3 Motivational Tips to see you through this lockdown
Staying in control during lockdown.
The headlines say it.
Unprecedented.
Stay at Home.
Lockdown.
Exit Strategy.
Meanwhile we are all at home watching our daily routine disappear like a Politicians promises. We no longer feel in control of our everyday lives.This is leading to a sense of loss, of purpose, of meaning. If you have ever been through one of lifes major traumas then maybe you already have ways to deal with these feelings – please share with us.
Make your bed.
I came across this one some years ago and it has inspired me as I have passed through a few personal trials in the last decade. Admiral William H. McRaven, a US Navy Seal gave an address at the University of Texas at Austin in 2014. One of the points that really stood out for me was when he said, “If you want to change the World, start off by making your bed”.
I loved the points he then made. Making you bed should be the first task of the day and it is easy to do so you start the day having successfully completed your first task. That will lead to the next task and the next and the next, until your day is full of successfully completed tasks.
It is also a reminder that the little things in life are important.
And if you have a bad day, at least you will have a nice bed to sleep in!
His speech goes on to talk about facing up to lots of the other issues that can face you in life and he puts it all in the context of his military training.
You can watch the key points of the speech here
And remember – Make Your Bed.
Dream Big
Denzel Washington has given several inspirational speeches at Universities across America. Do not focus on the things you can fall back on, just be prepared to fail, and keep moving forward. Do what you feel passionate about. Think outside the box, Dream big and Fall Forward.
I love these next two quotes from him.
“If you don’t fail, you’re not even trying.”
“Dreams without Goals are just Dreams.”
Just before the corona virus hit, I invested in a new website called Days Out in Leeds. It advertises places to go, Movies, Bars, Restaurants, and places to Visit. Well you can imagine how that is going just now. I know it will work because I believe it will. It will just take longer to come to profit. I am falling forward.
To listen to Denzel, go here.
Do not go to bed with a sink full of dishes!
This is a personal one of mine. Every night before going to bed I make sure the kitchen is clear of dirty dishes. Sometimes this means filling the Dishwasher and setting it going. Usually it means clearing up a few cups and plates. It takes five or ten minutes, but it makes getting up the next day so much more pleasant, especially once I have made my bed!
Happy Easter
Working from home
This is becoming an increasingly popular way of living and there are many advantages. It certainly cuts out the commute time, which for many people means saving a couple of hours every day. It can also take away that stress of commuting, the traffic hold-ups, train delays and overcrowding. Though it adds different stresses including a sense of isolation becoming distracted – there are a million ‘other tasks’ to do at home!
In the current climate many of us are constrained to work from home. When this is all over and things can go back to ‘normal’, I believe some of us will not want to go back!
This post is aimed at someone doing a traditional type of job which requires some sort of online presence. At the end I will add a link to a site suggesting alternative ways of working from home. If you are a Creative Artist, then just do your own thing!!!
Think about your work area
If possible make this a permanent fixture, preferably in a spare room. There are an increasing number of businesses offering Garden Offices which can be quite luxurious and expensive. When I first started out as a teacher, I lived in a small house without a spare room, so I converted the attic space into my office. My son is currently converting part of his basement into a work area. Whatever you choose, ensure it is a place that will not be disturbed easily – I’m thinking about children and pets.
Set Regular Work Hours
This is one of the hardest things to organise if you work independently. For people who are working from home as part of a regular job it is easier to set a schedule such as daily check-in times with the main Office. It can become too easy for breakfast to last until late morning and lunch becomes two very pleasant hours. This is fine if you know you can work into the evening; do you want to?
Plan your day with To Do Lists
This is a great way for keeping to a schedule. Set daily goals and targets, then review these at the end of the day. Timetable lunch, coffee breaks and exercise breaks. I split the day into four 4-hour blocks, starting at 8 a.m. A lot of people have said to me that the day is ‘just about over’ by 4 p.m. – to me that is the halfway mark. I’m not suggesting that you work a 16-hour day! Think of it in terms of what you need to achieve in those blocks of time.
When I was a full-time teacher the ‘normal’ school teaching day would be over by 4, though there were always clubs and meetings after that time. The block up to 8 p.m. was family time and as my sons go older this would stretch into the fourth block. Any extra schoolwork had to be fitted into the time available up to midnight. I kept with this idea during school holidays.
Dress for Work
I remember my first business when I worked mostly from home – I had a franchise selling Investment Properties in Florida. Some mornings I found I was still in my dressing gown a 11 a.m. On other days I went to networking meetings and potential clients; I was in a business suit and by 11 a.m. I felt I had achieved a lot.
So, if you work at home get up and get dressed! It changes your attitude and motivation and makes you far more productive. After all, you are running a business.
Exercise and Stretch Regularly
Many Office workers hit the gym in the evening and the place is always packed, hot and sweaty. The great advantage of working from home is that you can choose when to go to the gym. Avoid the early mornings as that is when all the crazy people go! If you like to start the day with Exercise than investigate routines that can be done with minimal equipment. A home gym can be built around using your furniture and maybe a couple of dumbbells.
I have a friend who said he used three gymnasiums for free – he used them as focal points on his cycle route! If you have a gym membership and you’re working from home, then 9 a.m. and Noon are great times to visit.
Take Short Breaks
Take 5 to 10 minutes every hour, away from your workplace. Stare out of the window; make a cup of tea; lift some weights; eat a banana; let your mind refocus before you start again.
