My Green-Eyed Monster

Here I sit with no shortage of topics to write about or projects to delve into. It is snowing outside with no signs of letting up until early tomorrow morning - or so says the weather report. Which should mean that cozy in the confines of my home/office this should be a very productive day. But if you ask me how many words I have written (it is now after 1PM) the answer would be to count back to the first word in this paragraph.

Eighty-five.

Not very impressive.

But that - I have come to realize - happens.

That is part of the struggle of being a creative.

That is the angst of being a creative with enough left brain tendencies to be annoyed with myself when not accomplishing what I think to be a day's work.
That is what will reoccur no matter how many times I  have gotten to the other side of this quagmire.

I am always surprised when I am in this spot. I wanted to believe the last time was - the last time. I am no less frustrated than I was before. I know all the tricks to get past this. 

Set the egg timer. 
Sit. 
At my desk.
Don't move until it goes off. 

But that does not mean that any of them are going to work.

The Resistance - as Steve Pressfield has so eloquently described it - is my green-eyed monster. 

Everyone has one. Mine comes equipped with little gray pellets it shoots at me than make either want to take multiple naps or do a lot of laundry. And sometimes - just when I think I am about to rise above it - my monster shoots another set that sends me off to Facebook or Twitter so I can read all the great stuff other people are writing or doing while I am just making my list. Rather than inspire me or egg me on - it makes me want to take- yet another nap.

Until something happens.
Like now.
And I get to hit publish.




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25 Things I've Learned From The Experiment - Day 30 !

So here we are. The last day of the great experiment. 30 consecutive blogs later - mission is accomplished! For those of you who have followed my every word, a great big thank-you for your encouragement, your comments and your sharing with friends.

I've learned so much! So for my last post on this leg of my journey I've compiled a list of the 25 things that are - at the moment - my biggest take-a-ways. Some of this is brand new information. Some a reminder of what I had forgotten. I'll leave it to you to figure out which is which. 

1-The more I write, the more I write.
2-The more I write, the more I have to write.
3-The more I write, the more other stuff gets done.
4-Nobody reads as many blogs on the weekends.
5-The more honest and vulnerable I am, the more the reaction.
6-The subject of bragging as a good thing is apparently quite controversial.
7-Publicly announcing your intentions is a good tool for accountability.
8-Those moments where I don't want to hit publish because I think my writing is just not good enough, never go away - no matter how much I write.
9-Inspiration does not come when you are looking for it and worried if something will stand the test of time or not.
10-Inspiration comes when you observe and take notice.
11-Inspiration comes when you are in a groove.
12-It's never just about the writing. It's about the listening.
13-Anything I set my mind to can be achieved. The key is to not over think the process.
14-I have a lot to say about a lot of things.
15-Trying to predict what will get a lot of page views never works. Nobody cared much about Jerry Seinfeld's new video series. 
16-My egg timer theory does work.
17-Deadlines are a good thing.
18-Lists are fun to write. Tips are great to share. But writing story  that resonates - like the day I left the building for the last time- is the best.
19-When someone tells me that when they read my blogs they feel like I'm having a conversation with them, my day has been made.
20-Writer's block does exist, no matter how many people want to tell you it's a myth.
21-Forcing oneself to get one's butt in the chair, and shut off all possible electronic distractions is one way to get past it.
22-So is taking a break, going for a walk and trusting the muse will arrive and with her the words.
23-My voice is what works best here. Trying to make it popular, to please others, to write something that gets all sorts of new traffic to my site is not what this blog is about. Never was supposed to be. If that goes against all the old and new rules of marketing, so be it.
24-That I am still in awe of those who manage to post every day, 365 days a year.
25-That it's possible for me to do it too - if I so choose.


I'll be back soon - just not tomorrow - with my next blog. Until then.

5 Things You Should Know Before You Write Those New Year's Resolutions

I love a clean sheet of paper. I love to make lists. I love to commit to writing what I want to change up in my life. I think it is a great and necessary first step to making it happen. So you would think I would be a big fan of New Year’s Resolutions. But I’m not.

I have my reasons.  For starters, I don’t like the word.  Which is why my list is labeled Intentions. I also don’t think it needs to be the New Year to experiment with change. I think change is necessary to growth and that is a year round activity. But that’s just me. And I tend not to fit into the norm.

