January 2015 - Page 2 of 2 - Strange & Charmed

Month: January 2015

10 Awesome Females All Millennial Women Should Know!

With so many of you that tell me on a day-to-day basis how much my work has inspired you to live a more productive and organized life, I got to thinking that I should perhaps share with you all the people, specifically, the women, that inspire me. I definitely go through phases where I become very interested in and inspired by the work of certain notable women, but for the most part, I find that I keep coming back to the same ladies and their work over and over again. So, here is a collection of 10 awesome females that I believe all millennial women should know!

1. Sheryl Sandberg

You really have to be living under a rock to not know about Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg, her controversial book, Lean In, and her work promoting and supporting the roles of women in executive positions through her foundation Lean In.org. Sheryl Sandberg has been everywhere since her book released in 2013 and she has become something of the unofficial face of women in leadership, opening up an important dialogue within the U.S.

2. Marie Forleo

Marie Forleo is a very awesome lady whose work I just recently discovered early in 2014. Known predominantly for her eponymous website and business coaching practice, Marie is definitely a mover and a shaker, rubbing elbows with Oprah Winfrey, Tony Robbins and Sir Richard Branson to name a few. Through her weekly web series, Marie helps inspire her audience of entrepreneurial women with refreshing candor and a hit of sass! Oh, and did I mention she’s from Jersey? What can I say, she’s my type of lady!

3. Malala Yousafzai

Seventeen year old Malala Yousafzai has been making major waves on the international scene for years through her human rights advocacy and especially her support for the education and advancement of women in her native country of Pakistan. In 2014 Yousafzai was awarded the Nobel Prize, making her the youngest ever recipient of the prestigious honor. This brave young woman already has accomplishments galore under her belt, and the world can only expect more great things to come from her in the future!

4. Felicia Day

So when you think of Felicia Day you probably think, geek girl, gamer, actress, writer, but what you should be thinking is web media innovator. In case you didn’t realize it, back in 2012 Felicia launched Geek & Sundry, a Youtube Channel featuring a laundry list of popular web series’ and has basically carved out a nice piece of the new media pie for herself, but then she turned around and sold that pie two years later after turning one single YouTube channel into a media entity in and of itself! She is one savvy multi-talented business woman who is building her media empire, brick by brick!

5. Brit Morin

Do you ever find yourself pining for a younger, more tech savvy version of Martha Stewart that would be accessible to the modern millennial women? Well, clearly you haven’t been acquainted with Brit Morin! As an entrepreneur and modern business woman, Brit has built up a lifestyle brand akin to Martha but with a twist. She is something of a digital homemaker with not only her own popular website and shop, but also her subscription based DIY box service that gives millennial women a creative outlet in their busy, often stressful lives! I’ve been following Brit for years back since the days where she was blogging under her maiden name and working for Apple & Google, and I have to say that it has been very exciting watching the progression of her brand into what it has become today, and I know there will be so much more in store for her in the future.

6. Caroline Ghosn

As the daughter of international businessman Carlos Ghosn, Caroline Ghosn clearly comes from a background of wealth and privilege, but instead of using her families money and connections to get herself into parties, play dress up and live in lala land like some other privileged socialites might, she graduated from college and started her own business in her early twenties; Levo League. You have probably seen me talk about Levo before, I’ve written articles for their site and really love the work they do helping young women connect and network with resources and mentors that will help them advance personally and professionally. Although Levo is a new company and still rather small, I have seen them take on massive projects and make such an impact already that it is exciting to see what will come next!

7-8 Carly Zakin & Danielle Weisberg

Carly Zakin & Danielle Weisberg are two names on this list that I expect you are most likely unfamiliar with. In fact, I myself am still not familiar with their names although I enjoy their work and product on a daily basis. Carly and Danielle are the founders of one of my favorite email subscriptions, Skimm.com, a daily email that catches you up on the important news of the day. As someone who doesn’t really read the news (I know, it’s not something I’m proud of) their service has really helped me keep an eye on important events around the globe by providing a skimmed down summary of the important facts, key players and possibly impacts. Oh, and did I mention this is a free service? Well, it is, so you really have no excuse not to become an informed and educated citizen, thanks to Carly & Danielle!

9. Gabrielle Bernstein

Gabby Bernstein is one of my personal favorite modern spiritualists. By day, she is a motivational speaker, author and life coach, but really, the thing that makes her stand out to me is that she is a spiritual thinker, yogi, and all around kick-ass lady! You may have seen me talk about her latest book Miracles Now, which I love, it’s basically a how-to guide to solve life’s little (and not so little) problems in the moment by changing your mindset and using your body’s natural energy to help you live a better life. I always love thinkers that really seem to practice what they preach, and to me, Gabby is one of those authentic, do gooder types who works to empower people through spiritual methods rather than through gimicky or commercial means. She is just one of those people who really inspires you to live a better life by embracing love and light in your own life and letting go of all those insignificant things that often times trip us up. She’s definitely one to watch if you are into spirituality, meditation, yoga, and self-help!

