We’re happy to announce that we've accomplished a long list of steps to meet the requirements of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), the new EU privacy regulation which comes into effect today (May 25th, 2018).

Some of the measures we’ve taken include:

• Thorough research of all business areas impacted by GDPR – DONE
• Appointment of Data Protection Officer – DONE
• Complete revision of our Privacy Policy – DONE
• Signing of Data Processing Agreements with third parties who process personal data – DONE
• Creation of Data Processing Addendum for Publishers – DONE
• Review of user consent to receive information – DONE
• Applying principle to only share data where required – DONE
• Briefing of staff with access to personal data to ensure GDPR compliance – DONE
   

Making SpecificFeeds GDPR-compliant is a very time consuming process that is not just about May 25, 2018, but is about ensuring that we provide products and services to our users that prioritizes data protection.

Also, it provides a solid basis for what lies ahead: we are planning a range of significant enhancements which will put SpecificFeeds on a new level. Stay tuned!

In the last few months, we've been busy together with our legal advisors to make SpecificFeeds fully compliant with GDPR, the new EU regulation. This post provides a brief update on the subject. 

The key information first: We are on-track to be fully GDPR compliant by May 25th 2018, the date GDPR comes into effect. 

If you are not familiar with GDPR yet, please read on.
 

What is GDPR? 

GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation) is a new regulation affecting all EU/EEA countries and Switzerland, aiming to make the processing and storage of confidential information (esp. data which identifies persons, such as emails, IP addresses etc.) better regulated and safer. It replaces the outdated Data Protection Directive and can be considered the biggest change in data privacy protection in 20 years. 
 

Does GDPR affect me? 

If you're a publisher, using SpecificFeeds to update your followers about your new posts (which has many advantages), then the answer is a very, very likely "Yes!". That's because even if you or your company is not based in an EU/EEA country or Switzerland, at least some of your followers are, and the handling of their data falls under GDPR. 
 

What changes does GDPR bring? 

Some "highlights" of GDPR include: 

• Importance of getting consent explicitly: It has to be unambiguous that followers provided the consent to be emailed (or contacted in other ways) for the purpose you're contacting them for.

  It will not be permitted anymore to collect users' contact information for a certain purpose (e.g. for sign up) but then send them marketing emails not related to their sign up, i.e. emails to which they didn't agree to.

  And: their agreement has to be explicit. If you ask for their email so that they can download your e-book, then it is not sufficient to state at the bottom of the subscription form something like "By signing up, you agree to receive marketing emails from us". The user needs to agree to it explicitly, e.g. by clicking a checkbox. 

• Possibility to withdraw consent (easily): After consent has been given, the user must have the option to easily withdraw it again (e.g. by clicking an unsubscribe-link in the email he received, which doesn't require any login). 
   
• Right to rectification: The "data subject" can request that incorrect data gets corrected. 
   
• Right for deletion: Users have the right to ask for a complete deletion of their data (also called "right to be forgotten")
   
• Right for moving of data: The data subject will have the right to received the personal data conserning him.  

If you want to know more about GDPR, visit the official GDPR homepage, or, if you prefer a layman's explanation instead of too much legalize, have a look at this easy-to-understand explanation of GDPR. 

What are next steps? 

We are working on finalizing our GDPR-readiness and will provide an update before GDPR comes into effect on May 25th, 2018. 

If you have any questions about GDPR or related topics in the meantime, please don't hesitate to contact us. 

Note: This article does not provide legal advice. If you have any legal questions about GDPR, please seek professional legal counsel.  

We’ve discussed in a previous article how a 4-day workweek could result in increased productivity and healthier, happier workers suffering less from the effects of stress.

Many salaried workers would jump for joy at the idea of a 3-day weekend, but what about freelancers and contractors, who work irregular schedules? And what about those people who are really passionate about their jobs? Not everyone works only for the weekend.

In fact a lot of productivity advice goes against this idea of taking an extended break from work. Habit is a powerful tool when it comes to being productive and avoiding procrastination, and the best way to develop a habit is to do something every day. Whatever habit you are trying to develop, you’ll find that most experts recommend that you take no more than one day off a week.

This seems to be particularly true of writing and many prolific and successful writers claim to write every day, with very few days off. Bestselling author, Stephen King, in his memoir and writing guide, On Writing, notes how he writes every single day, aiming for around 2,000 words. No doubt if King were to write only 4 days out of every 7, he would be significantly less productive.

So if you’re interested in utilizing the power of habit but don’t want to burn out, or become a workaholic, what is the answer?

Parkinson’s law and the power of deadlines

Parkinson’s law was first published in the Economist in 1955 and states that work expands to fill the time available for completion.

We’ve all experienced this phenomenon when we’re coming up to a deadline for school or work. As the deadline approaches, we work faster and become miraculously more productive, sometimes fitting several weeks’ worth of work into a few days.

Working longer hours may seem like the obvious way to get more done but as we previously pointed out, the longer you work, the more tired and less efficient you become.

The best way to prevent work from dragging on unnecessarily is to make sure you have a deadline. Without deadlines we are tempted to either put the work off until later or keep working, trying to silence our internal perfectionist, with no real end in sight.

The optimal number of working hours for productivity

The 8-hour workday seems to be today’s standard for most full-time workers. The United States Department of Labor reported that the average American, aged 25-54 with children, spent 8.8 hours a day working, traveling to and from work, and doing other work-related activities in 2011.

One of the first businesses to implement an 8-hour day was the Ford motor company in 1914. Before this, the average working day was between 10 and 16 hours. After cutting the working day, Ford found that the productivity of workers increased so much that their profits doubled within a 2-year period.

