During my call on Monday I talked about my CREATE! system for building and growing your creative arts business. The A in the system stands for Action. Action is what drives your results, yet so many of us get stuck here. What should I do first? I need to know all the steps. It has to be perfect before I go on. None of us is immune from getting in our own way.

Yet if you look at successful people, you’ll see they all have one thing in common: They take action. And taking action is really a habit that you can develop. Here are five ideas to help you build your action muscle:

1. Don’t get overwhelmed with the big picture, with having to know all the steps to accomplish your goal. You only need to know the next thing to do and act on it. After that, then pick the next step. Remember Martin Luther King said, “Faith is taking the first step even when you don’t see the whole staircase.”

2. Write your SMART goals on paper or index cards and keep them in front of you. What you focus on makes a difference.

3. Decide that you will take three action steps towards your goal each day.

4. Plan your day the night before so you are ready to hit the ground running. And, you’ll find that your brain will even work on those plans while you sleep. I know that sounds odd, but I find it really happens.

5. Do it now! As you’ve probably heard, there’s no time like the present, so just start!

Here’s a wonderful quote about taking action from Leonardo da Vinci:

Please share your tips for taking action below.

Recently I’ve had a few clients talk about being unable to focus and get done what needs to be done because they are distracted by options, whether that’s the other stuff in the room or another great idea that is beckoning. Yes, they are infected with Bright Shiny Object Syndrome. I’ve been there too. Sometimes in my office I get totally distracted by the projects I want to make or the books/tools that just arrived or the idea I have for a new product or all the blogs that call me to tour them. How do you get past this? Here are a few ideas:

1. Take a break. Right now you could be overwhelmed rather than just distracted. This could be an hour or it could be a few days for yourself. The work will still be there.

2. Prioritize what needs to be done. Prioritize by what projects/objects will provide you with the best return on your investment, i.e., what will bring money into your business. This is often what it will take to focus.

3. Clean up your environment so the objects aren’t in front of you. If you are working on your computer, shut down your email and your Internet browser, so they won’t distract you.

4. Work in a different environment. When I get ready to proofread The Professional Quilter, I do this on the porch in nice weather and the living room in colder weather. The living room doesn’t have lots of BSOs – other than the kaleidoscope collection, which I’m not sure why I can avoid. When I suggested that one of my clients look for a spot to work without distractions, she zeroed in on her dining room and quickly got all her work done.

5. Schedule time for BSOs. If you know you’ll be distracted by that blog tour in the middle of the day, schedule it for later in the day or the weekend. That way you’ll enjoy it, and you won’t feel guilty about not getting your work completed.

How do handle all the bright shiny objects that call you during the day? Please share your ideas below.

Several years ago I decided to forego the regular New Year’s resolution. The same resolutions were there every year – lose those extra few pounds, exercise more, clear the clutter – and mostly they fell by the wayside after a few months. At that time I decided to choose a word that would act as a guide for the year. Those of you who have known me for a while know that I started this practice in my yoga class and that I wanted to trade in the word I drew. As the year went on I realized what a magical concept choosing a word or an intention was. It really did act as a direction. I continued to choose a word or intention each January. Words I’ve chosen over the years included openness, challenge, enjoy, abundance, mindfulness. When I was thinking about the direction I wanted to take this year, the word openness kept coming back. In church this past Sunday during her sermon, our priest used the word open or openness at least eight times. Maybe that was a sign for me. In the end I decided that I would choose openness and one other word. That word is opportunity. I want to be open to new opportunities, new experiences, new adventures, new challenges.

Now that you’ve chosen an intention, what do you do with it? Here are a few tips:

1. Write it down where you can see it. I put mine on a sticky note and attach it to my computer where I’ll see it every day.

2. Share it with someone else, especially if the person will hold you accountable. I shared mine with some of my mastermind partners and we talked about why we chose the words we did.