10. Wendy Davis

I really thought that this list wouldn’t be complete without mentioning an inspiration woman who is part of the U.S. political system. Wendy Davis is a former Texas State Senator who came to national popularity when she took a stand on women’s rights and stood for an eleven hour-long filibuster to block a Senate Bill that would place harsh regulations on women’s reproductive rights in Texas. Now, no matter your political affiliation and no matter your stance on abortion and reproductive rights, you have to admit that one single woman standing up against the political system in one of the largest states in America and facing huge amounts of opposition for her actions is really, honestly, amazing! You really need a plethora of courage and strength to do what she did, and although her actions weren’t successful in preventing the legislation from passing, she did manage to bring national attention to the issue and help open a dialogue in support of the right’s of all women, and for that I think she is pretty awesome!

I hope this article helped introduce you to an awesome and inspirational woman who you may not have been familiar with before and if it did, please let me know in the comments below. If you have other great women that you draw inspiration from I would love to hear about them as well. Perhaps you can introduce me to someone great as well!

xoxo,

Filofax

{How to} Project Planning & Goal Tracking with a Filofax

Since we are now in the very beginning of January and I know many of you are probably pondering resolutions for the year as well as any projects and other goals you want to accomplish throughout 2015, I thought now would be the perfect time to share with you all my project planning and goal tracking process. As you may already know, I do use my personal sized Filofax planner to house and organize all my projects and goals for the year. You may even be familiar already with my printable project planning bundle that I sell in my shop and designed specifically to help myself (and others!) outline and monitor their projects in a productive way. If you haven’t seen my project planning bundle yet, feel free to check it out for yourself.

Now, when it comes to projects and goals, I think people tend to approach each of these items differently because they do tend to be different in nature. When it comes to projects, I view them as a collection or series of tasks necessary to complete in order to come to a desired outcome. In my opinion, projects usually arise as a result of external factors in our lives that prompt us to undertake these tasks. For example, you may find that the majority of your projects come from places like work, your household or even community needs. Since projects are often externally driven, I believe that we often feel a lot of pressure or stress to complete these tasks because usually someone other than ourselves is counting on the completion of the project. Goals on the other hand are things we as individuals work towards with the hopes of accomplishing. I find that goals are usually internally driven and very personal in nature and because of this, I believe we often put our own goals aside or on the back burner to other projects because the completion of our goals only affect us on a personal level. Therefore, I find that goals are usually the first thing to fall to the wayside when life gets busy because they can sometimes feel like something of a selfish pursuit. The truth of the matter is, that both projects and goals should be approached with the same system of organization in order to identify, plan and execute them to completion. No matter whether you are working on a project for work or trying to reach the goal of running a marathon, the same basic planning structure applies and neither a project nor a goal is any less valid no matter the factors surrounding it’s existence!

Okay, so let’s move on to the nuts & bolts of my project planning system. This isn’t any sort of revolutionary system by any means, and I certainly can’t take credit for doing anything other than developing it to fit my own needs, but it does work very well for me, and I thought if it works for me, it could work for you!

Step 1: Brainstorming

The first part of my project planning system is brainstorming. This shouldn’t be confused with brain dumping, because in a brain dump you are simply moving information stored in your mind onto paper (or another trusted input system) in order to store the information, reflect and review later. Brainstorming is like the opposite of a brain dump, because with a brainstorm you start with an empty mind and actively populate ideas. In order to do so, it can often help to first complete a brain dump so that your mind isn’t focused on holding on to any other ideas or plans already stored there, and you can focus simply on the act of creating ideas.

Tip 1: Define your problem

When you begin a brainstorm it is important to ask yourself what you are trying to achieve or what problem you are trying to solve. You need to be specific here and think about the who, what, where, when, why and how of your problem so that you can approach it from every direction.

Tip 2: Envision the ideal outcome

When brainstorming, it is important to know what the ideal outcome is for your problem. We are talking best case scenarios only! Don’t negotiate your ideal down to something diluted, but focus on exactly what it is that you want to happen. Don’t be afraid to dream big. As one of my favorite quotes says “Reach for the Stars, for even if you fail, you’ll land amongst the Heavens.” When you are brainstorming it’s a great idea to think like an overachiever! I follow this rule of thumb myself and I never fail to produce great things even if I don’t quite make it as far as I dared.

Tip 3: Track all thoughts

Start writing down any idea that comes to mind, no matter how small, how right or how wrong it sounds. I suggest doing this with sticky notes or index cards, because these will help you to organize all your thoughts later.

