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Do you have tired eyes?

Do you have tired eyes?

by | Planning-Organization-Productivity

Do you have tired eyes?

Do you have tired eyes?

By the end of your workday do you have tired eyes? Are your eyes dry, sore and have difficulty focusing? Do you have a headache?  These are symptoms of digital eye strain.

Yup, I had digital eye strain

If you answer yes to any of the above, you could be experiencing digital eye strain. This is caused by overexposure to blue light from our digital devices. As an Online Business Manager and Web Designer, I’m pretty much in the same boat as you, sitting in front of our digital device is how we serve our clients and prospective clients.

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Little Side Note

Have you heard of the Kolbe A? It is an assessment that identifies the natural way you take action. My high number is fact finer which means, I start everything I do with research.

Enter Research Mode Here

At the end of the day when I had tired eyes that were so exhausted I didn’t even want to open them, I entered into research mode.

What I found out is…

I was suffering from digital eye strain, in this day and age is very common. A solution to digital eye strain is simple, you can purchase computer glasses that reduce the blue light exposure from your digital devices.

With a Google search, you will have more options than you know what to do with. Because I wanted to make sure they would be helpful I just found a pair on Amazon. I did not even give it a second thought I ordered them immediately.

Can you say life changing

These glasses have made a huge difference for me. ((Insert little dance party here)) In the evening my eyes do not feel tired and dry. Nor does my vision seem hazy any longer. My eyes are not tired in the evening and my vision does not seem as blurry as it was in the past. I can tell you from experience that when my first pair broke and I didn’t replace them right away I could tell from my tired eyes I had all the digital eye strain symptoms again.

Here is a bit of my research if you would like to check it out:

Article One: Blue Light – It's Both Bad and Good for you from All About Vision

This had a ton of great information in it. It explains why blue light is needed and why too much of it is bad for our eyes.

 

Article Two: Blue Light and Your Eyes from Prevent Blindness

This article gives a list of what you can do to protect your eyes from blue light.

I did read through a few others, but I found the most information in the two articles above.

 

Creating A Vision For Your Online Business

Creating A Vision For Your Online Business

by | Online Business

Creating A Vision For Your Online Business

Creating A Vision For Your Business

Have you given thought about creating a vision for your online business? With all the day in and day out of running an online business keeping an eye on the vision of where you want to go can get shoved to the wayside. Whether you create a vision board, doodle about it in a notebook or write it out in detail. Visually seeing the results that you’d like to receive in your business can be extremely helpful.

The concept of creating a vision board isn’t anything new. It’s all part of the Law Of Attraction that you hear so much buzz about. I love me some LOA!

If you’re not into the Law Of Attraction, a little too woo-woo for you? Then I suggest you learn about Cameron Herold Vivid Vision. Here is a quick 11ish minute video of Cameron speaking about a Vivid Vision for your business.

Do you enjoy to read?

Cameron Herold covers this subject in his books: Vivid Vision and Double Double.

Do you

Do you see yourself getting to your vision of what you want for your business? Maybe you’ve already reached your first vision and are working at creating a vision to take you even further.

Besides creating your vision, have you created a plan mapped or did a mind map of how you think you can get there?

Track The Achievement

Do you track your achievements along the way so that you’re able to look back when you’re feeling defeated and overwhelmed with all the aspects of creating a vision into reality?

Maybe you’ve gotten over the first six-figure hump, but now are getting stuck in the daily grind of managing it all now and not able to move forward. It may be time to sit down again and begin creating a vision to take your business to the next level.

James Wedmore talked about this on his podcast Episode 254: How to Prevent Your Business from Crashing Down.. Without creating a vision for your business the path and belief to get there may not happen.

A little foggy

For the first few years of my business, my vision was foggy. I wanted to help everyone do everything. You know the saying a jack of all trades master of none? Trying to be all the things is stressful. Trying to help all the people is stressful.

I've since narrowed my focus down into two areas. Web Design because it is a beautiful creative outlet and online business management (OBM). Because I love the operations and managing of the business that an online business manager gets to concentrate on.