Other companies, impressed with the success Ford enjoyed, also adopted the 8-hour day, and it has continued with little experimentation into different workday lengths since.

The 8-hour day was optimized for industrial workers, but as we have previously discussed, it has little relevance to the knowledge workers of today.

A survey of more than 38,000 people by Microsoft in 2005 — the Microsoft Personal Productivity Challenge — found that while on average office workers worked 45 hours a week, they felt they were only productive for about 28 of those hours. In a 5-day week that equates to less than just over 5.5 hours a day.

In an office setting, it makes sense that knowledge workers only do 5 or 6 hours of productive work per day. The remaining 2 or 3 hours from the standard 8-hour day can easily be made up by attending meetings, making phone calls, replying to emails and other non-critical tasks.

But for people who work at home or who run their own businesses, many of these activities can either be eliminated completely or optimized so they take up only a small amount of time each day. By reducing the working day and fitting more work into a shorter time frame, more hours each day are available for leisure and family time.

Experimenting with a shorter work day

I am one of those people who work better if I do a little work every day, rather than taking set days off. I believe that the answer to increased productivity for me lies in working every day but reducing the length of each working day.

As 4 seems to be the magic number when it comes to productivity (see our previous discussion on 4-day workweeks and the famous book by Tim Ferriss, The 4-Hour Workweek), I decided to experiment with limiting my working day to 4 hours.

From tracking my time throughout the day I have found that while I may be sitting at my computer for most of the day, the actual amount of real work done is surprisingly low – often around the 4-hour mark.

The concept behind this experiment was to see if I could optimize my productivity by concentrating my working hours into a smaller period of time and eliminating distractions and wasted time as much as possible.

It takes a lot of willpower to stay focused and work solidly for 4 hours (with regular short breaks) without getting carried away on Facebook or distracted with emails – a skill I am still mastering. However so far, the results of my experiment seem to be encouraging.

On the days when I am successful with this new schedule, I  get more done in a shorter space of time. My hope is that by refining and perfecting this work schedule, I can get a whole day’s work done in the first few hours of the day, leaving the afternoons and evenings free to enjoy time as I wish.

Is a shorter workday the future?

A paper published by the new economic forum in the UK calls for a radical change to the working week by reducing it from an average of 40 hours per week to 21 – just over 4 hours per day in a traditional 5-day week.

The idea behind this reduced working day is that as well as eliminating the health and social problems caused by overwork, unemployment, carbon emissions, and other negative environmental impacts would be reduced as well.

If you work set hours for somebody else, your chances of cutting your working day in half may not be very good (although you could try for a 4-day workweek or showing your manager some of the problems associated with a traditional 9-5 work schedule)

However freelancers and those who work for ourselves may well benefit from a shorter working day, and it’s within their power to put it into practice.

Why not give it a try? We’d love to hear about your own experiments into working hours and how they have affected your productivity. Let us know how you get on in the comments.

Image credit: http://smallbiztrends.com/, retrieved on 22 July 2014 from http://smallbiztrends.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/work-harder-cartoon-business.jpg/; no modifications made, Licence: CC BY-ND (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/4.0/legalcode)

What does the word "meditation" conjure up for you? Buddhist monks praying in a temple on the side of some faraway mountain? Indian yogis tying themselves in knots? Hippies in designer yoga gear drinking green tea and eating tofu?

Meditation has long been known for its use in spiritual practices, but the practice of meditation has many benefits and is certainly not just a hyped-up, new-age trend. Once the realm of spiritual gurus and ascetics, meditation is now becoming popular with entrepreneurs, academics, and anyone aiming to achieve their highest potential.

Google employees have the opportunity to attend regular meditation classes, and the number of meditation apps that are popping up on iTunes and the Google Play store is testament to how the popularity of this ancient practice has increased in recent years. So what's all the fuss about?

The Benefits of Meditation

Many studies have been done into the physical and mental effects of meditation and there is compelling evidence that regular meditation can indeed provide a number of positive benefits for our health and well-being.

MRI scans have shown that during meditation, the pattern of brain waves changes, shifting more towards the theta waves that are produced when we are deeply relaxed or asleep. Meditation literally calms the brain and silences thoughts, reducing the amount of information that it would normally have to process in normal activity.

So what does a calmer brain do for us?

• Increases focus and reduces susceptibility to distractions
• Reduces stress
• Improves energy and reduces fatigue
• Increases creativity
• Improves memory and recall
• Improves emotional stability
• Improves mood and increases happier thoughts
• Improves the ability to step back and reflect on complex problems

A study carried out by the University of Washington into the effects of meditation in a high-stress environment found that workers trained in meditation techniques had better energy levels, a more positive outlook, improved memory, and concentrated better at work.

Achieving just one of two of these potential benefits could have a significantly positive effect on your productivity.

Sound good? But perhaps you're thinking that you don't have the time or the inclination to sit cross-legged for an hour every day. No need to fear – while some people become somewhat addicted to the positive effects of meditating and choose to do it for long periods. But just a couple of minutes a day can make a huge difference in your life.

How to develop a meditation practice

There are many different ways to meditate – you don't have to sit in the lotus position with your eyes closed, chanting "om." Many people actually engage in meditative activities without realising it. Knitting, for example, can be a form of meditation as the repetitive activity focuses and calms the brain.

The general technique behind meditating is to train your brain to focus on one particular thing. This may be your breathing, a mantra, a sound like a ticking clock, the light of a candle flame, a spot on the ceiling, an image in your mind, or anything else that works for you. Trying to simply stop thinking is incredibly hard for most people, so you need an object of focus to prevent your mind from drifting.

