eyes – too stressful!). You don’t need to know every time someone replies to you on Twitter. You don’t need to hear a “beep” or see a red flashing light every time you get a text message or an email. The reason we are so exhausted and can never seem to catch up is because we’re continuously bombarded with new messages. YOU control who accesses you and when, not anyone else. Shut down those notifications. Do it today. Tell people if it’s really urgent, to phone you, or use a service like AwayFind. You’ll be so much happier, and get so much more of the important stuff done.

Finally – if you really need to reduce the noise so you can accomplish more, there’s one thing you can do, that I highly recommend. Just shut everything down. Close all applications on your computer and unplug the Internet. Put your phone away (and shut off the darn ringer!). Heck, turn the computer right off, and grab a piece of paper and a pen. Gain control of your information flow again, and you will find your productivity and your peace of mind go through the roof!

How do you manage the flow of information?

[photo by futureatlas.com]

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Okay class. First thing I want you to do is watch this video of Marlon Brando. For real. Then come back.

Great stuff, eh? That interview was taped in 1973. Brando admits to being a little “long in the tooth”, but that doesn’t stop him. He wasn’t one to give many interviews, but when he did, gosh, he gave great ones. My husband Greg sent me this last night, and I watched it three or four times. I couldn’t get over the incredible insight Brando had. Remember, this was a good 20 years before the Internet, and about 30 years before social media started to take hold.

We’ve gotta drop format. 

“We’ve gotta drop format”  is one of the best quotes from the whole interview. At first I wasn’t exactly sure what Brando was trying to say (a lot of people have trouble trying to figure out what he was trying to say most of the time, so I guess I’m normal.). But I realized he’s referring to “format”, as being the typical way in which big media operated back then (and I suppose still tries to operate today).

Dropping format means not putting up with the status quo. It means not letting big media and famous people with big voices get all the attention.  (Today, that includes “Internet famous” people too.) He even refers to himself as a “pontificating actor”, and points out that the sound man has just as much right to have his voice heard as anyone else.

Think about that for a minute. Brando is right. We used to get all of our information from the people with the biggest voices, because they were the only ones that had control of the broadcast channels. But that’s all changed. If you have an Internet connection and an idea, you can be a publisher. You can have a voice. You can broadcast your stories to the world.

You can break format. As Steve Jobs might have said, “How cool is that?”.

If somebody disagrees, you gotta speak up. 

How many of you refer to yourselves as “lurkers”? You spend all of your time online listening, and watching. You treat new media like old media – as a consumption-only medium.

The single most amazing thing about the Web is that it’s a many-to-many conversation that you don’t have to simply consume. You can be a contributor. You have as much right as anyone else to participate. You can, and I’d argue you should, speak up. Not just when you disagree, but when you have something to say.

This is our space, our forum, our medium, and McLuhan was right – it’s also the message. This is your chance to find your voice, and all it takes is making the first step – saying hello to someone new, writing 200 or 300 words on your blog, or sharing something that you find interesting. You gotta speak up, as Brando said – because now, your voice can, and will, be heard.

You gotta hear from everybody. 

This is the line I had running over in my brain all night – “If it isn’t a world of dialog and exchange between people….we are in for a helluva lot of trouble.”

It’s not about just listening to the big voices anymore. It’s not about corporations and governments telling us how we can and can’t share information. It’s about each of us taking responsibility for our own thoughts, feelings, ideas, dialog, and opinions, and about being brave and standing up and finding our voice and using it.

I completely agree with Brando. If you only let the big voices do all the talking and sharing and pontificating, then the channel doesn’t thrive. In fact, I think it runs the risk of stagnating, and dissolving back into the old format, where big media dictated what we should see, hear, and experience. And if that happens, we are indeed in for a helluva lot of trouble.

It’s a noisy world out there. But that just means, you need to learn to speak up.

What say you?

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The thing I hear most from my students, clients and online friends is that they don’t know where to start when it comes to creating online content. They are swimming in a sea of information, and consuming as much as they can, but when it comes to creating, they fall short. They just never quite get around to starting their blog because they think they have nothing interesting to say. They want to post a video, but aren’t sure where to start, and feel shy about talking on camera. They think podcasting is a great fit for their communication style – but the weeks and months go by and they never press “record”.

We all know how important a content strategy is to marketing your business and yourself online. We’ve seen how creating great content can help us to position ourselves as experts, help our customers and open the doors to tremendous new opportunities. Yet we are still fearful of taking that first step.