But it took really turning inward and looking at what were the things that I did that brought me joy and excitement, and releasing the things that caused me stress and overwhelm. It was simply a matter of trusting my own self and creating a vision of what I truly loved offering in my business.

This quote is from Life, The Truth, and Being Free by Steve Maraboli, “If you don’t know exactly where you’re going, how will you know when you get there?”

Best Tips for Email Organization

Best Tips for Email Organization

by | Planning-Organization-Productivity

Best Tips for Email Organization

Best Tips for Email Organization

Either you control your email or it controls you. Here are my best tips for email organization and keeping your inbox in control.

When I chat with people about what I do and how I help, when I mention keeping your email organized the same reaction of Hallelujah is heard.

Your inbox should be treated as a tool in your online business, it should not be where you spend a bulk of your time. Here are the best tips that I provide or implemented for email organization.

Labels and Filters

Setting up labels and filters is the first step to an organized inbox. In the past, I've created a number of labels, but I've scaled that back a bit. 98% of the time if you go looking for an email, likely you’ll search for a keyword or person before you go and look for it. If that’s not the case, how are you finding those emails? Searching is quick and easy.

 

Here are the best labels or folders that I’ve found to use:

  • 0-Immediate
  • 1-Action
  • 2-Active
  • 3-Hold
  • Finance
  • Finance/Payable
  • Finance/Receivable
  • Review
  • Unscribe

Any specific folders that are needed in your business. Such as client or product folder.

Let's talk about labels or folders and the purpose they serve.

Dubsado Is A Game Changer a blog from Miss Task OBM
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A Little Side Note

When you need a mindless activity use this time to unsubscribe to all those marketing emails that are no longer serving you. This not only helps you but also the conversion rates of the list you're opting out of. It's a win-win for you both. 

1-Action

These are emails that require action by you but doesn’t require immediate action.

2-Active

These are emails for active projects that are getting a number of emails. I would suggest creating a filter to put them directly in this folder. The filter can be on an email address or subject.

3-Hold

These are emails for meetings, travel, reservations, activities. Generally anything with a date or an agenda that will no longer be needed after the event has taken place.

Finance

The actual Finance folder is used to hold the emails. Once the email has been completed it can be moved to either the payable or receivable sub-label/folder pending what it is.

Review

These are emails that do not have a timeframe as to when they need to be reviewed. This is where I put the marketing emails that I like to skim and archive for reference later.

Unsubscribe

This folder can either be manually added to or a filter can be created. I’ve done it both ways, personally, I prefer to manually add these when I’m sorting through my emails because some of the marketing emails will be added to my review folder to be skimmed later.

Inbox Applications

You have options, options and more options when it comes to inbox applications. I can’t even remember all the inbox applications I’ve tried out. These days I use mostly Spark, however, Kiwi is a very close second. Do not be scared to try different applications, you need to figure out what works for you. You have so, so many possibilities!

Why I like Spark

I like Spark because it has an app for my iPhone, I can pin emails, save canned responses, I can schedule emails, and I can have them come back into my inbox. They also have a paid option for teams to chat back and forth on emails. One other feature that I like is Quick Reply this option allows me to set up canned responses that I can send with a click of the mouse. For example,  that allows me to send a quick email to let my customer know that I’ve got the email and will take a look at the request. It is handy dandy.

Why Kiwi

Kiwi brings your Gmail to your desktop and if you have multiple Gmail accounts they receive tabs to jump back and forth with. With kiwi, you can use Boomerang. This will allow you to set up emails to be sent at a later time or to snooze a email to review later.

Get out of your inbox

As an online business owner, it’s important that you get out of your inbox. Your work should not be driven by the emails that you receive. It’s best to block time to work on your email. I check mine twice per day. About mid-morning and at the end of the day when I’m looking at planning the following work day. My emails are sorted when I open up my inbox to the appropriate project.  Everything gets filed in the correct label or folder so that it is completed in the correct time block.

 It is possible to get your inbox to zero, it just takes a bit of time to clear out the clutter. Once you have the system in place email is so much more.