Many people fail at their attempts to meditate because they try to do too much too soon. As with exercise, it's better to start small and build up over time. Leo Babauta of Zen Habits has a highly popular guide on his site for developing a two-minute meditation practice.

Whichever way you choose to meditate, you'll probably want to find a quiet space where you will be free of interruption for the time you have chosen to meditate. Being comfortable is also important – sitting cross legged is traditional and has some other benefits, but there's no reason why you can't meditate lying in bed or sitting in a comfy chair.

You can also try a meditation app to help you develop the skill. These apps use a technique called guided meditation to help you to achieve a relaxed and focused state and they are great for beginners. Try one of the following:

• Buddhify (iOS and Android)
• Headspace (web, iOS and Android)
• Mental Workout Mindfulness Meditation (web, iOS and Android)
• Calm (web and iOS)

Remember, you don't necessarily need to set aside a certain time each day to meditate. Small periods of meditation can fit easily into your workday – for example during your pomodoro break.

Do you meditate? Have you tried out one of the meditation apps we mentioned or do you have another one to suggest? Let us know in the comments. Now close your eyes and breathe…

Image credit: Wonderlane, retrieved on 12 June 2014 from https://www.flickr.com/photos/wonderlane/3612652725/; no modifications made, Licence (CC BY 2.0)

Most of us will be able to remember at least a couple of occasions when we were so absorbed in what we were doing that hours passed, and when we finally looked up from our keyboards (or books or musical instruments or whatever), we realised that it’s dark outside and we forgot to eat dinner.

If you’ve experienced this phenomenon before, you’ve already experienced Flow – a special state of consciousness when we are so deeply involved in what we are doing that we are basically un-distractible. (Not the same as indestructible, but almost!)

What exactly is Flow

The term, “Flow” was coined by psychologist and author, Mihály Csíkszentmihályi, in his book, Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience. In the book he discusses how musicians, artists and athletes can achieve a state of absolute concentration during their activities and completely block out the outside world while achieving top performances. You may know this state better as being “in the zone.”

I’ve experienced Flow during a number of different activities: in my former life as a coder, while drawing, reading, and writing fiction. Most avid gamers are well acquainted with Flow. You can achieve Flow doing pretty much anything that has the potential to absorb your mind fully.

A Flow-like state generally has the following characteristics:

• Complete concentration and focus
• Imperception to distractions and time
• Complete absorption and enagement
• An increase in ability, productivity and creativity

Flow is an almost–meditative state where you can achieve things that would not normally be possible, or substantially difficult.

The advantages of flow

Olympic medal winners, when interviewed after the event, will often talk about their achievement as if it was an out-of-body experience, and they were viewing it as a spectator. This is a demonstration of flow in action and how it can help us to achieve almost super-human feats. On more of an everyday level, spending time in Flow is a great way to get stuff done. If we can achieve that perfect focused state, we can work for stretches of several hours at a time and not be tempted by distractions or procrastination.

Achieving Flow can not only make you incredibly productive, but it can also reduce stress and increase your feeling of happiness. Many hobbies such as knitting, reading, and running encourage a natural progression into a flow-like state, which is part of their appeal.

How to achieve Flow

Achieving Flow is not always possible, and certainly not if you don’t enjoy the task you’re doing. Doing something that is fun for you is one of the easiest ways to trigger a Flow-like state. If you’re not entertained by what you’re doing in some way, it will be incredibly difficult to become completely absorbed in it, as your mind will always tend to wander towards something more enjoyable.

While once you’re in a state of Flow, you may find that you are unbothered by distractions. While you’re getting there, it is helpful to be somewhere peaceful and quiet. You might find music or some kind of ambient background noise will help you to get into a focused state.

The type of task you do is also important. Ideally you want something that is challenging enough to keep your brain busy, but not so challenging that you get frustrated and want to give up. Tasks that are just within the realm of your ability are ideal for invoking flow (and one of the reasons that computer games can be so absorbing).

You probably won’t be able to achieve Flow every day or every time you want to at first, but the more you practice, the easier it becomes. Enjoy losing yourself in your work or hobby and focus on the process of doing, not just the end result.

What is your experience with Flow? Do you have any tips for achieving it?

Image credit: Author: Skyseeker , retrieved on 28 May 2014 from https://www.flickr.com/photos/skyseeker/300024933/sizes/z/in/photostream/; no modifications made; Licence: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/

When it comes to productivity, there are lots of little tips and tricks that we can use to be more productive. You may have heard of the Pomodoro technique, where you work in 25-minute blocks; Getting Things Done, a hugely popular technique and bestselling book by David Allen; or MITs (most important tasks). How about a productivity technique taken from US sitcom, Seinfeld?

Don't break the chain is a system invented (or at least popularised) by the comedian Jerry Seinfeld. The idea is simple: for every day you complete the task you are aiming for, mark off the day in your calendar with a large red X. After keeping up the habit for a few days, you'll have a chain of red Xs and the only thing you need to focus on is not breaking the chain.

This system works by helping us build the daily habit of completing the task we have set ourselves. Perhaps you want to write 1,000 words of your novel, or publish a blog post, or work on your web application for one hour. Developing a daily habit is one of the most powerful methods we have at our disposal for getting work done.

This technique works best if you have a large calendar printed out on your wall and make sure to cross off the days with a nice, big X. Our brains crave order and pattern, and we don't like to see those gaps if we miss a day.

But not everyone wants to work every day. Can you still use this technique if you take one or two days off a week? One solution is to use a different checkmark or color on planned break days or days when you are unable to work due to illness. This way you have an unbroken chain but don't feel like you're cheating by making an X when you haven't worked that day.

