The Traveling Introvert

Today, I'm going to talk about a little give you a little slice of something that I talk about very often in front of other professional groups. That's podcasting. Surprise, surprise. And the reason I talk about it and this little snippet is I feel like almost every business should have a podcast  every business I hear you cry. Yes. And this is the reason why there's many reasons. One of the reasons is accessibility.

And so a podcast doesn't have to be a podcast in the traditional sense that you are listening to right now. A podcast could simply be having your your blog and having an audio version of your blog so that people can listen to it rather than read it. It's about accessibility, but other reasons why all businesses should have some form of a podcast is a lot of people have smart speakers in the House, especially in the United States. And so smart speakers are evolving.

Now, you get families listening to podcasts, the elderly who can't like press buttons, they can now just talk to their smart speaker and say, I would like to listen to blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And the smart speaker will play it for them. It's a great one on one medium. There's nothing like feeling that you have that personal connection with the podcast that you are listening to that in your ears and in your head.

It's very, very personal and in this day and age right now. But we are not doing a lot of in-person stuff. Getting to you reach your clients and your potential customers personally is great. It's not necessarily better than being in person, but it is an actual other way to get in that gives people a look behind the scenes of what you're doing and what you're talking about and gives them a real insight into what it might be like to work with you if you have a service business.

But even not just that, it could be, you know, what your thoughts are, what your ethics are, what you stand for and you believe in all really important. There are definitely companies that I refuse to work with because I do not like the ethics or the way that they do things. And so having a podcast is a different way to get that information. Or you can use it to highlight your clients. You can use it to highlight your customers and give when stories.

Everyone needs a little cheering up right now, so why not bolster other people? But one thing that I have seen that has been amazing is some podcasts create resources for other people so they become a resource hub. And so not only do they have the podcast, but then you can download PDF and worksheets and things to go and work on whatever it is that they're talking about. And so they could be a resource hub on travel that could be a resource hub on working from home, whatever it might be, they are the go to place to do that thing.

Another way thing could be it could drive forward your mission. If your mission is to feed 50 people a week or show 50 people how to do X, Y and Z will be financially accurate or do the taxes or whatever it might be. This is a great way to reach more people that aren't in your sphere and your circle. Another website that I've seen that has used podcasting in a really unique way. Well, until, like I tell everyone now is it's a service provider and you can work one on one with her as a business coach.

You can do a group program with her or she has this like DIY section. And the DIY section is literally a podcast embedded in her website. I don't know if it's available anywhere else and it's embedded in her website. And so she walks you through sort of working with her. But because it's very general, it's not tailored as it would be if you were working with her one on one. But it gives you a great idea of the things you could learn and what it's like working with her, but kind of for free.

It's wonderful. So there are so many different ways that you can use the product, you can use it to tell stories. You have a book maker podcast out of it. Reading to kids, reading stories to kids has been used as a podcast. There are so many different things that you can do. Someone did stories from chefs like while they were making food, they could tell you the story behind like the the thing that they were making wonderful thing.

Then they could turn it into a magazine. Then you can do other things with it. But all businesses should have audio available in some way, shape or form for people to consume content about either them or their clients, their mission, their products, anything of that nature, their processes. And yeah, that is what I think is really helpful, especially now. So you're going to go and start a podcast. Do you want to know how to do that?

You can contact me, but thank you for listening. This is [email protected]. Do you have any questions? Feel free to. Email me at [email protected] or anything you want me to cover on the podcast. Thanks for listening and have a great rest of your week.

Today, I'm going to talk about personal development plans, and the reason I want to talk about this is because development plans tend to be something that I've seen very negatively, especially in the workplace. If you are put on a performance development plan or a performance improvement plan, it means that your role at work is at risk. But having a personal development plan is something that you should have anyway. And so I want to talk about some ways of how you can go about building your own.

It's a process that you will work on for your entire life, but it will help you assess skills and qualities that will help you build the lifestyle and the career that you want and that you will make you happy and give you a high quality of life. A personal development plan can help you with all aspects of your life and help you become more self aware not only at home, but at work. So a well-designed personal development plan will address your strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and roadblocks, just like a SWOT analysis.