3. Do something that lets you take action on your intention.

This morning as I was reflecting on my words, I looked up at a sign on my bathroom wall. It said “What is your choice/intention for today?” That little note has been there quite a while and reminds me that each day I have a choice about how I will approach my life. I know many of you also choose an intention for the year. Please share yours below. And, if you’ve made a piece of art for your word, let us know where to go to see it.

It seems every year many people make a resolution to manage their time better. How about you? Funny thing is that we all have the same 24 hours in the day. Some of us just do a better job of managing ourselves. Here are five tips to help you do that this year:

Here are some time management quotes I really like:

Please share your thoughts on how you get control of your time below.

Your Best Year Yet!

Jenny Ditzler

Grand Central Publishing; $13.95

One of my favorite planning resources is Your Best Year Yet! by Jinny S. Ditzler. I’ve been using this little book for years and recommend it widely. It offers a framework to define your personal values, identify the various roles you play and create goals for those roles. Here are some of Jinny’s questions plus a couple of my own:

1.    What did I accomplish?

2.    What were my biggest disappointments?

3.    What did I learn?

4.    How do I limit myself and how can I stop?

5.    What are my goals for next year?

6.    Where do I need to find education or support to get there?

7.    How can I make sure I achieve my top goals?

I find one of the most empowering aspects of Jinny’s system is the look at the successes of the year. It let’s you focus on your successes and not get weighed down by what didn’t work. It also lets you get off the treadmill of working on your business to see if you really are on course.

Here’s a quote from the book I particularly like: “We must prepare our soil before we’re ready to plant the seeds we want to grow in the new year.”

I went on a personal retreat last week. In addition to all the museum visiting, one of the things I did on my retreat was to reflect on all the changes in my business in 2011 and the big plans I have for 2012. I guess you’ve heard about the Creative Arts Business Summit! That would be my big plan. Do you have big plans for 2012? Why not set a plan to play bigger in 2012? Here are some ways to help you.

1. Set a stretch goal.

I’ve often heard of this as a breakthrough goal. The idea is that once you achieve such a goal, you break through to a new level in your business. Look back to a really big goal you set and how you felt when you achieved it. Could you really go back to how you felt before? Look for a goal that would make a really big difference in your business and focus a little each day until you achieve it. It could be writing that book you keep thinking about or getting your portfolio together and actually contacting galleries to show your work or submitting your teaching proposal to a national show.

2. Take action.

Achieving any goal is all about taking action, whether that’s giant steps or baby steps. Both will get you there. Decide today to take some action each day toward your stretch goal. Write down what you plan to do each day.

3. Track your results and make necessary adjustments.

Every day take time to look at what you accomplished that day. I also like to do a weekly review. When you do this and see yourself moving toward your goal, you’ll build your confidence and keep going.

4. Get support.

Support comes in many varieties. It can be a coach (that’s one of my favorite support systems) or mentor. It can be business friends also growing, and you’ll network and encourage each other. It can be a class environment where you learn something to build your business. And, it can be family members if they understand that you are trying to grow. Be sure the people on your support team are people like you, truly invested in their own success and who want you to succeed as well.

5. Watch your mindset.

This one stops a lot of us. “What we think, we become.” said the Buddha. Take action to eliminate negativity and small thinking from your life. Read or listen to uplifting books, leave affirmations where you’ll see them and start a gratitude journal. These seem like simple steps, and they are. They can have a profound effect on your goals.

Lastly, I want to share my favorite resource for planning my year, Your Best Year Yet! by Jinny Ditzler. It’s the book I took on my personal retreat. I’ve recommended it before and everyone who uses this process finds it valuable. I’ve reprinted the review from last year below.

Please share your thoughts below.

Despite the title of this piece sounding rather Tina Turnerish to me, I’ve been thinking a great deal lately about what I want in a variety of areas. In other words, I’ve been looking for clarity. It’s so easy to get bogged down with all the what ifs and fuzzy thinking. Ever been there?

What do you need clarity on? When I work with some clients, that’s our first step. Clarity is really the foundation of success both in your business and your personal life.