To use the “don't break the chain” system effectively, you'll need a different calendar for each of your goals. For example, you might have one calendar for work and another for exercise. It's best not to have too many goals on at once; you'll run out of wallspace.

It's also important to be clear about what you're trying to achieve before you start. Use SMART goal setting to decide what you want to do each day and write it down before you start. "Write every day" is not an effective goal. In theory, you could write just one word to achieve it. Make sure you have a specific word count, number of pages, or another appropriate, measurable goal for a different line of work.

Most people will need the visual aspect of a printed calendar to get the full effect, but if you try and run a paperless office or move around a lot when you work, there are a few “don't break the chain” apps available both on the web and for iOS and Android.

Have you tried the break the chain technique for productivity? Did it work for you? Let us know in the comments.

Image credit: Jerry Seinfeld, retrieved on 16 May 2014 from http://static.squarespace.com/static/502a418de4b05bc1fa6362b8/t/5237ca79e4b04c8901258fc5/1379388050985/; no modifications made

Information overload now seems to be an inescapable reality, no matter what your role or expertise. With that in mind, it is worth looking at how information overload has impacted one particular sector and the innovative solution.

Over the last couple of decades there has been an explosion of neuroscience research. There are now estimated to be around two million published neuroscience research papers, far more than any scientist could read in a lifetime.

The problems that have arisen from information overload include:

• Missing important existing discoveries that would be relevant for current projects
• Duplicating published research and experiments
• Failing to apply planning and logic to research due to not being able to see the full picture

The western world invests large amounts of money in scientific research, and we need to know that that research is well-planned, productive and relevant. Without creating some sort of order amongst the vast numbers of research papers available, it’s difficult for neuroscientists to comply with these requirements.

The Solution for Neuroscience Information Overload

To combat this problem and bring order to the mess, a team at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) created research maps that are accessible through an online app. They aim to provide simple and unbiased details of all published research papers in the neurosciences available. These research maps will allow neuroscientists to gain an overview of the research that has already been conducted, understand what is already known, identify crucial gaps in our knowledge and plan their next projects.

Addressing these maps, principal investigator Alcino Silva, a professor of neurobiology at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA, suggests that "Without a way to organize the literature, we risk missing key discoveries and duplicating earlier experiments. Research maps will enable neuroscientists to quickly clarify what ground has already been covered and to fully grasp its meaning for future studies."

The research maps are categorised by specialised fields, and the papers within these are linked, allowing scientists to focus on particular areas of expertise. The evidence within the research is also scored according to key criteria such as reproducibility and convergence, which is when different experiments point to a single conclusion.

The maps are interactive and searchable, so scientists can view as much or as little as they need to. There is the ability to zoom in on certain areas of research so they have the option of seeing a high level summary of findings, detailed results of individual experiments and nearly anything in between. The maps will provide the levels of detail scientists need to make informed decisions about their future work.

Populating the Tool

The challenge is now to populate the maps fully ensuring that all published research papers are included. The team at UCLA began with their own field of expertise, molecular and cellular cognition, to test the map, and now they are expanding it across all the neurosciences. It relies on a crowd sourcing principle, where scientists who are specialists in their fields add the research papers that they find useful.

The expectation going forward is that the addition of new research papers to the maps will become routine. The team is setting up a system whereby upon being published a neuroscience research paper will automatically populate the research map, allowing other neuroscientists instant access to the latest findings.

The team at UCLA believes that research maps will improve the planning and co-ordination of neuroscience research, allowing scientists to gain an overall picture of the research that has been completed. This type of map could be a model for other niche sectors looking for ways to make sense of the masses of information they are now confronted with.

Where do you see the future of information mapping?

Image credit: Author: Thomas Schultz; retrieved on 6 May 2014 from http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/82/DTI-sagittal-fibers.jpg; no modifications made

A recent study by Cornerstone On Demand, The State of Workplace Productivity Report, finds that the hyper-connectedness of today’s workplace is negatively affecting employees due to a constant flood of information. Surprised? Me neither.

The study suggests that the younger generation, so-called Millennials, Generation-Y, or people aged between 18 and 32, are the most affected by this new trend. 41% of of Millennials felt they suffered from information overload on a regular basis, compared to 31% for older generations outside of this age group.

Today’s emerging workforce has grown up in a world where the internet has always existed. They are internet-savvy, informed, and are changing workplace culture.

Only just fitting into the ‘Generation-X’ category (age 33-48), I am right on the cusp of this new generation. I was 14 when I first accessed the internet and 16 when I created my first website. I have witnessed technology grow from bulletin boards through AOL chat, ICQ, Yahoo chat, Myspace, Twitter, Facebook and all the rest. I remember a world before we had instant one-click access to entertainment and distractions, but those who were born just a few years later than me do not.

What is the impact of this constant stream of incoming information on our younger generations, and should we be concerned?

53% of Millennials reported using a smartphone for work, compared to only 23% of older generations. One could discuss whether that phone in your pocket is a link to the outside world or a ball and chain tying you to your workplace?

Even more worrying, another study published by the Royal Institute of Technology (RIT) in Stockholm, Sweden suggests that mental overload causes an excess of stimulation to the brain’s short term memory centers, which may eventually result in a reduction of information stored away for later use and impaired mental functioning.

Furthermore, it seems that increased exposure to technology which helps us consume information online more quickly means that we engage our brains in deeper thinking less often. Not only can technology and information overload damage our brain, it can make us stupider. More on this topic comes from Richard Watson, author of Future Minds.