And so the idea is identifying your strengths so you can improve on them your weaknesses so that you can make up for them in some way, shape or form, whether that be learning or doing something else, also explore new opportunities so that you realize when a door window is open and you can go ahead and explore something else, as well as noting any roadblocks, threats that are in along the way. Now, this is something that you should actually do on a regular basis.

And then the other thing, or one of the really great things about creating and the purpose of having a personal development plan is to recognize those development areas. So once you've performed your SWOT in each area of your life, you'll discover internal and external things that are blocking your success. And these can be things like you might have a belief that you hold on to own insecurity, and so it could be something like you might hold the belief that you will never have enough money to save for the future.

And because of that, when you do get, like extra unexpected money, you tend to blow it right away on things that you feel you've missed out on before or just spend it. Now, this is a somewhat limiting belief about money. And a lot of people have it because most people think that money is a finite source. And, you know, you do have the opportunity to make more in various ways. So that's something to think about when you are creating a personal development plan.

The other great thing is it helps you identify your resources. So when you are creating a personal development plan, you might do some work that helps you look at the resources that you have available to a specific task. For example, if you decide you want to start a coaching business, what resources do you have where you can start straight away or and what things do you need? What things can you live without? One, a nice house. What are deal breakers?

What can you do for yourself and what does somebody else need to do? And this works in almost every single aspect of your life. You may realize you already have the skills to do exactly what you wanted to do. However, you might also realize that you need to pay for additional brainpower, i.e. resources of other people or a course or workbook or something of that nature. But identifying the resources you have and what you need to get where you want to be is crucial in developing a plan that will work for you.

Also, doing a personal development plan will help you create better relationships. And this is because you then have a clearer idea of what you need to move forward. And so when you're managing your relationships, it helps you realize, OK, well, I'll need this for the future or this might be useful for right now. And just becoming self aware enough that not everyone likes what you say or do and you need to treat people differently is super helpful.

Now, whatever you want to work on and however you want to build up your career, what you're doing can be done by using a personal development plan. Whether you want to lose weight, start a business, change jobs, go back to school or anything else. The goal doesn't matter as much as developing the plan that you need to get where you want to go. Your plan will not be the same as anyone else's because it's unique to you, because you are different.

And that's why it's so unique and important that you create your personal development plan. Thank you for listening. This is [email protected]. If you have any questions, please email me at [email protected]. Anything you want me to say on the show. Apart from that, have a great rest of your week.

Hello and welcome to The Traveling Introvert. Today, I want to talk about ways to improve your creative thinking. So for the longest while I've always said that I'm not creative and I realize now it's a slightly limiting belief that I have on myself, I don't see myself. See, even now I'm saying I don't see myself as being creative, and yet people will point out all the things that I have created. So here are some things that I have done that have helped me improve my creative thinking.

So you might find times when you find yourself lacking creativity and it can be for different reasons. Or it could be that you haven't been using your creative muscles regularly and you've forgotten how to tap into those things. And so there are many things that you can do to sort of improve and dig into doing that creative thinking.

Again, one of the best ways is to keep yourself inspired. And so I create a ritual every day that you can use and regularly and routinely several routines that inspire you, condition your brain to tap into your creativity easily. And some examples of a ritual might be reading in the morning or listening to music every day or meditating for five minutes, or just sitting and being and deep breathing throughout the day. So if you can see if you can create something every day, even if you only have five or 10 minutes to do so, it keeps your creativity muscle, so to speak, alive and inspired.

And you don't have to be creating a masterpiece. This is this is something that people sort of get caught up on. They think it has to be this wonderful thing, whatever it is that you create, it could be something as simple as a doodle or writing a short article, drawing a mind map in meetings, developing new product ideas, or reorganizing your files, taking photographs of the sunset or, you know, a plant that's growing in your house.

These are all ways of being creative. Everything is to take breaks often, and I can't recommend this enough, especially when you feel stuck with a problem and can't kind of figure out the solution. And I think I've spoken about this before. Taking breaks allows your mind to focus on something else while getting inspiration and like working in the background. It's also good to take a break from all the digital chatter that allows regularly has. So getting outside and unplugging at least once a week just for work.