Eat Healthy Meals and Snacks
This will depend very much on personal taste. I tend to cook breakfast and enjoy it with lots of tea. Although my sons are grown and left home, I still tend to cook family size meals, often at the weekend, and store portions in tubs in the freezer. Most days I can retrieve one of them for lunch or dinner. I enjoy cooking with fresh vegetables as often as possible. And always have fresh fruit available.
Further ideas
So, these are a few basic ideas to get started. If you want more details take at look at this site or this one.
If you are still looking for an idea on the type of business, you could run from home then carry on reading my blog and have a good look at this site for entrepreneurs.
Good luck.
How to get started on writing a book/ebook.
I recently participated in a Webinar which was aimed at ways to make money online. I decided to take some of the basic ideas and turn them into a series of blog posts. Although the original idea was based around writing an ebook I think the ideas could be just as useful for writing a Print book or Script Writing or Plays or Poetry or Journaling or Blogging or anything!
So, when it comes to our book/ebook we must ask several questions.
- Are we writing fact or fiction?
- If fiction, what genre?
- If fact, do you need to do all the Research from scratch?
- Are you an expert in a field or a niche?
- Could you get hold of some PLR* and change it to fit your needs?
- What do people want to read about?
If you want to find the answer to that last one it is possible to just Google the question.
- What kind of answer would you get?
- And how many answers would you get?
I just did it and it came back with 7,850,000,000 results in 0.63 seconds!
That is a lot of information!
But some of it is amazing – https://www.getresponse.com/blog/8-tips-on-writing-content-that-people-want-to-read-right-now
Would it be useful to know the kinds of things that people regularly ask about online and then see if you could write something that will fulfil their needs?
This is a website that does just that!
In their own words “AnswerThePublic listens into autocomplete data from search engines like Google then quickly cranks out every useful phrase and question people are asking around your keyword.
It’s a goldmine of consumer insight you can use to create fresh, ultra-useful content, products and services. The kind your customers really want.” From their website.
Where can I get help and tips on writing.
Then, there are plenty of writing courses that can help. Google or Bing or whatever ‘Free Writing Courses’ and again there will be many millions of results. You can vary the search like ‘Free online Creative writing courses’ or ‘free online business writing course’ etc. You then end up with something like this
Be careful though as some of these ‘free’ courses end up costing a lot of money. There are also the professional paid writing courses such as https://prowritingaid.com/
There are also webinars and courses through many portals.
Software – Which package suits you best?
Most people will be working with Microsoft Word on a PC or Pages on a Mac, which are probably already installed on your machine. These are software packages designed to appeal to every type of word processing. However Scrivener was designed for writers by writers! All these packages come with a cost.
However there are also plenty of free word processors such as Google Docs, FocusWriter, FastPencil and Evernote. There are also many other writing aids such as Hemingway App – it’s a style checker that’s designed to help tighten up your prose and make your writing clear and bold. Open Office is a free Word Processor; it is Open Source so don’t ever be scammed into paying for it.
yWriter is a popular word processor (intended mainly for novelists) with some impressive features (especially for a program that’s completely free). And to help with Grammar – Grammarly –It has taken over as one of the most versatile simple editing software and for a good reason.
Other useful software to aid writing
Dropbox – save your files into a cloud folder. Any files that you save in this folder will be automatically backed up to Dropbox’s servers in the cloud, which will be automatically downloaded to any other computers that are synced to that same Dropbox account.
Freedom –It’s a productivity app designed to help eliminate distractions by blocking certain websites – something more than beneficial for those of us who get side-tracked easily. It carries a monthly fee.
Getting your things out there!
With any kind of business idea, and remember publishing is a business, you need three things.
- Something to sell – your book/ebook
- Somewhere to sell from – a shop or an online platform
- Someone to sell to – an audience
Most people think that the first is the toughest part – they are wrong. Every year millions of books are written, published in some format – and fail to sell. Trust me on this – my books are still mostly on my laptop apart from this Swords and Sorcery spoof – https://www.amazon.co.uk/Strange-Things-Uranus-PP-Swifty-ebook/dp/B00D6BAFC8/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=strange+things+from+uranus&qid=1586299289&sr=8-1
The obvious choice is to find a publisher!
That is a totally different story.
Self-publishing is the way forward and can in many cases lead to a publishing deal with an established Publishing House.
Amazon and Amazon Kindle are two ways forward with publishing. It is possible to Upload your book to both by creating an account with Kindle Direct Publishing. They will walk and talk you through every step of the process, from uploading your content to setting a price and making it available on the Amazon website.
There are other sites such as Youwriteon.com which encourages you to publish with them, either as a part novel or as a full novel. They run competitions and have links to many publishing houses such as Penguin, Random House, Orion, Harper Collins, Transworld, Hodder & Stoughton and Little Brown.
If you want your work critiqued as you write then use FastPencil as mentioned earlier. It is a writing and publishing platform which goes from a completely free do it yourself package to an expensive fully managed professional programme – check the prices.
Finding an audience.
Ok so Amazon and the others will help you put a book or ebook in front of the public. How do you make people find it and buy it or even just download it if you make it FREE! This is where Social Media comes into play and you must decide if you want your own Blog or Facebook Page or Facebook Group or Instagram or LinkedIn or whatever else is out there and trending. Whatever you choose there will be a course available of Blog Posts to help you. I will be writing more as I learn more about all these methods so stay tuned.
Moving forward.
There is an enormous amount more to this idea of writing, printing and publishing your book. I will cover more of these ideas in other posts.
Meanwhile, Enjoy Writing it’s good for you!!
*(PLR – Private Label Rights. I will write more about this in a later post.)
Phoenix Education 