Most people will make a list that will be doomed before they finish it. It might even be the same list they wrote last year and the year before that, only now on a fresh sheet of paper. They'll tuck it away someplace safe. Maybe even for a few days they'll act on it. Half way through the year they'll wonder why nothing changed. 

Here's what they needed to know before they started:

1- Don’t call them resolutions!  Resolution is a terrible word. It’s so clinical and unsexy. You’re doomed to failure before you start. Plus, it implies that whatever you were doing before was a big problem that you are now going to re solve. That does not sound like fun, and let’s face it, if there is not a way to have fun with this, why bother? 

2-Experiment with the word intention. Intention has no fixed outcome. You can intend to do something differently. You can intend to create something new. And by intending instead of resolving you allow the Universe to intercede, perhaps delivering up something that is even better than what you originally wrote down. 

3- Remember that true change requires discipline. Yes, discipline. Not a very user-friendly word in our culture. But if it is a 2013 that does not look like 2012 you want, you are going to have to exert some discipline.

For instance, if one of your resolutions/intentions/desires is to expand your business network then put aside at least one hour a week to go and spend on LinkedIn.  Set the timer and don’t get up until  it goes off. And then do it again, next week. 

4-Don’t forget to check your progress. Most of us will forget where we stored the list before Martin Luther King’s Birthday rolls around much less what we wrote on it. If you’re really intent on making some changes in 2013, you need to revisit that list periodically and see how things are going. Set up a schedule of reminders. 

I’ve become a big fan of a program called GoodtoDo that allows me to schedule recurring ToDo’s. This year I will set one so I can check in every month on how I’m doing with my intentions. The beauty of the program is that you don't have to worry about remembering to check in. Through the miracle of technology the program will remind you automatically on the day you told it. 

Let’s face it, in this 24/7 information on overload world we live in, we will all forget, no matter how important or what our age. In fact, it is often the things that we want most to change that we subconsciously push to the back of our mind.

Hold yourself accountable. Or enlist the help of someone or something else. Like GoodtoDo.

5-Read your list out loud. Preferably in the company of a living, breathing witness. Check in with yourself. Can you feel the rightness of your intentions? Are they coming from a true desire you have or what you think you should be doing?  If they make you nauseous, is it the good kind that lets you know you’re on the right track and headed towards something good? Or is it the kind that is a warning signal to you that this isn't really what you want on your list this year?

Now go to it! Make that list. Check in on it every month and let me know how it goes. Happy New Year!

9 Basic Rules For A Tech DeTox

Two years ago I embarked on my first technology detox. I was rather ambitious. I decided seven days would be the minimum amount of time necessary to effectively cleanse my system of the poisons of  24/7 technology overload. It was an eye-opening and admittedly  difficult adventure that was chronicled  on this blog as well as on ForbesWoman.  

I learned a lot, about myself and the world we now live in. For example:

• Technology addiction is widespread and if not kept under control can be hazardous to your psyche and productivity.
• We are lured in with incessant media sound bites encouraging us to feed our habit. We fear if we are not keeping up with whatever else is going on at this very moment we are going to miss out. Lose. Something. But the fact is we don’t. At least nothing of great consequence.
• I had much more time in my life than I was owning up to. I was just misusing it.
• This would not be the last time I would need to take a break and detox. Like too much of the wrong food, periodically we need to stop, avoid the demons and cleanse ourselves of the impurities clogging up our system, until we can feel the essence of who we are again.
• Seven days is rather stringent.  Three can do the trick and give you a good reboot of  clarity as to what is really important.

I've noticed the last week or so, that it's time again. But like all diets, I've been saying I'll start tomorrow for a lot of yesterdays. But this time I really mean it! And since I'm writing this blog, now I can't back out. Besides what better way to gain some clarity and focus on creation instead of consumption right before the Fall starts, than to shut it all off?

So how will I do this? By following what I consider the 9 Basic Rules for a Tech DeTox.