You know, if you can do it at some point daily or even if it's 10 minutes, 20 minutes, an hour, whatever it is to help build your creative thinking muscle without digital binging and annoying you all the time. And whenever you do feel inspired, make a list of these ideas on a notebook or an app or something. Uses ideas as a launching pad for new ways of doing things or new products or new podcast episodes, whatever it is that inspires you.

The other thing that your creative mind loves and thirst for, which is probably being a little hard recently, is to have fun, have fun regularly, and finding different ways to do that, depending on the circumstances you're in, can be difficult. But laughing a good conversation, bouncing ideas off each other, bills and inspires your creativity while relaxing and having fun in different ways. It can be with other people. You can have a back and forth conversation on what's up with someone.

It doesn't have to be real time, but finding a way to instill and inspire fun and relaxation in your life will help you. The other thing you can do, and this is really interesting, is the three F's to ask questions, to inspire your thoughts on a concept. And it helps build your creative thinking by answering things like this. What would happen if I change X, Y and Z, like the software, the color, the whatever it might be?

But what would I change or improve about it if I wanted to use it in 10 years? This is really good for software like you might have software you like. How does it work now when it works for me in five years, 10 years, think about those things. What would I do if I had a one million dollar investment to improve it or at twenty dollar investment to improve it? These are really the what if questions these questions or ones like them can be powerful tools to help you think just a little bit differently repeatedly using these questions and these types of questions test in all type of situations, ideas will begin to flow and enable you to think more creativity.

The other thing is take advantage of the peak hours when you feel most productive and creative, when you need to find a solution. Some people are more creative during times of emotional stress or whatever that time is. Use it to let your creative juices flow, put on some music, surround yourself with inspiring things and be creative. Interact with creative and inspiring people on a regular basis just to get fresh ideas and outlooks and perspectives. These interactions and exchange of ideas will help you refocus on the creative ideas that work best for you and help you narrow down what you want to do.

And don't be afraid of taking risks to improve your creative thinking. When you avoid taking risks, you end up suppressing your ideas. Risks give you permission to think so to speak outside the box and embrace your creative ideas. So people are more creative than others, naturally, and that is fine. But anyone can be a creative thinker. Build your creativity in ways that help you to be inspired and create all the time. Thank you for listening. This is [email protected].

Looking forward to hearing from you. If you have any questions, email me at [email protected]. Have a great rest of your week.

Hello and welcome to The Traveling Introvert. Today, I want to talk about different ways to deal with overwhelm and overwhelm can come in many different shapes and sizes. It could be overwhelmed from all the tasks and the projects that you've taken on and not setting good boundaries. It could be overwhelmed from overstimulation, from too much music, noise, crowds, that sort of thing.

There are so many different types of overwhelm and know the difference between what that experience is and how you feel after that experience is highly important. But one of the things that's really helpful is, you know, acknowledging the chaos outside or inside. Be honest with yourself about it. If you're feeling overwhelmed, overstimulated, pushed to the brink, acknowledge that fact instead of trying to push through and just getting it done, acknowledge how you're feeling, get in tune with it, maybe sit for a minute and think, why might I be feeling this?

Is it the music or is it the type of music or is it the volume of the music? It could be a small thing that needs changing that would make all the difference. Is it because you're hyper focused on it and you need to just go somewhere else? Acknowledging it and and not pushing through is a great thing.

Pushing through can be detrimental. Pushing through stops you from adjusting your actions and prioritizing yourself. So don't do it. Stop. Take a breath. Figure out exactly what it is that is causing that discomfort, that overwhelmed that feeling of that feeling, of of that brick wall, that tiredness that you're feeling. That's really helpful. Getting in tune with that. If you don't acknowledge what you're feeling, you can still burn out and then you can easily go about berating yourself or feeling down about it rather than acknowledging it going, OK, this is what's happening.

What steps do I need to do to make that change? And something to think about also is a lot of the time when we're feeling overwhelmed, overstimulated, the the thing that we like to do is just shut everything down, like I'm going to go into a cold, dark place and leave me the hell alone.