Erik Fransén, Computer Science professor at RIT, states that when the brain is regularly exposed to social media browsing or other activities where a lot of information has to be filtered simultaneously, we are robbing it of essential downtime to process and store information.

The solution? Regular downtime away from the computer. Oh, and that means your smartphone too, something that most Millennials would shudder at.

Is spending time on Facebook worth risking brain damage?

Are you a Millennial? A Gen-Xer or Baby Boomer? How much time do you spend ‘connected’ every day? Do you make sure to have regular downtime away from your computer?

Image courtesy of unclebrice.com, retrieved from http://www.examiner.com/article/how-to-restore-a-sense-of-control-following-brain-injury, 23 April 2014, no modifications made

This is a guest contribution from Kemya L. Scott, Marketing Strategist & Social Media Manager at Phisco Marketing

Do you ever feel like social media is a vortex that sucks time from the atmosphere?

Have you ever lost track of time using social media, looked up at the clock, and wondered where your day went?

Or perhaps you're swamped running your business and there’s simply no time to use social media effectively?

You are not alone. 

It seems like some companies use multiple social media platforms so effortlessly, while others use social media sporadically, with tumbleweeds blowing through their accounts.

So why is there such a big difference? How do even the smallest of companies manage to look so great on social media while some fall by the wayside?

I’ll let you in on a little secret.

It’s not about outsourcing. It’s not about money. It’s all about systems. You have to develop a social media management system to get the best results from the time you spend on social media.

Whether you’re a one-person company or you have dedicated staff to manage your social media accounts, you still need a process, a system, to be efficient in the time spent on social media. Otherwise, the vortex will suck you in and you won’t see any results from your efforts.

The great news is that you can make time for social media, in the same way you make time for your other marketing efforts. Time management is the real issue here… how to manage it all.

Five Steps to Better Social Media Management

The following five steps will lead to better social media management. Use them all for the most powerful results!

Step 1:  Plan and organize content in advance.

Plan content ideas for your blog and social media posts in bulk. You can plan by the week, month or quarter or even by the year. Once you have an idea of what you want to talk about (as in post), you can organize your content ahead of time and eliminate the “what should I post today” anxiety.

Step 2:  Keep a list of go-to resources for content to share.

Keep a list of go-to resources for content to share. I use an RSS feed to keep blog content at my fingertips. When I’m looking for some good info to share, I visit my RSS Reader to browse my favorite blogs, and presto! I have content to share.

Step 3: Use a social media management dashboard.

Use a social media management dashboard to schedule some social media posts in advance. A dashboard will allow you to post to multiple social media profiles from the same place. I save hours of time every week by using my HootSuite dashboard for scheduling, posting and searching. You can configure your dashboard to include keywords, lists, scheduled posts, mentions, etc. If you are not using a dashboard, start today!

Step 4: Be actively engaged for 1 hour daily.

Acknowledge the value of engagement at least an hour or so on social media daily. This doesn't mean self-promotion, this means back and forth sharing and interaction. Break up your one hour into 10-20 minute chunks of time. I live by my 20-20-20 rule when I’m super-swamped and can’t get online several times throughout the day. I can still hop on social media to meet and greet people and interact socially.

Step 5: Focus on two or three platforms.

Decide which social media platforms you should focus on. Let’s be realistic, you can only focus on 2-3 platforms at best, so decide which platforms need to be a priority for your business. If this tip has you stumped, consider this key criteria to help you decide: where are your customers looking for your product or service? This is where you should be spending most of your  time. Sure, you can use other platforms, but concentrate the majority of your  time on the platforms that will get you in front of your target audience.

This basic system will eliminate two major challenges most people face as they try to add social media into their marketing mix:

• the "what do I talk about" problem, and
• the “how do I make time” problem

Yes, this system will work for you!

For those business owners who claim they’re too busy and don’t have time to learn social media, I know this isn’t entirely true. It’s simply a matter of finding the best time management systems and tools that work for you.

Develop a content strategy, employ these time-saving social media management strategies, and keep up with your competitors in the social space. You’re giving away money and opportunities to your competitors if you let tumbleweeds blow through your accounts!

Ciao,
Miss Kemya

Miss Kemya is a Marketing Strategist & Social Media Manager at Phisco Marketing, a marketing consulting firm that facilitates the growth of small businesses through conventional marketing techniques merged with social media tactics. Visit her blog for all your DIY marketing and social media needs, and hire Phisco Marketing to kickstart your marketing and fall back in love with your business!

There are many sources of digital information overload, but one that almost everybody does battle with on a daily basis is the e-mail inbox. No matter how often you check it, those unread messages just keep piling up, convincing you that you’re missing something vital and adding to your stress levels.

Oddly enough e-mail overload has actually become a measure of how hard we work, how important we are and how difficult it is for us to take time away from work. When a colleague despairs that, after a week’s holiday, their inbox will have at least six thousand unread messages awaiting, they really just want you to know how indispensable they are.

In reality, most of the e-mails we receive require little in the way of action or response, but leaving them sitting in our inboxes makes it difficult to work out which ones are important to us and which we can ignore. We become a slave to our inboxes, checking every five minutes on laptops, tablets, or smartphones, just in case we miss an important message.

Many people use their e-mail inbox for functions it was never designed for:

• A to-do list. Do you scan your inbox each morning to determine what you need to do that day?
• A database. Do you search your inbox for important attachments that you haven’t saved elsewhere?
• A calendar. Do you keep e-mail messages to remind you when you have meetings or appointments?