1. NO social media. No reading of and/or engaging in. That includes but is not limited to Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Google+ or Instagram.
2. Limit reading your email to 3x a day for no more than twenty minutes at a time. Use an egg timer. My suggestion is to check in the morning, before lunch and at the end of the business day. Note: you need to close down the program for this to work. Otherwise those intrusive reminders, all those bells, whistles and alerts will lure you in.
3. No meals with or in front of technological devices including but not limited to  smartphones, iPads, desktops, or television.
4. Experiment with only getting news from a printed newspaper. This may be a stretch for many, but reading the on-line editions is a temptation to wander about in cyberspace.
5. Limit your television time to destination entertainment viewing only. No aimless meandering with a remote in hand in search of a rerun of Sex andThe City.
6. Focus on creating, not consuming. (For me, this will mean ALOT of writing and planning)
7. Experiment with using a pen and paper to take notes, or anything in that vein that will keep you from touching anything electronic.
8. DO NOT multi-task.  For example, no walking and talking on the phone.
9. Alert all those of real importance in your life what you are up to so they don't wonder why you have not commented on their newest FB picture or take it personally you did not answer their last email in thirty seconds. If they want you they will find you. Trust me.

Tech Dieter's Note: You may find yourself cheat, nibbling away on your favorite social media network like it was a warm chocolate chip cookie you just could not resist. It happens. I confess I have been guilty of just such indulgence when I am in the midst of a tech detox. My advice? Enjoy the moment, own up to the fact you fell off the wagon, and get back on. 

I'll be detoxing until next Wednesday. If there is something really critical you need to find me about, like you are finally ready to sign up for some serious coaching, just shoot me an email. I'll be checking 3x a day!  

It Takes An Egg Timer

What if the secret to creating and managing your time was not some elaborate system of charts or fancy new app for your iPhone?
What if it was as simple as an ordinary egg timer?

That is the premise of my new book, It Takes An Egg Timer, A Guide to Creating the Time for Your Life which is officially released today! This part guide and part manifesto offers uncomplicated solutions to creating and managing your time that start with the basic egg timer.

It is  written not just for the self-employed and entrepreneurs struggling to keep themselves on task, productive and happy but also for those who simply dream about making a change in their life, big or small, and are convinced that what is stopping them is not enough time.

My intention is that this little book will inform, inspire, motivate, entertain and prove that you have more time than you think. You just need to organize for it!

Available today on Kindle! 

so hurry on over and get your copy!
The paperback edition  will be available later this week
on Amazon and other select on-line booksellers

Click this link to tweet the good news!

Also by the author: The Secrets They Kept, a story of secrets unraveling amidst the complex relationships of a Greek-American family living in New York City.

For information: on hiring Joanne as your coach or to speak to your organization please visit www.joannetombrakos.com or email joanne@joannetombrakos.com

Test Driving My Time Theory

I’ve been in absentia. Tucked away writing my next book, a part guide and part manifesto on how to create the time for your life. If I said that left little space for me to write much of anything else, that might seem a bit hypocritical to the premise of my book. But it’s not. It’s called triage, a tool I use in assessing what needs to be at the top of my to-do list. My newsletter has not been there, nor this blog, until now.

In a case of what can only be life imitating art, or is it art imitating life, I have been thrown curve balls in the last week or so that challenge the very core of what the book is all about. And so I found myself in the last days before this book hits Amazon, forced to test drive to the extreme what happens when the really big curve balls hit. I had to listen to my own advice on managing, organizing and creating the time for everything I both wanted and had to do.

This is where I was last week.

It Takes An Egg Timer: A Guide To Creating The Time For Your Life has been written and edited and is with my very brilliant interior book designer, Jamie Kerry. The cover is under construction with the extraordinarily talented cover designer, Wendy Bass. My official release date of May 15, auspicious in that it happens to be my brother’s birthday is two full weeks away. More than enough time to read through, yet again and again this short, inspirational, motivational, informative, and at times entertaining guide/manifesto in that way authors do as they strive for perfection.

I am walking rather proud. This is after all my second self-published work. And I am feeling pretty good how ahead of schedule I am this time and consequently much less nervous. Well maybe. I don’t think I will ever not be on the edge before a new book is birthed into the world. But confident enough that I was able to relax and enjoy a four-day weekend spent in a Robert McKee Story Seminar from 9A-7P every day.

And then the calls started. From my mother. My 89 year-old, fiercely independent mother who still lives alone, an hour and forty-five minutes south on the New Jersey Turnpike, and yes, on occasion still drives to the grocery store. Her leg is bothering her, but this time it is not just the osteoarthritis and absence of all cartilage. This time she says she can barely walk and the pain is excruciating until I suggest she call 911. Then the pain subsides.

My brother goes to her apartment. Things settle for a bit. He leaves. In between I am trying to concentrate long enough to read as well as prepare for all that marketing and outreach that goes into a book release. Yes, I use my trusty egg timer in sixty-minute windows just as I suggest in my book. It is the only hope I have of getting anything done. The ticking sound really does calm me. 