You don't necessarily need to do that. Sometimes you do. But once you kind of pull in, maybe you end up not seeing the bigger picture, maybe go on a downward spiral. Maybe everything he's thinking just, you know, you start overthinking and thinking bad thoughts.

So, yes, you might need to shut down and get some inner peace, but also reach out, explain yourself, tell another person, say, hey, I'm going to do X, Y and Z because I need a B, and F, whatever that might be. Letting someone else know what you're doing, why you're doing it and how you're feeling is huge. Because then next time, if you say to that person, hey, I'm doing this because of X, Y and Z, they might say, well, last time you did this, this and this, did it not work out for you or is a different thing or what should we try this time?

And just making people aware of how you're feeling lets them know that you care and that you are including them and you're not just blocking everybody out. So that is something that I highly, highly recommend.

Now, that's just some like spur of the moment feeling overwhelmed sort of a thing. But what about enable yourself to prevent exhaustion and overwhelm to a degree, because you can't always know that it's going to happen. I know I've definitely tried some things sort. I've been consistent that one day it's like, no, this week has been different and so it's not working.

So it's really important to schedule some you know, they call it self care time. Your own time, whatever it is, is sort of a mini retreat, even if you don't have the time or finances or things to do it like a vacation, you can probably set aside a day or two for a mini you retreat. And here's some things that you can do for that retreat. Maybe take a two day hiatus from social media, an email or just like devices so that you can read and wander and daydream and do whatever it is that makes you and your body feel good rather than being at the beck and call of your devices.

You know, do a lot of brainstorming and reading outside or in bed, so it feels like it's a treat rather than a chore, you know, take yourself and do cool stuff for the day, go for a picnic, go for a walk, treat yourself to ice cream or whatever it is.

These are things that give you the space and the brain space as well to go ahead and deal with everything else in your life, giving your brain that time to think and do what it pleases without being at the beck and call of a device or other people is invaluable. So thank you for listening. This is [email protected] helping introverts build their brand and get hired.

If you have any questions for me or things you'd like me to cover on the show, please email me at [email protected].

Have a great rest of your week.

Hello and welcome to the traveling introvert, today, I want to talk about separation of business and personal, and I want to come around to it from a tech point of view. So I was remembering the days when I used to go to work at a desktop computer, do the work, finish the work, go home, go about my life. And then SARS happened and I had to bring my desktop computer home. So at work, my desktop computer, I had my own personal laptop.

So I do the work finished on that. I put my laptop.

Never the twain should meet. Let's go forward another few years, then I have a work laptop and a home laptop, and again, I would do my work on my work laptop and I would do non-work stuff on my home laptop. Never the twain should meet somewhere along the line that got blurred. I started my own business and then I had one laptop and that one laptop did business and personal. And it happened so gradually that you don't even realize that it's a problem.

And that's how the line between personal and business gets really blurred, especially now using this one particular laptop for everything. So one thing that I've been told can be useful I'm actually going to try it is to have separate user logins for my laptop. So one user will be all business, the suit and the tie. It will have all my logins, my last pass, access to whatever it is I need all the software installed a certain desktop image all that good stuff.

And then another user on the same laptop, but with a different desktop, maybe beach or traveling or, you know, whatever latest book that I want to read. And it could have like my gaming accounts and access to my gaming accounts, because then what I could do on my business side is to block certain websites. So there's websites that I probably shouldn't be looking at, or rabbit holes that I shouldn't be going down while I'm working so I could block that access, but then have that access on my other user account to try and get that separation between work and non-work, especially just for like personal learning or watching YouTube videos.

Because I have access to a lot of different accounts in general because of my work and the work that I do for my clients. So making sure that I'm not accidentally watching a certain video on my clients like YouTube channel because I was working on it during the day and then in the evening I just went and looked at YouTube. This is a really easy way of keeping that line of delineation. And I've heard about this from a I was gonna say fellow podcasting and I was like, I don't know the person, but technically they have podcasts, content creators.

They are fellow podcasts. And I think it makes a very valid point. Demarcating the difference between personal and business is, I think, good for mental health gives you more space. And you you feel that break, OK I'm not working anymore because even though I might not look at my business email, I know it's there. I can access it at the click. And yes, a user isn't quite as good. Obviously, I would love a separate laptop, but not on the cards.