You need to be clear on the direction you are going. What is your end goal? If you don’t know where you’re going, how will you know when you get there?

You need to be clear on who your client is. We can’t be everything to all people, though I do know people who try. In one class I taught, I had a student who wanted to turn every quilter into an appliqué artist. While that was an admirable goal, her time would have been exhausted trying to accomplish this. She would have been more effective targeting beginning quilters to get them started.

You need to be clear on the financial realities of your business. Where does your income come from? What are your expenses? How much do you need to earn to provide support for yourself?

Those are just a few of the many areas that require clarity. I’m sure you can find other areas where you are searching for clarity. It could be something big, like what my coaches call your “Big Why,” or it could be something smaller, like the name of your new pattern.

It’s easy to figure out what you need to be clear on – you hear the muddled voices. How do you find clarity? Here are a few approaches to tune into the right little voice inside so you can listen.

1. Create a vision board. The easy approach is to go through magazines and find things that resonate with you. It could be colors, words, pictures of places you want to visit, quilts you want to make or techniques you want to learn. Glue them onto a piece of poster board and leave it in a place where you’ll see it. I find that just searching for the items to put on my vision board helps me get clearer.

2. Keep a journal. Note your day’s activities, how you felt about what happened, any insights you might have. You might even ask a question and brainstorm on ideas or let the answer just come to you. Go back and read your earlier entries. The more you journal about something, the clearer it becomes.

3. Be grateful. If you are grateful every day, you can start to replace confusion with clarity. I keep a gratitude journal.

4. Spend time alone in nature. You may feel most at peace in a certain type of setting. For me it’s the water. So when I need to gain clarity, I will often sit by the water. Clarity often comes just “being,” and this environment lets me “be.”

5. Let go of the question. Sometimes by no longer putting your attention on something the answer will just come to you.

And, finally remember when I started looking at the letters in the word “success”? For me, the first C is for clarity.

Here’s a quote on clarity from Scottish writer Richard Holloway that I like:

Please share your thoughts on clarity below.

I had a busy travel schedule in September, and looking into October, I’ve got Quilt Market in a few weeks. The Fall issue of The Professional Quilter is in the mail, and I’ve got lots of loose ends to tie up. I think my “to do” list is a mile long. Plus, I’m busy working with my meeting planner on scheduling our annual meeting for next March. Wow! Just thinking about it adds to my stress level.

I realize that I like to work hard and can easily neglect taking appropriate care of myself. I know I have good intentions but can slack off. How about you? I thought about ways to be sure I put myself in my calendar and thought I’d share some with you. I’d love to get your feedback on how you care for yourself on the blog.

1. Pay attention to your health. October is National Breast Cancer Awareness Month. As a daughter of a breast cancer survivor, I am aware my family history plays some part. Early this week I called and made an appointment for my annual mammogram. All women have experienced the discomfort of the machine, though not many have had the experience of Leigh Anne Jasheway. She won the Erma Bombeck Award for Humor Writing in 2003 for her true story about her first mammogram when the machine caught on fire. Here’s a link the the article, “The First Time’s Always the Worst.”

2. Watch what you eat. Halloween is just around the corner and then we have Thanksgiving followed by Hanukkah and Christmas. It’s easy to get caught up in celebrations and neglect to pay attention to what you eat. And, since most of us work from home, i.e., near the refrigerator or pantry stash or the leftovers, it’s sometimes hard to eat healthy. Eating healthy keeps you energized and you feel better. For me, I try to follow the meal plan in our 5 Simple Steps to Boost Your Business and Boost Your Health. For the month, we’ve marked it down 15% for non-members, 20% for members.

3. Treat yourself to something special. I have a friend who treats herself a couple of times a month at the local bakery where she enjoys a cup of coffee and whatever just came from the oven. As my treat, I scheduled a massage for later this week. Did you know that it’s Spa Week? Spas all across the U.S are offering $50 treatments. Here’s a link to see if you can find one near you.