Your inbox was purely designed as a place for new messages to wait until you have the time to deal with them. It shouldn’t be used to store messages telling you what you should be doing or where you should be, and it’s not efficient as a database for vital attachments. Luckily, getting on top of your e-mail and using your inbox for its intended purpose is easy once you grasp the principles of Inbox Zero.

What Is Inbox Zero?

Inbox Zero is an action-based e-mail management system defined by Merlin Mann to eliminate the stress caused by e-mail overload. Mann suggests that we abandon the idea that we need to “respond” to every e-mail in our inbox. Instead we should think about “processing” those e-mails in one way or another. He also suggests that we get out of the habit of “checking” our e-mails, without actually doing anything about them, and that we only access our inboxes when we have the time to process them to zero.

The first stage in implementing Inbox Zero is to define a limited set of actions that can be performed with the e-mails that land in your inbox. These may vary from person to person, and the system will work best if you define your own actions, but these are the examples suggested by Merlin Mann:

• Delete. A huge number of irrelevant messages that arrive in your inbox can simply be deleted, and this should be done immediately. There will also be others that you feel you don’t need to do anything with right away, but that might be needed in the future. In this case you could archive them in one general folder. Either way they should be removed from your inbox.
• Delegate. If you feel you’re not the most appropriate recipient for the e-mail, or if you’d like someone else to take action on the e-mail on your behalf, forward it to someone else with an explanation. You may also want to quickly respond to the sender explaining your action and set a reminder to follow up on the matter in the following days.
• Respond. If the e-mail requires only a brief response–perhaps a couple of sentences with a piece of key information or an opinion–then respond immediately before deleting the e-mail from your inbox or archiving it.
• Defer. If the e-mail requires a response, but you need some time to think about it gather more information, you can defer your response until later. You will need to move the message out of your inbox, so you could create a ‘to respond’ folder which should be processed daily, or at least by the end of each week.
• Do. This seems the simplest action to take with an e-mail. If the e-mail contains details of a meeting, then put them on your calendar. If it has instructions that you can carry out right away, then do so. If it has a document attached that you have asked for, then save the document in the appropriate place. You can then decide whether to delete or archive the message.

Once you have defined your list of actions, you need to get into the habit of applying them to the messages in your inbox, allowing you to process to zero every time you open your e-mail. Generally we are distracted by e-mails every few minutes, either because we have our e-mail account open as we work or because notifications on our smartphones let us know there are messages waiting.

To make Inbox Zero work you need to set aside specific time slots for accessing and processing your e-mail. Try out different schedules and see what works for you. For some people, two daily e-mail sessions of 30 minutes allows them to process to zero. For others ten minutes out of every hour can help to keep on top of urgent messages.

E-mail is an instant and versatile form of communication which has been universally adopted, even in sectors such as law and banking which have traditionally needed a physical paper trail. However, the sheer volume of e-mails now flying around means that our inboxes can become a source of worry and stress if we don’t have a system such as Inbox Zero in place to process them.

Do you have your own system of eliminating your e-mails? Share it with us below.

Image credits: Publisher: Alisher Hasanov; retrieved from: https://www.flickr.com/photos/ideali/2871762876/sizes/o/in/photostream/; link to licence: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/deed.en; no modifications were made

Everyone knows how difficult it can be to break bad habits. Quitting smoking, snacking and nail-biting are all notoriously difficult purely because they have become regular habits. Basically, your brain has become so used to performing these actions that you barely notice yourself putting a cigarette in your mouth or reaching for another handful of peanuts.

Just as bad habits can be hard to break, so can good habits, if you make a conscious effort to form them. Good habits will help you to live a happier, more productive life with little effort after an initial investment.

What habits should I try to develop?

There are numerous life- and productivity-enhancing habits you might adopt. You may want to consider:

• Drinking water regularly and less sugary beverages
• Exercising daily
• Rising early
• Eating a healthy breakfast
• Starting work as soon as you sit at your computer
• Taking regular breaks
• Doing your most important tasks of the day first
• Having a regular bedtime
• Meditating daily
• Checking emails only at set times each day.

If you’re thinking, “what does drinking water and exercise have to do with productivity?” try these simple changes for a week and see how much more work you get done and how much better you feel. A healthy body really does equal a healthy mind, and you’ll be surprised at how much more productive you can be when your body is in peak condition.

Are habits really necessary to be productive?

If you study the daily schedule of highly productive people, you will frequently find that they follow the same routine every day, doing the same thing at the same times and being almost ritualistic in their behavior.

When you turn an action into a habit, you flip the autopilot switch in your brain so that your actions become automatic. You don’t waste time debating with yourself if you should do something or not. Neither do you procrastinate.

Practicing something over and over again builds muscle memory. You can probably enter your bank pin or your house alarm code with your eyes closed, simply because you have done it so many times. When your body remembers how to do something in this way, you get both better at it and faster. This removes the mental effort from doing everyday tasks, making your life easier as well as more productive.

10 tips for developing good habits

It takes around three to four weeks of daily practice to develop a habit. This means you will have to make a concerted effort for about 30 days, after which you will find you’re in autopilot mode and don’t need to think about it anymore.

