Create some zen — live intentionally, take less luggage, set fewer goals

I was having a conversation with a friend the other day about our time management and organizing skills. This is my productivity and Things buddy, so this is an ongoing (five years now? more?) conversation with us. I mentioned a site I like, :zenhabits and told him I’d pull some of my favorite posts for him.

• An Intentional Life
• Mindful Simplicity: Decluttering, Cleaning & Leaving No Trace

Focus on intentional living. Why do you clean up the kitchen? For me it’s to have a clean, clutter-free, space. This make me feel relaxed and happy when I walk through. Cleaning with this intention in mind infuses the process with love and gratitude. When was the last time you cleaned your kitchen (or any number of chores) with that mindset?

• Eva’s List: Traveling Light for Women
• 16 Essential Tips for Traveling with a Family
• Teaching Kids to Pack Ultralight

These are all around packing ultra-light which is a new interest of mine. I hate to pack, to a painful level. My best friend tries to help me on Skype, my husband alternates between trying to help and clearing out to let me work through this. I come from a family of over-packers. I’m getting closer to this and it makes the prospect of traveling more appealing.

• Simplify.
• Clutterfree Inspiration: Two Beautiful Transformations
• How to Have the Best Year of Your Life (without Setting a Single Goal)
• the best goal is no goal

No goals, do less. Sounds like it’s against everything we’ve been taught (and against everything us Type-A people strive for). This has helped me focus. There are a thousand things I want to do everyday, ways to make my business better, ways to make your business better, ways to make my life better (hell, ways to make your life better). I decided to focus instead.

I’ve always wanted to do a triathlon. An opportunity came up to train and race with someone I really admire (and she’s in my age bracket to boot!). I wanted to jump right on it, and I did for about half a day. And then I realized that it was taking time away from the other thing I’m focusing on (I’m writing a book due out in September). I reigned myself in maintain focus, cross one thing off my list and then choose the next.

5 Neat Things — Design, Development, Organization

This is a round up post of some of the things we’ve been looking at lately.

1. Lots of data, small screen.

This is from a blog we love called Little Big Details. I’ve been having an ongoing conversation with EveryDave about solutions for this problem—specifically for us it’s how to fit large tables of data on a mobile device.

Doodle - Compresses dates that you did not select times in like an accordion.
Clicking on the accordion expands the entire calendar.

2. Responsive Images

Responsive, adaptive — like it or not, one image on a website is a thing of the past. We’re on our fourth major redesign using responsive techniques. We are still working through the best way for us, but here is an interesting article:

Which responsive image solution should you use?

3. Open/Close and More/Less

How have I never seen this before? Also from Little Big Details

Thunderbird - The little ‘+’ in the welcome screen tabs rotates to an ‘x’ when clicked.

4. Writing Copy for the Web

It’s not just stream of consciousness and it’s not a big beautiful full color brochure. It’s a tool.

Quick Course On Effective Website Copywriting

5. What can you get done today?

This is a concept we’ve been working with some designers on — when you work in a company and you have a billion things to do, how do you accurately schedule or even communicate what you have going on. Goal Stacker could be a piece of the solution.

Speaking Topics & Pricing

Sawaya Consulting is available to speak your group or company on a variety of topics. All of our topics are workshop-style, meaning after we lay the groundwork we help you get started with next steps and ongoing maintenance outlines. It’s important to us that we not only share our knowledge but create actionable plans for people to use.

Topics

Clients and colleagues were asking for advice and information on various topics. First we taught one person, then a group, then another group. This developed into our workshop series. We can teach any of the workshops listed below or create one specifically for your organization.

Social Media in Your Personal & Business Life: The New Ice Cream Social

Our most popular workshop is our introduction to social media and how to effectively use it in your personal and business life. This workshop focuses on LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter and includes case studies, statistics, etiquette, getting started and ongoing management of your social media.

This presentation is about 60 minutes long and includes worksheets with the data you most need at your fingertips and an easy list to help you get started.

Being Organized: how to get organized (and stay that way) with your business and your life

If you’ve worked with us you know we are extremely organized. This workshop will teach you our system for being organized. We believe a system is independent of the tools you use to interact with it. In this workshop we review dealing with the onslaught of information we all face and present old-school paper tools and cutting-edge digital tools to get you organized and stay that way.

This presentation is about 45 minutes long and includes comprehensive worksheets to help you get started.

Internet & Computer Security: Protecting yourself and your information.

You shop online, you bank online, you collaborate online, with more and more online interaction it’s important to understand security. This workshop focuses on taking proper security measures in a digital world, including creating and protecting passwords, understanding secure and non-secure networks, virus scanning, anti-virus protection and general internet safety.

This presentation is about 60 minutes long and includes comprehensive worksheets to help you be safe online.

Pricing

To share one of the above listed topics our pricing is as follows:

• $500 minimum — up to 10 people
• $100 per person — each additional person up to 20
• Over 20 people please contact us

We can tailor a topic to your specific organization or create a different workshop with you for an additional charge.

Booking

To share a workshop with your group or organization please drop us an email or give us a call at (801) 931-6554.

We have everything we need to put on a workshop (projector, screen, etc) and can even provide the location.