The Power is in the Pen

"Knowing where you're going is all you need to get there." ~~Frederick (Carl) Frieseke~~

The Power is in the Pen. Well, maybe not the pen, but definitely in writing it down… An interesting thing happened to me early this week. In preparing for the first meeting of my accountability group after summer’s hiatus, I spent some time thinking about my goals between now and the end of this year. I recognized again that goals and tasks are not the same, so I actually spelled out – wrote down – 7 different goals. One business development goal, one public speaking goal, one job seeker social media client goal, etc. I also wrote down a recurring to-do list, things like a daily blog post, daily candidate sourcing; things I need to do every day to help me achieve my goals. Literally within hours, I had a new social media referral from a boutique outplacement firm that seemed to have also taken the summer off. By the next day I also had two referrals / introductions form colleagues to potential new clients, and an inquiry about my LinkedIn Webinar. It felt great!

I was reminded again yesterday about the power of writing it down. One of the participants on my last webinar sent me an email, which I have excerpted below:

Dear Jennifer,

I want to tell you a funny (peculiar, not ha-ha) story about what happened to me after I attended your LinkedIn webinar on 28 July.

On Tuesday, 2 August, my latest newsletter was sent out. With that done, I went back to musing as to how I would implement the to-do list I created while listening to you. Top of the list – how to get recommendations. On Wednesday I received notification that someone had endorsed me.

When I asked this client why he had suddenly written the referral, he responded by saying that he had never written a LinkedIn referral before, but when he got my latest ‘newsletter’, he thought “if I ever write a referral, then it would be for this guy”. And then, he said, he suddenly thought, “Why not now?”. And he did.

So, I put it down to your lessons being in my mind sending out thought patterns to the Universe who then nudged someone to act on it. You have a better explanation?

To which I replied:

I love hearing this stuff! And, I do NOT have a better explanation. I am a huge believer of writing things down, putting thoughts out into the universe, and letting the magic happen! There’s no such thing as coincidence in my book…

My take-a-way… Write it down. Put it out there. Know your intentions. Make them real. By the way… when I was writing down my goals, I also wrote down some affirmations. I even taped them to my wall right next to my computer!

Attitude: Your Public Face

“Well we all have a face
That we hide away forever
And we take them out and
Show ourselves
When everyone has gone
Some are satin some are steel
Some are silk and some are leather
They're the faces of the stranger
But we love to try them on.”

~~Billy Joel, “The Stranger”~~

Have you thought about who you are in public? Are you different at home with your family than you are “in business”? Have you considered your online persona? Are you the same? As I talk to more people about the importance of an online presence in today’s marketplace I encounter many who don’t understand who they “should be” online. A few tips: 1. Be yourself. 2. Listen first to what’s going on around you, and then engage in conversation. 3. Add value and insight. And 4, which is the most important advice I can offer, stay positive. No.Matter.What.

It is becoming more and more apparent as online social networking tools increase in popularity that too many people still don’t understand the impact of negativity in public. Say whatever you want to at home behind closed doors, but when you’re out there, whether in person or behind a computer screen, please, I beg you, stay positive. Airing dirty laundry, complaining about your job (or lack of one), dissing the guy you just interviewed with in front of MILLIONS of people online, or otherwise being negative and whiny is just not going to help you. Not in any way.

If you really can’t think of a way to spin it so it’s positive, if you simply cannot find that silver lining, just stay off the computer. You’ll be glad later that you made that choice.

Focus: The Organization Correlation

“Whenever your mind is totally absorbed in whatever activities you are performing, your mind will remain calm and content.” ~~Chin-Ning Chu~~

Being able to focus, actually minimizing or ignoring distractions, and seeing something through to completion, is a valuable ability. Whether you’re researching, writing, or even talking with someone, that ability to be present and be fully engrossed by the task at hand is a skill. Is there a direct correlation between that kind of intentional focus and being organized?

When presenting social media tools to be used for job search, the number one complaint I hear is that there is too much noise online. People state that they get too many emails, there’s too much activity on LinkedIn and it takes too long to read through it all to determine what is valuable. There are too many people on Twitter still telling the world that they’re eating breakfast or walking their dog. And, don’t even get them started on Facebook. They’re so surprised when I show them how to turn off the email that floods their “real” inbox from LinkedIn, how to manage the content that shows up on their homepage, how to create Twitter lists and use an application like Hootsuite** to manage what they see… It’s pretty eye-opening. They CAN actually focus on what’s important to them by simply getting organized.