I clear my schedule and on Wednesday take Exit 6 to the Pennsylvania Turnpike to find my mother crawled in a ball in her bed. She is in too much pain to walk. She has not been drinking enough water because she is too afraid she will not be able to get herself to the bathroom. She wears her medical alert necklace, the one she has never been afraid to push to get help. Until now.

I don’t ask, I tell her I am taking her to the ER. Except I can’t get her out of bed to get dressed. We’re going to need the rescue squad but not, she informs me before I help her dress and she puts on some lipstick. To some this might seem like a good sign. To me, it is just my mother’s vanity, her elixir to staying young.

I mask my worry in crisis management.  I’m good at that.  All those years of working in a corporate office and having to draw on my testosterone reserve while squashing my feminine energy to survive come in handy at moments like this. I compartmentalize the excitement for my book. My attention and my time are nowhere else but with her.

At Abington Memorial Hospital they start running tests, drawing blood and ordering x-rays. A team of doctors and nurses in what might be the nicest ER I have ever been to, attend to her. There is some sort of infection in her blood that they need to get to the source of. It was good, we are told, that she got here when she did.

I sit in the chair next to her, and she looks frail. Once standing at five–five and three quarters she has shrunk to five-two. I want to burst into tears but I save them for later.  Seeing me cry will only make her more afraid.  At this moment she needs my strength.

I worry that maybe this is it. That maybe this infection has taken hold of her and we are at the end.  Her time. But could it be? Just two weeks from my brother’s and the book’s birthday? A book on how we have more time than we think we do? Why do beginnings always have to be so inextricably connected to endings?  It’s all too much to think about. So I force myself not to. Not until the results are all back and we know what we are dealing with. I close my eyes and concentrate on the movement of my breath. I am so grateful that breathing and meditation are no longer foreign concepts to me.

I watch her fall asleep. She is tired. A combination of meds and all this attention and excitement. I see a tiny opening here. A few moments for me to be there for me. And I seize it.

I find the PDF in my iPad and I open my new book. It is dedicated to her, my mother and her ever-faithful egg timer, the one she showed me how to use. I read and I can’t help but smile.  I ground in my own words, transported to the original egg timer in the kitchen I grew up in. My worry shifts to profound gratitude for this woman I have been lucky enough to call my mother for all these years. She will like this book. Like that she and the egg timer were the original sources of inspiration. I know she will stay at least long enough to celebrate its grand entrance to the world.

I am right. I love it when I am right. By the next day the infection is under control. The swelling has subsided. A therapist is helping her walk.  A few days in the hospital and she is home, this time with a walker as her personal assistant as well as the help of visiting nurses. And of course,  an advance PDF copy of my new book.

I know her strength and her will. I have after all inherited that.


She is not ready to go. Not just yet. Not before a party. For her son and this book. Neither of which would have been possible without her.

It Takes An Egg Timer, A Guide to Creating the Time for Your Life will be available on Amazon, in print and Kindle on May 15. If you wish to be added to my mailing list for updates, please click here.

My Monday Morning Aha

This is what happens when you go for it. There are periods of intense work. When you feel like you are accomplishing so much, there is just not enough time in the day to get it all done.

Then you stop to stand still because of course you must take a break. Everyone needs a break. I advocate taking a break. But when you try to get going again, it seems you have forgotten where exactly that  gas pedal is. You look at your to-do list for the week and it looks remarkably similar to your to-do list for the week before and the one before that.  Nothing is getting crossed off.  And suddenly you forget all the progress you have made and think that maybe you have accomplished nothing. And you start to sweat. Because of course it is almost December. This year is almost over.

That is where I was this morning. With two feet stuck in wet cement, worrying that if I didn't pull myself out quickly I would be forever stuck in hardened concrete.

So I  forced myself to get to it. I sat at my desk staring at my big shiny iMac, unable to type a word because I had decided I had nothing left to say.  I checked Facebook.  I rearranged the papers and the folders. I checked Facebook again. I wiped away the dust and discovered my egg timer. That magical little inexpensive time management tool I boast about using. And there it was. My Monday morning aha moment.

I hadn't been using that timer.

It was that simple to get unstuck. Make my list. And time each item. Even if I didn't get to cross it off the list, I could check off my progress. The feeling of accomplishment allows for that sense of progress made and for me breeds more accomplishment. All for the price of an egg-timer.