4. Get some exercise. I’m actually good about scheduling this one. I walk four miles early every weekday morning with my neighbors. They keep me accountable – you wouldn’t want to let down someone who got up before the crack of dawn – and I start my day energized. You don’t have to aim for my level; as little as a 15 minute walk three times a week makes a difference.

5. Get enough sleep. Busy people sometimes think that sleep is optional. Getting enough sleep is crucial to your well-being. I’ve read that six to eight hours is optimal and that you should go to bed and rise at about the same time each day.

6. Add some down time into your calendar. It could be the 15-minute break mid-afternoon where you make yourself a cup of tea and enjoy a magazine or think about your dreams. It could be a quick walk around the back yard or a 20-minute yoga stretch. A break in your day will help you avoid burnout.

As with each of these ideas, scheduling the time is key. If you don’t pay attention to yourself, you will be tired and stressed out. That doesn’t give you the energy required to run your business. So take time to take care of YOU.

Please share your ideas on how you care for yourself below on our blog.

Procrastination. We all know what it is: putting obstacles in our own way by handling those low-priority tasks instead of taking action on the high-priority tasks. The Latin roots of the word mean “in favor of” and “tomorrow.”

Dr. Piers Steel, a researcher on the science of motivation and procrastination and the author of The Procrastination Equation, says that procrastination is pervasive, with at least 95% of us procrastinating on a occasional basis. Count me in that group, as I found several ways to extend writing this article.

And we pay a price for procrastination. We miss out on opportunities, we cause ourselves unnecessary suffering, and procrastination also has an economic price. Steel says that procrastination falls into three different categories:

1. Expectancy, i.e., we expect to fail;
2. Value, i.e., we don’t value our work;
3. Time, i.e, we let momentary impulses rule us.

So how do we get beyond procrastination? Here are five tips:

1. Eliminating procrastination is tied to goals. Be sure you have set, clear goals and that you know why you want to accomplish them. You have to know why – your “Big Why.” What value do you attribute to completing these goals? It can also help you to break your big goal into smaller doable goals. And, if you need an extra push, consider finding an accountability partner to work as an external deadline for yourself. I’ve found this to be effective for completing the small doable tasks with my goals.

2. Learn how to prioritize. When you look at your list of activities for the day, which are most important? And, of the most important, are any urgent? One source to consider here is Stephen Covey’s matrix for prioritizing work. He classifies your tasks as urgent and non-urgent and then as important or not important. The problem with procrastination is that we neglect the important but not urgent until they become the fires we need to put out, i.e., important and urgent. We do this by focusing too much time in the not important quadrants.

3. Reward yourself. You can create a system whereby you earn points for each task that is accomplished as you set out, or you can pick a reward for completing the task. This should help focus you on the goal.

4. If low expectancy is one of your problems, try replacing your language. Expect that you will achieve your goals. That in turn will lead to self-confidence and optimism.

5. If impulsivity is your problem, try a technique Dr. Steel calls the “unschedule.”  He asks you to schedule play time into your calendar, being sure the amount of time is reasonable. He also suggests that “you should schedule an activity that represents the temptation you indulge in when you procrastinate.” For example, if you find that when you procrastinate, you surf the Internet, update your Facebook status or watch television, schedule time for that. Steel found that people that he worked with who “unscheduled” were better able to work on the task at hand.

6. Look for reminders that procrastination is a problem. I found the following quote from Victor Kiam – you may remember him as the man who “liked the shaver so much, he bought the company” – that I read periodically to remind myself that I might miss out on something good. Procrastination is opportunity’s assassin. 

Please share your ideas on dealing with procrastination below.

Guest post by Leslie Shreve

Are you surrounded by piles of your favorite magazines? Are you attached to what you read and think if you throw it away now it’s gone forever… never to be found again… and (sob, sniff) you’ll never remember how to find it anywhere else… ever again… not even on the Internet? Oh, the tragic loss…

Or maybe you haven’t even read your magazines. Maybe they’re just piling up around you and you’re collecting them, but you’re not even sure if you’ll have the time to read them all. Maybe you know you don’t have the time, but you’re reluctant to let them go. Could this be you?