If I take that a step further and I think about the “clearing the clutter” phase I just went through, I realize that I too can stay more focused when I am organized. There are fewer physical distractions, fewer “other” things to do, when my workspace is clear and things are put away. This may seem like “common sense” to you, but it’s not something I’ve ever really thought about… What is the correlation between organization and focus? Does it work that way for you too?

**To sign up for Hootsuite (FREE!!!!) click here: http://hootsuite.com/p_4061

Focus: Clarity and Direction

"Clarity affords focus." ~~Thomas Leonard ~~

Have you ever noticed that when you’re introduced to something you had never noticed before, that you notice it all the time? (If not, you will now! ) In all seriousness… it happens to me a lot. I’ll not have ever heard of something, and then I’ll hear it referenced five or six times in relatively rapid succession. Or, I’ll never have seen something, and then all of a sudden it’s all around me… I feel like it’s a message. I choose to believe that when this happens, it’s happening for a reason, and it’s something I need to pay attention to. Well, the thing that has been coming up a lot for me lately is “clarity”. I wrote recently about clearing the clutter. A number of people told me I was making room for new things (figuratively speaking, of course… who needs more clutter???) And a surprisingly large number of people told me that I was “clearing” to get ready for “clarity”; to be completely clear on where I was going, why I was going there, and possibly even more importantly, on how I was going to get there. “Clarity”, as a term, was not one I had used often, and was not one I frankly had heard often until recently. Very shortly after my clearing clutter conversations, a colleague was talking to me about how they really needed clarity, and how they needed to understand on which direction they should focus. That felt familiar to me. I’ve been saying for no less than two years that I really needed to understand more about who my target audience was and how to market to them. The very next day a client was asking me about how to get clarity (and used the word!) in their job search and again, figure out who to target as a prospective employer. I found myself coaching around clarity. And I found I was pretty right on… It was kind of ironic... I was right back to my “physician, heal thyself” post. So I did. Thanks in part to my amazing accountability group, and thanks in part to a few other great listeners and advisors, I feel like I really got clarity. I have a renewed focus. I even redrafted my LinkedIn profile! (Check it out here: http://www.linkedin.com/in/jenniferscott) It was quite the accomplishment, and I feel really good about it! Then yesterday I had yet another conversation on getting clear on direction. This time it was with another entrepreneur who was working on choosing a line of business on which to direct her focus first… It could have been me talking. This time I could really give some great, step-by-step tips on getting clarity. And, I am so happy that I chose to focus on that! I am committed to listening to what the Universe is telling me. When these things come up, I will pay attention to them. I know I have lessons to learn, and I am once again excited by the possibilities!

Focus

“Success is focusing the full power of all you are on what you have a burning desire to achieve.” ~~Wilfred Peterson~~

The ability to stay focused may very well be the most important ingredient in the recipe for accomplishment. While I believe that all of the tools that I write about are critical to success, staying focused on the tasks at hand (short term) and keeping your eye on the prize (long term) are paramount. And, HARD! There is so much noise out there. And, there’s just so much going on! How many emails did you come in to this morning? How do you manage all of them? If you have separate work and personal email accounts, how tempted are you to check your personal email the second you sit down? And, I know that it’s a challenge for *me* not to get “sucked in” to Twitter or Facebook when I sit down at my computer. Even LinkedIn is in the process of beta testing a tool which will help people weed through the garbage to glean useful and relevant information from their networks. (http://blog.linkedin.com/2010/09/29/linkedin-signal/) But it’s not just the online noise that can sidetrack you. What about your own thoughts? What about the things you said you had to do, and haven’t done yet? What about all of the outside stressors in your life; your household chores, your family commitments, your good news, your bad news, your friends’ news… There is always something, and because of that, it’s imperative that you learn how to stay focused! I am practicing some new tools this year, and hoping to perfect some old ones. Meditation and affirmations are key for me. My mantra right now,” I am focused and efficient. I accomplish my goals.”

What do you do to stay on task?