Tip 4: Brainstorm early & often

It’s never too early to brainstorm solutions to a problem that may have just arisen or even to brainstorm solutions to problems that you are anticipating. The more time you spend brainstorming and the more sessions you undertake, the better your ideas will get and the more prepared you will be to undertake the project!

Step 2: Organizing plans and ideas

Once you have spent a sufficient time brainstorming, it’s time to organize your ideas! If you used sticky notes or note cards as I suggested, this process will be easier for you, but make sure to keep a few extra supplies around because you may still have some more though processing to do!

Tip 1: Lay it all out in front of you

Literally, lay all your cards with ideas and plans and information in front of you and take a good hard look at everything.

Tip 2: Discover the Hierarchy of Ideas

Once you have spent time reviewing your ideas, you will start to notice a natural hierarchy of ideas emerge from your notes. You will see ideas you like, ideas you don’t like and you can begin the organization process by grouping these items into a logical order. Ask yourself as you do this if you see any gaps in information, if so, pull out another sticky note or index card and fill in the blank!

Tip 3: Do not discard any ideas

It is very important that during this process you do not discard any ideas, no matter how bad they may seem. Why? Sometimes good ideas can spring forth from bad ideas. Often time I find that by looking at the wrong answer, your mind naturally comes to understand what the right answer is, almost like a process of elimination. When you know what doesn’t work, you have eliminated a possibility and can therefore focus on what does work! Another reason to keep around those seemingly bad ideas is because although an idea may be bad for one project, it may actually work for another or give you a great idea for a totally different project. While you’re brainstorming, you seriously have no clue what is going to pop up but your brain gave you the idea for a reason, so give it some time before you decide that it’s not worth pursuing.

Tip 4: Give your ideas time to process

Project planning and organizing ideas isn’t something that should be rushed. I say to brainstorm early and often for a reason, because thoughts need time to process and stew in your mind. Even after your ideas have been organized into their proper hierarchy and gaps have been filled, you still never know what inspiration is going to pop up once you give your ideas time to grow. So, how do you know when you have given enough time to your ideas so you can begin to project plan? Well, I find that there are two things that happen to me when I am ready to move on to the next phase in this process. First off, I find that I begin to feel confidence in my ideas. It’s like a gut check with me, if I feel uneasy with my ideas, they need more time, but if I start feeling confident and excited, I know it’s time to move forward. Finally, when I begin to see that my ideas are following a very logical order, I know it’s time to move on because my ideas make sense, and that is really what you want from this process.

Step 3: Planning

Once your ideas are in order, you can proceed with the actually planning portion of the project planning system. Novel, ain’t it?

Tip 1: Process your ideas into actions

Once you have all your good ideas in front of you, you need to process them into actual actionable items. After all, a project plan is nothing if you don’t have actions associated with your ideas.

Tip 2: Fill out a project planning page

I like to keep track of my projects with a project planning page because it provides a nice overview of your project at a glance. The project planning pages I use come from a set on my shop that are sized for a Filofax, either personal or A5! The project planning page houses all the important information regarding the project.

Tip 3: Note deadlines and timeframes

On the action list of the project planning page, I make sure to note deadlines for tasks as well as provide a general time frame for their completion. This helps me when it comes time to undertake a task to understand the time commitment required.

Tip 4: Keep track of resources

When it comes to project planning, we often need outside resources or other materials to reference in order to complete tasks. The project planning pages I use have a special section for this so I can list out everything I need to reference or anyone I need to contact or work with to complete tasks.

Tip 5: Move projects to the Yearly tracker

My project planning bundle also includes a yearly tracker broken down by month of the year as well as spaces for short-term, mid-term and long-term goals. I consider a short-term goal to be something that can be completed in 1 month, a mid-term goal to be something I can complete in 1-3 months and a long-term goal to be something I need 6 months or more to complete. Once my projects are outlined in the project planning pages, I move them into my yearly tracker in their appropriate time frame so I can see everything I have going on in my life, project wise, throughout the course of the year.

Step 4: Implementation

Once your project or goal is planned out and organized, the most important part is still ahead of you and that is actually getting things done!

Tip 1: Schedule action steps into your calendar

I use a specific month at a glance insert to track my project tasks. This page (which is available alone in my shop or as part of the project planning bundle) is broken down into two parts. On one side of the page are the days of the month listed out one per line, and on the alternate side is a column of task boxes. I use the dated side to track tasks that have a specific due date or deadline and the side with the check boxes to list out all other tasks that belong to that month. That way when it is time for me to work on a project, I have a list of my next actions ready to go and I don’t have to spend any extra time looking up what I have to do! When an item is completed from this list, I check it off on the monthly page as well as on the project planning page.