1. Identify your goals – decide what exactly you want to achieve and write it down. If you don’t have a clear goal to focus on, it will be difficult to attain.
2. Tackle your goals one at a time – trying to do too much at one time is a recipe for failure. Master one habit before you move on to the next.
3. Set an end date – it can sometimes be too overwhelming to devote yourself to even a simple action for the rest of your life. Instead tell yourself that you’ll try it for a month. After this trial period you’ll probably want to continue anyway.
4. Inspire yourself – inspirational stories, productivity blogs and books are all great ways to motivate you and help to create a positive mindset.
5. Build habits into your routine – when you’re trying to develop a new habit, it helps to do it at the same time every day and associate it with another activity. For example, drinking a glass of water immediately after waking.
6. Be consistent – Daily habits are much easier to develop than weekly ones. Try not to give yourself days off and track your daily success on a calendar. You won’t want to ‘break the chain’ by missing a day.
7. Visualize your success – the world’s most successful people use visualization techniques to help them have their best performance. See yourself succeeding and the chances are, you will.
8. Create accountability – tell your friends and family about the new habit you are trying to develop or write about it publicly in a blog. When other people are following your progress, you’re much less likely to fail.
9. Review your progress regularly – keep track of your progress on a diary or calendar so you can remind yourself of how much you have already achieved.
10. Find tools and tricks to help – alarm and reminder apps can be very useful when you are trying to develop a habit. Try out a few to see if they help.

Habit is one of the most powerful techniques that you can harness to become more productive and start living the life that you want. What methods have you found helpful for developing healthy habits in your life? Do you have daily habits that you think improve your productivity?

Image Credits: Author Kyle Cassidy; Retrieved from http://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Running_Man_Kyle_Cassidy.jpg; under licence ShareAlike 3.0 Unported http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/legalcode; no modifications were made

When it comes to traffic generation, bloggers generally tend to side with one of two camps:

• The SEO bloggers, who optimize their blog content for search engines, tweak the structure of their site with SEO plugins and build links to their site wherever they can.
• The social media bloggers who build their audience mainly by engaging with readers through sites like Facebook and Twitter, encouraging people to share their posts and creating content strategically in the hopes it goes viral.

Of course the best overall strategy is to combine these two methods, but today we’re going to cover the basics of social media marketing.

What is Social Media and Why Should You Care About it?

You’d have to have been living under a rock for the last 10 years not to have been exposed to social media and have a vague idea of how it can impact your website.

Facebook has grown from a small site to help college students to stay in touch, into one of the biggest websites in the world; Twitter has over 600 million users, including many famous figures such as Justin Bieber, Barack Obama and Oprah Winfrey; Instagram was sold to Facebook for $1 billion in 2012, despite the fact that it wasn’t (and still isn’t) making any money. Social media is now the no.1 web activity, particularly with the 18-24 year old age group.

It’s obvious that social media is the current big thing and its rate of growth shows no sign of slowing any time soon.

Accounts on social media sites act as kind of outposts to your main site. Most people don’t run their businesses or make a living purely by posting on Facebook (although this is indeed possible). Rather, the social media accounts are there to notify readers that you’ve published a new blog post, add value by posting other related links that you wouldn’t necessarily put on your blog, and encourage discussion and interaction around your site.

It’s incredibly rare that you’ll find a business these days without a single social media account and if you do, it’s probably because they’re not a very successful business. However it’s equally misguided to sign up for an account on every single network – it’s impossible to keep up and you’ll spread yourself too thin. To market successfully on social media, it’s important to plan your strategy in advance.

Which Social Networks Should You Focus On?

Unless you have a large team working on your behalf, you probably won’t be able to manage posting on more than two or three networks on a regular basis. There’s no hard and fast rule about which sites to pick – it depends very much on the subject of your blog, your audience and your personal preferences. Studying the demographics of different social networks can help guide you:

• Facebook is almost a must as so many people use it (71% of all internet users in 2013) and its use is fairly evenly distributed across all age groups and income levels.
• Twitter is particularly popular with younger people – over 30% of its users are under 30.
• Google+ has a mostly male use-base and its importance is predicted to increase in 2014 as Google shift their ranking algorithms more towards social signals.
• Instagram is a pure image-based social network, very popular with the younger age bracket.
• Pinterest is also image-based and is very effective at driving traffic to blogs that use eye-catching photography and graphics. It’s mostly used by affluent females, making it a marketers dream for blogs that target women.
• LinkedIn is great for blogs that focus on the business community and anyone wishing to engage in a spot of networking to build up useful contacts. Its usage is skewed towards the over-30 crowd.
• YouTube should also not be overlooked as video marketing is another way to reach people, with over 800 million users visiting the site every week.

Don’t assume that any of these social networks will be here for good – while you don’t want to pick too many, concentrating on just one is also probably not a sensible strategy. Remember how quickly Myspace fell from grace?

Planning Your Social Media Strategy

Once you’ve decided which networks to focus on, you’ll need to set up accounts (use your brand name or the same name as your blog if possible) and start producing some content.

It’s important to be consistent with how frequently you post on social networks. A tweeting spree followed by a three month silence won’t do much good. You may think the more you post the better, but spamming the networks is never appreciated and can cause people to unfollow you.

There are tools available for scheduling updates on social networks. These can be very useful as it means you can just queue up content in advance and forget about it, rather than trying to remember to keep posting throughout the day.

Buffer and HootSuite both do this job well and work on multiple networks. It’s worth experimenting with a few different social media management applications to see which one suits you best.

Timing is also important as you should aim to post the majority of your content while your audience is online. The type of content you post is also relevant – for example, funny stories and highly shareable articles like the type of thing you find on BuzzFeed does well on Friday afternoons when workers are killing time before the weekend starts.

Think about the type of content you’re going to be posting to each network and aim for a balance of different kinds of content. Don’t just post links to your own articles – if you share the link love by sending traffic to some other useful articles on related sites, they’ll probably return the favor.

Remember to think about your readers and post information that will be helpful to them. Think about what you’d like to read if you followed another blogger in your niche.

Opening up a discussion can also be a good strategy once you’ve amassed a good following. Asking your readers for advice, opinion or ideas can inspire conversation and show that you’re interested in what they have to say.

