Shifting Things Around

So I've been a bit moody of late, partly due to the weather (the late sunrises and early sunsets make me a bit cranky), and partly because of the insanity of holiday schedules. One of the things I realized was making me cranky was actually my bedroom - although it was mostly fine, I had these very dark brown curtains hanging on the windows which made it incredibly dark in the room at all times. Even with the curtains open, there was almost no light coming in. Add that to a dark red comforter on the bed and just a lot of red and black in the room in general, and my room was really, really dark and kind of depressing, which was affecting my mood when I woke up, which was affecting my mood for the rest of the day. You see the pattern.

So, today I decided to do something about it. I have now replaced the brown curtains (they're going to my mother for her candle shop) with some sunny orange curtains that let in plenty of light. I still have the red comforter, but it's covered by a light green super-fuzzy blanket, and all of the furniture has been moved around to a much better configuration. I have my bed positioned so I'll be able to look out the windows as I wake up, and my meditation alter positioned so I'll be able to look out the windows as I meditate (before, it was against the wall looking out into the hallway), and overall, I feel much happier about the current configuration.

The next step is tackling the office. This one's going to be a bit more of a challenge; I have a lot of stuff in a relatively small space, and it has been really hard to convince myself that I don't need half of the stuff in there. Wish me luck!

Advice on planning for 2007

A terrific woman in my network, Kerri Salls of Breakthrough Business School, gave me some great advice on planning for 2007:

1) sketch out where you want to be, personally and professionally, in 2010;
2) break that down to where you need to be in 2007 to get you there;
3) break that down into 90-day action plans to help you move toward your vision.

Kerri is a consultant that helps business owners make more money in less time. I met her during a speaking engagement I did at the Northeastern University XCel Conference, and her workshop on managing your finances gave me some terrific new ideas that I put into place almost immediately after the event. If you're an entrepreneur looking to take your business to the next level and make more money in less time, check out her website at Breakthrough-Business-School.com.

On productivity

Over the last few days I haven't felt as organized as I could be — my apartment is pretty much in order, laundry and dishes are in good shape, office is pretty well organized, but something feels... off.

What I'm realizing is that, now that a few of my jobs have either been buttoned up completely or are still waiting approval, the only thing left is to work on my own stuff. And that, for whatever reason, always makes me incredibly lazy.

It's time for an action plan. Over the next month, I'm going to be focusing on revamping the zen kitchen's website, re-evaluating the marketing plan for the studio, and working out a business plan for a couple of other business/personal things I want to get started.

In the immediate, it's time to break the insanely overwhelming task of revamping the website into its smallest possible chunks. Home page: done. The rest: well, still needs to be done.

Okay; let's get going!