Well, I won’t be prying off the white-knuckle grip you have on your multitude of magazines today, but what I will share with you are some tips for those of you who’ve actually read your magazines and have fallen in love with one or more articles. What to do, oh, what to do with the many articles you love?

And by the way, today’s article was born from a question from a Work Day Wonders reader who read my July 2010 article called “Reading Resuscitation.” It covered The 7 Steps to Revive Your Reading or Retire It for Good and she wanted to know what to do with the articles after she read them and wanted to keep them for an extended period of time. So here goes.

First I’ll address the two most common uses for articles and then I’ll go through 4 steps for the best magazine management.

1. Articles for ideas. If an article sparks an idea, it could be actionable now or great for later and you may or may not need to actually keep the article.

a. If it’s actionable now, decide what the first step is and note it on your Task list with an action date – a “do” date – so you can get this going, whatever it is.

b. If it’s not actionable yet and you want to park this idea somewhere, add it to an “Ideas” list and include as much information from the article as possible so you can throw the article away. And be sure to follow up periodically to review your ideas list.

If you need the article when you’re ready to take action because of a photo, picture, diagram or other information in the article, then it’s considered “reference” material. Keep it in a file named appropriately so you can find it when you need it.

2. Articles for reference. First, be really sure you’ll want or need this information in the future. Be selective! Even the reader who requested this article said in her e-mail, “OK, I often never refer to them. A year later, I end up tossing most. ” So there you go… Be really clear on what’s so special about the article you’re holding in your hand that you want to keep. Are you really going to look for it in 6 months? A year? If you can explain why it’s so good to keep – and say it like you mean it – then you’ve justified keeping it.

Here’s what you can do with your favorite articles…

Step# 1: Tear ‘em out. Tear out the articles you want to keep or cut them out with a razor knife. These pages will take up less space than a whole magazine in a file, in a binder or on a bookshelf and the articles that spark great ideas may even be tossed once you’ve noted the idea on your Task list.

Step #2: Binders and boxes are out! I suggest you file the articles you want to keep for reference. I actually don’t recommend using binders or magazine boxes in which to store your magazines, even though you may have organized them in date order and put a Post-It Note® on the front cover telling you what you liked.

Why? Because you’ll still waste lots of time looking for the magazines, the articles or the Post-it Notes® on the covers to find exactly what you’re looking for.

Unless you have an extraordinary indexing system, down to the year, month, volume, date, page number, title, etc… then you’re going to waste lots of time looking for what you want. And if you rarely refer to the articles you indexed, you’ve just wasted time creating an amazing index you’ll never use.

And binders are “high-maintenance” since you have to punch holes and all that. It’s just faster to drop something into a file.

Step #3: Don’t leave them out. Don’t leave your articles hanging out in piles. Create files for them as you need them and keep your categories broad and general to begin with. You’ll want to be able to add to your files again and again and have them not be so specific that nothing else will belong. When a file becomes too fat, then it’s time to break it down.

Step #4: Keep an eye out. Watch your collection as it grows. On most occasions, people eventually throw away what they’ve kept because they realize they’ve not looked at what they kept! I see this happen with my clients all the time and I’ll remind you again that the reader who requested this article did that too.

Add a task to your Task list to review your files, especially “idea” files, on a regular basis. Maybe every month, every quarter or twice a year, but whatever you do, don’t ignore them for too long. You saved these articles because they were supposed to be useful, right? So put them to good use or toss them for good!

Productivity expert and founder of Productive Day, Leslie Shreve, publishes Work Day Wonders to help highly motivated experts like you put their work day on cruise control at peak productivity to enjoy less stress, more progress and greater success. If you’re ready to be in the driver’s seat of your work day and leave your frustrations behind, subscribe now to get your FREE subscription. And as a BONUS, you’ll also get the 7 Power Steps to Peak Productivity, a 7-day e-mail mini-series of tips you can start using today!