Tip 2: Transfer tasks to a weekly or daily spread as needed

Sometimes tasks are very important and I need to make sure I don’t miss them, so I will move them onto my weekly pages to ensure completion. This is just an additional step I take that helps me to plan my workload for the week. Normally I will either add these items to a specific day that they need to be done on or leave them as a general task to be completed at some point during the week. Either way, having it front in center on my weekly view keeps it on the top of my list!

So that is my project planning and goal tracking system in a nutshell. This is quite a long post, so I won’t keep you any longer. If you didn’t happen to make it through the whole post, don’t worry, I did make a YouTube video on the subject as well to go along with this post in case you preferred to watch me in action instead of read a long form article!

Of course, if you did make it through the post, let me know what you thought of my process. Is this something that you may find helpful to you as you begin to plan your projects for the year? Do you use a similar method or another system all together? I would love to hear about how you plan out your projects especially if you use a Filofax based system as well!

xoxo,

Letter from the Editor

Letter from the Editor: Welcome to 2015!

Welcome to 2015

Hello Everyone and Welcome to 2015! I have to admit, I have been anxious for 2015 to arrive for quite some time now, as I’ve been craving the fresh start that the New Year brings. For what feels like the first time in a long time, I feel like my internal clock is finally in time with the real world because we both hit the reset button at midnight! In reality of course, there is nothing new or special about January 1^st that wasn’t already there December 31^st— it’s just another day— but the new year gives us reason to pause and evaluate our situations and mental baggage and decide what is going with us into 2015 and what is staying behind in 2014. If you had a rough year for one reason or another and have been feeling weighed down by pressure, stress or negativity that resided in 2014, now is the time to let it go (queue the ice queen)! Get a piece of paper out and a pen and write down whatever it was that happened (or didn’t happen) in 2014, all the negative emotions you have associated with the year and describe them on paper. Spill your guts as they say onto the paper in whichever style you prefer (journal, bullet point, sonnet, etc) and as you write feel yourself unpacking those events and feelings onto the paper like a mental inventory. When you’re done fold up your piece of paper into a nice little square and write 2014 on the outside. Now, I want you to dispose of this paper square in whichever means you find most convenient or cathartic. Burn it (safety), flush it down the toilet, rip it up into little pieces, send it through the shredder, take it outside and step on it, roll over it with your car, whatever will make you feel like you are destroying that paper and disposing of it along with all the mental and emotion baggage that was unpacked onto it!

Now, if you had a great year in 2014, or if you had some great moments and happy positive feelings, memories, etc that are associated with the year, I want you to perform the same example of writing it down, but this time in a more positive and permanent place. A page in your planner, a document on your phone, a notepad in your office, wherever you can write these good feelings down that is more permanent, do it! Why? Because I want you to be able to look at this list and reference it as you enter into 2015. Do you need to keep it all year? If you’d like, but really I just want you to have a record of all the good things from the previous year that you want to migrate with you into the new one. This list is going to be filled with all the emotions and memories you want to continue to manifest and live on in 2015! Okay, so what if you feel like you didn’t have any good moments in 2014 or any happy memories or positive feelings associated with the year? Well, if you feel that way, what I want you to do is write a wish list of events, emotions, positive moments you would love to achieve in 2015. Try to go into detail as much as possible and include a short brainstorm of things you can do or actions you can take in the new year that you believe will help you to achieve these happy thoughts. Use these as part of your resolutions or think of them as a blueprint for an action plan for 2015 and work them into your planner for the year. Like actually schedule out things to do on specific days to help you reach those happy feelings you want to manifest in 2015. If need be, get friends and family involved by sharing part of your wish list with them and explaining how they can help you achieve these goals by their support or cooperation. Remember, this is your list, so ultimately you are responsible for it, however, sharing with those close to you that can lend support and encouragement is a great way to help motivate and keep yourself in check!

I hope this little exercise is helpful for you as we move into 2015. Remember, I’m all about this year being the best year of your life (and mine!) and if you want to keep that message at the forefront of your mind as well, make sure to grab a set of my tech wallpapers for your gadgets! In case you were also unaware, I just recently added a new printable product to my Shop, a set of 2015 Monthly Journaling Cards. They are an elegant month at a glance design that you can keep in your planner to help with no-spend months, photo challenges, health or life tracking, etc, or use in a scrapbook or project life spread! Since they are printable, you can go ahead and print as many as you need each month for various projects! Of course, if you’re still in need of a new calendar system for your Filofax or equivalent planner system, make sure to also check out my offerings for Monthly, weekly, and daily planner pages, as well as my selection of task trackers and project planning inserts that will help make your life more organized and your goals more achievable in 2015! Oh and don’t forget to download my January free insert, a Resolution a Day to test out a variety of popular resolutions in January to narrow down your own!

Well, like I said earlier, I have been anxious for this year to begin and perhaps you have been too, so I will let us go now so we can go ahead and make out our lists and action plans and get to work making 2015 the best year yet!