I know how challenging it can be to dive into the world of content creation. I’ve been there. In 2006 when I started this blog, I felt really awkward about communicating my thoughts to the world. But now, more than 430 posts later, I don’t know what I’d do without this channel. Blogging has been an enjoyable adventure that has connected me with great friends, and opened new doors of opportunity to me as a teacher, a professional speaker and entrepreneur.

That’s why I decided to write this e-Book. “Just Hit Publish: How to Become a Prolific Digital Content Producer” is a 59 page guide that will take you through a process of discovery into your own creative process and help you to master the art of publishing online.

You will learn:

• Why it’s important to publish
• How to find your personal style
• How to get past creator’s block
• How to overcome your fear of putting yourself out there
• How to find your muse
• How to be a prolific producer of great content

Click below to buy now for just $8.99.

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How busy are you? No really…how busy ARE you?

If you’re like most people, you’re so busy you barely have time to think. You feel like you’re always playing catch up, and you never quite get there. Yep. Me too.

I like to be busy more than just about anything – that’s probably why I have a full time business, a part time teaching job, two fairly big volunteer commitments, and a pretty active family and social life, offline and online. I usually have a pretty good handle on my time – in fact I pride myself on my time management skills. But this past Fall, my schedule spiralled a bit out of my control.

It wasn’t that I couldn’t meet my commitments – on the contrary. I was able to meet and exceed expectations (especially my own) with everything that was thrown my way. But the problem was, just about every waking moment, I was either working or doing something. I would get up in the morning, make a coffee and breakfast, and head right to the computer. Sometimes I was replying to emails in bed before I even got up. Every weekend I’d aspire to take a couple of days off, but inevitably work would almost always push into my Saturdays and Sundays, because I wasn’t accomplishing everything I needed to during the week.

Before I knew it, I couldn’t remember the last time I’d taken a real day off.

I finally decided enough was enough. My schedule was controlling me, and was time to get my schedule back under MY control.

Laying the ground rules.

There were a few bad habits that I’d developed that I needed to eliminate. Sometimes when working from home, it can be difficult to separate work and home time. It just gets all mish-mashed together. Hence, the bad habits like checking email in bed, and hopping on the computer and getting to work right when I got up.

I had to make some new rules for myself. I needed to make my health a priority. So I filled the fridge with healthy food, and changed my morning routine. It would no longer be wake up, check email, make breakfast, go to work. Now it’s wake up, meditate, exercise, eat breakfast, read, shower, get dressed, sit down at computer and work.

I simply don’t do any email and work stuff until I am ready for my day. I ease into the day now, starting each one off with time for me and my health. And laying that one simple ground rule has made all the difference to my mental state at work, as well as my pant size!

If it’s not in there, don’t do it.

The reason I was missing getting a bunch of stuff done every week was, it wasn’t actually scheduled. I would only really put things on my schedule when I had to BE somewhere…at a client meeting, at school, and so on. The rest of my work day was relegated to a to do list, and things like email and voicemail were just slid in willy-nilly throughout the day.

The result was, the to do list and the emails were controlling my work day. The volume of the average person’s incoming information – new tasks, emails, phone calls, and so on – is much higher Monday to Friday. So with those things bombarding me from all angles during the week, the work I was supposed to be doing wasn’t getting done. Instead, the important stuff got pushed and pushed until a quieter Saturday morning was the only time I could focus on it. Before I knew it, I hadn’t had a day off in six weeks.

All that has changed. At the end of each week, I open my calendar to the next week. I go down my to-do list, and I schedule the tasks on that list into my calendar. I block off time for all the work I need to do. I even have my morning routine scheduled. I schedule when I will check email throughout the day too. I leave blocks of free time for things that might come up (it’s not good to be over-scheduled either!).

Two interesting things have happened since I have started putting everything in my calendar.

First, I find that I am far more focused. I know exactly what I need to accomplish every day, because it’s right there in black and white (and red and purple and orange and blue). Second, and this surprised me…I worry less. Once my week is planned out, I can shut down my calendar and not have to think about it. I don’t have this constant nagging feeling of “Oh, I have to remember to do this or that”. Once it’s in my schedule, I can forget about it until it’s time.

Re-create your time.

We all get the same 24 hours in a day. Even though we all have obligations (you have kids, I have animals to care for), in general, and particularly when it comes to work, we still get to choose how we manage our time, and the things in our schedules we have control over, we can completely control.

Sit down and take a long hard look at your calendar. Instead of letting your time create your experience, you can re-create your time.

So what are you waiting for?

[Photo credit: ramyo]

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