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I am a small business Conversation Consultant and public speaker that uses the power of the internet to leverage your success. Productivity in Context is a web magazine focused on Productivity and tools for organizing. Make this your headquarters for improving your life and work through increased mindfulness, education, and workflow practices.

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Please contact me via e-mail: stephen @ hdbizblog dot com

A while back I was reading Turning the Future into Revenue (Hiemstra) and I came across this paragraph:

“To be strategic is to move to integrate daily work with strategic work, so that over time they will become one and the same. If one is ‘being’ strategic, then virtually all work activity can be seen and is interpreted for how it contributes to the agreed upon strategic directions. Rather than strategic work being seen as an interruption of daily activity, daily work that is not strategic is seen as the interruption.”

I was so moved by the clarity of this statement that I had to put the book down and give that some more thought. I knew that I had written about making sure that your principles point toward your goals and that your actions should follow your principles.

I had also made a practice of using my Quarterly review to make sure that I planned and executed at least one thing toward achieving my Someday/Maybe goals during the next quarter.

This paragraph took that thinking to the next level. I decided to Tweet about it, and pare it down even further.

Note: Twitter is not an interruption, it is a good, quick easy way to share some ideas.

Put Strategic Practices to Work

Since the spring, I have been working diligently on executing a strategic plan for making this blog into a much larger business venture and community. I have been working with a few teams of people on some really cool projects, and it was all coming along nicely. Then this book inspired me to take that vision further, to be bold and take a risk. Hiemstra actually lists four ways that companies (even little ones like In Context MultiMedia) can experience fundamental, transformational change.

1. Be Future Oriented
2. Be Vision Driven
3. Be Collaborative
4. Be Strategic

There it was, my whole practice, sewed up into a neat little package. I had not seen it like this before. Mainly because I am one of those people that like to make things a little more complicated than they have to be! (the rest of you with ADD will understand)

Now I had that extra push that I needed. My “future-oriented vision” had reached its tipping point, and I knew exactly what to do.

Take it further than you think you should

I had been toying with the idea of using this platform strictly for my productivity and workflow writing, and moving the other topics that I am interested to other places, such as guest-posts on other blogs. You, as readers, seemed to like that idea, since you primarily come here for the workflow tips and learning simple practices for controlling your inputs. Several of you have communicated with me privately, indication that you just don’t like the non-productivity stuff.
Okay, you’ve got it.

Productivity in Context, the blog, will become part of the In Context MultiMedia network. Keep your eyes on the new universal portal for In Context MultiMedia, here [link]. As of today that is the new home for my writings on Blogging, on Leadership and Management, and on some new topics like Networking and Conversations. Please take a few minutes to check it out:

“This resource has been specifically created to teach you how to develop your small business and yourself, from the inside and out. This is not just another blog purporting to tell you about how to grow and strengthen your business and brand, I am doing it right now. I am living it right now.

And it is time for me to pay it forward and tell you what I did, show you the steps I took, and work with you as your business grows.”

Thank you all for putting up with the non-productivity related posts over the past two years. From now on, this blog will be strictly about productivity workflow and getting your tasks done. I do trust that many of you will be interested in the new blog as well, you can find out how to subscribe here [link].

Thanks again, I look forward to hearing from you. Leave a Comment!

If you found this post useful, please share it with your friends on Twitter using the tinylink http://tinyurl.com/5pv3eo. Thanks, I appreciate it! Feel free to comment below, I enjoy discussing these ideas. ~@Stephen

“As a savvy business owner, you know you can’t do everything yourself. Whether you are capable or not, you understand that your time is most intelligently focused on activities that grow your business and generate revenue. These days, outsourcing your administrative work to a Virtual Assistant makes it very easy to get just the amount of support you need without having to hire in-house staff. But how do you choose a highly skilled, truly qualified Virtual Assistant?

This 10-step guide gives you some practical points to consider and questions to ask as you go about the selection process.”

“For our own success to be real, it must contribute to the success of others.” Eleanor Roosevelt

[Editor’s Note: This post has been updated and corrected for originality]

If you found this post useful, please share it with your friends on Twitter using the tinylink http://tinyurl.com/6g6jcf. Thanks, I appreciate it! Feel free to comment below, I enjoy discussing these ideas. ~@Stephen

My friend Leo from ZenHabits has put together something new and exciting, an e-book resource called Web Warrior Tools . This new project is a partnership with blogger Glen Stansberry from LifeDev.

Billed as a set of ‘ridiculously useful e-book guides to everything’, Leo and Glen begin with these 4 titles:

1. The Beginner’s Guide to Podcasting - a “how-to” book for learning about podcasting. I am especially interested in this one!

2. Email Zen- e-mail management with a twist.

3. The Get Rich Slowly Guide to Roth IRAs - a basic financial planning resource, it’s never to early to think about retirement!

4. Secrets to a Healthy Life - Tips and advice for people that want to jump-start a healthy lifestyle.

This is just the beginning of what is going to be an extensive library of e-books. The e-books are inexpensive ($9 or less), they’ve been well-designed and are written by experienced bloggers. There is even a preview of them right on the site to get a feel for them before you buy them.

Leo and Glen are on the cutting edge of Web 2.0 with Web Warrior Tools. I believe that joining together to create this resource is going to be the first in a series of new business ideas that hit the internet this year. You can even get involved as a Web Warrior Tools affiliate.

If you found this post useful, please share it with your friends on Twitter using the tinylink http://tinyurl.com/5mvqf7. Thanks, I appreciate it! Feel free to comment below, I enjoy discussing these ideas. ~@Stephen

If you found this post useful, please share it with your friends on Twitter using the tinylink http://tinyurl.com/5slc26. Thanks, I appreciate it! Feel free to comment below, I enjoy discussing these ideas. ~@Stephen