Competitions can also be a good way to give back to your followers as well as attracting more traffic. Facebook is probably the most popular network to run competitions on and it’s very easy to do so.

How to Get More Followers on Social Networks

While achieving a large following on your social accounts is important, don’t forget that the main focus should be on your blog. An email subscriber is worth way more than a twitter follower who might never even check their account. So don’t spend too much time worrying about your social traffic – if you regularly post useful content, it will grow naturally.

There are, however, a few strategies you can employ to encourage the growth of your following.

Twitter is probably the easiest network to attain a large following as many people will follow you back if you follow them. The simplest thing to do is follow a handful of new people every day and watch your stats grow. You can use a tool like Manage Flitter to unfollow people who don’t follow you back within a week or so.

The same principle can work for Instagram and Pinterest but it’s important to have good content on your own account first. Focus on building up a great collection of images before you start following other accounts.

Commenting can be a good strategy for many social networks and works particularly well for Facebook and Google+. Try following some influential people in your industry and commenting on their social media updates. If what you post is relevant and useful, you’ll attract a few new followers.

Maybe the most important thing is to make it easy for people to follow you and your posts to be shared on social media. Make sure the buttons are clear and preferably at the bottom of every post as well as in your sidebar. Adding buttons to your post makes it 7 times more likely that your content will be shared.

Content Matters

Whatever method you’re using to grow your blog, the focus always comes back to producing great content. There are hundreds of tricks you can use to get people to follow you but unless you’re producing content they want to read, you’ll lose them again just as quickly.

Going viral is the holy grail for any blogger as a viral blog post can explode your following by thousands overnight. There’s no guaranteed method for creating viral content – it’s a mixture of good luck combined with clever copywriting and understanding of psychology. If you want your content to go viral, consider the following for a starting point:

• Learn how to write engaging headlines (study the headlines of viral sites Upworthy and Viral Nova to see how they entice people onto their sites).
• Write long form blog posts – long posts are more likely to go viral than short posts.
• Focus on content that is funny, controversial, shocking or inspiring. Basically content that resonates with people and invokes emotions is more likely to be shared.
• Write useful content. If you solve someone’s problem, they’re likely to share it with others.
• Write list posts. List posts or “listicles” are shared more than other types of written content.

Social Media is Here to Stay

Whether you’re a social butterfly or more of a technically minded SEO-geek, it’s hard not to be impressed by the impact that social media continues to have on the world of blogging.

It’s easy for social media to take up a lot of time and the focus should definitely be on your own blog rather than updating your Facebook, but even 10 minutes a day spent on your social media strategy could grow your blog readers by an impressive amount.

If you have any more tips for working with social media, please feel free to share them in the comments.

Image Courtesy: http://mkhmarketing.wordpress.com/

There seem to be two main categories of people when it comes to the topic of music and productivity: those who need silence to concentrate and those who need music or some kind of background noise in order to achieve maximum productivity.

Personally, I fall somewhere in the middle, and my mood for music depends on the tasks I am working on. If I'm designing or coding, I work best to music and find it difficult to focus on the task at hand in silence. However, when I'm writing, I prefer only quiet, instrumental background music or low-level background noise such as that produced by Coffitivity.

Studies have shown that most people don't work best in total silence, and that a moderate level of ambient noise can aid concentration and inspire creativity. It seems that the main draw of the coffee shop for writers and other creatives may not be the caffeinated beverages, but rather the constant background hum of conversation and clinking coffee cups.

When it comes to music, rather than just background noise, the effect on your productivity will probably depend on what you're doing. Just as listening to high energy music with a fast beat can help you to stay motivated during a run or aerobic workout, energetic music can be helpful for being productive in any kind of physical job or repetitive task.

For knowledge workers, the situation is a little more complicated. As I mentioned previously, I find music with lyrics too distracting when I am writing, and many others report the same. A study from a university in Taiwan found that background music with lyrics has a significant negative effect on concentration at work.

Music Therapist, Kimberly Sena Moore, explains in Psychology Today that music with words activates the language centers in the brain, which can interfere with other language tasks such as writing and reading. Instead she suggests listening to white noise or nature sounds and experimenting with music of different tempos which may have differing effects on our mental state.

However, it's far from universal that writers can't concentrate when listening to music. In his biography and writing guide, On Writing, prolific author Stephen King claims to be at his most productive when listening to heavy metal bands like Metallica and Anthrax.

The music we like is highly personal, and most experts agree that the most important aspect of choosing music to work to is selecting music that we like. Listening to music we like causes the brain to release dopamine, a chemical associated with pleasure and reward. Making a task more pleasurable in this way will help you to complete it faster and more effectively.

A study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association found that surgeons performed with significantly better speed and accuracy when performing surgery to music of their own choice versus music selected by the experimenter. Those who worked to no music at all performed the poorest.

If you have to work in a noisy workplace with lots of distractions, music can be a good way to tune out constantly ringing phones and noisy colleagues, but not all companies encourage their employees to wear headphones. This New York Times article offers some suggestions such as listening to music for limited periods of time or listening to the radio, lowering the volume when talking to clients or superiors.

Classical music has long been hailed as a magical way of improving mental performance, but if you don't enjoy listening to classical music, it's unlikely to provide you with any real benefit. It's worth experimenting with a few different types of music to see what suits you best. Youtube is also a great place for finding tracks that claim to improve your concentration and increase your creativity. (Personally, I quite enjoy this channel).

Do you prefer to work in silence or are you a desk-bound headbanger like Stephen King? What's on your work playlist? We'd love to hear your thoughts on music and productivity in the comments.