Right now, though, what I could do in time is what I do like to do is to buy a laptop, a new laptop before my old one dies. And I some people like to wait until their actual laptop dies and then panic and buy a new one. But I you know, you see the warning signs. It's been three to five years , probably starting to run a little slower. So maybe at that point what I would do is make one laptop, a work laptop, the brand new one, and the fresh install and the fun stuff, and then keep my old laptop just for fun.

That is something that I'm also thinking about doing after I get through a couple of financial stuff that I think is a good idea.

So moving forward, I'd love to know what you do to delineate or stop, you know, the bleed between work life and non-work life. Any tips, any hints, anything you want to try, anything you've heard about to try, any experiments? Because I think it's it's hugely important and it's an area we forget about. Like with your phone, my  phone specifically. I know with Android I have the option of having a work profile and a non profile, and I use them very, very separately on purpose on my phone.

Why don't do that on my computer. I don't know. This is just a little light bulb moment that I wanted to share with you all. So thank you for listening. If you have any questions, please email me at [email protected]. Have a great rest of your week and thanks for listening.

Hello and welcome to the traveling introvert. Today, I want to talk about time off. It was Recently brought to my attention that I don't take a lot of time off. And looking back at it, it's been for a couple of reasons. So for the past month, I have been trying to take Sunday as my day off where I don't do I don't respond to emails. I don't look at business stuff. I might dabble with some new software, but I generally get up late and let the day flow where it may.

I mean, I generally don't have to cook because we've gotten takeout for the whole weekend. I might bake, but because I enjoy doing it, there is nothing that is specifically calling my attention. My mind can wander where it wishes and I can do what I feel like. I could get up, go out, take a walk, exercise all that stuff. I could stay in bed and do nothing. And depending on the weeks I have done many, all or none of those things.

There was also one week where I did work on that Sunday as a favor for somebody, and it ruined my week afterwards and from then on, because, you know, when you take time off, you don't realize how beneficial it is. So you think, oh, no, it's OK. Like just this once it will be fine. No, never again. It ruined my week afterwards. So I then realized, OK, this is something that I need to keep, which is great.

But Sunday is just one day. And as someone who no longer does nine to five, I forget, you know, it didn't really do not have long enough. I forget that a lot of people have two or three days off a week. And when you're running your own business and your computer is always on and everything else, you kind of don't. And I know I talk about having better boundaries. So this is this is a thing. And I've talked or will be talking about how how I'm going to separate my computer.

But let's talk about days of actual full days off. So I don't think I can figure out in my calendar two full days off that would disrupt me and all my clients. And I don't think I'd get the full benefit from it. I love Sundays A because I Sundays B because other people aren't going to be harassing me on Sunday. But also it's a time in our household where, like I said, this food already sort of have to think about cooking and other stuff.

But I think for another full day off, I don't think it would work. But I'm quite happy to take maybe two afternoons off a week, and it doesn't mean I won't work. It just means I will maybe ignore business stuff or I will only work on or read stuff or just, you know, try and meditate or do stuff for me and my mental health and my physical health.

So I was looking at my calendar and trying to figure it out and along with fitting in with meetings that I already have a lot of standing meetings. And so this also came about because for the past couple of months, you know, with everything that's been going on in the world, I haven't had as intense work as I would normally. And that now seems to be back on the upswing. I've got maybe three or four projects that in the next will be finalized in the next week.

That could make my life very busy. If I am not organized and me being me, I will take on these projects and then not have time off or just, you know, power through which can be done, but isn't necessarily the best thing to do. Also, over these past few months, I've discovered better ways of working and that I need like a two hour block to get stuff done. If I'm doing hotchpotch stuff, I just I don't feel as productive.

I'm not working as well. So I need like maybe block out my clients two hours for this client, two hours for that client to hours for the other client. And that should work better for the kind of work that I want to do and mentally keeping me like sharp. So my plan is to have my one day off a Sunday, which I currently have for various reasons, and then to take two afternoons off a week. Now I say afternoons for some of you that mean from midday.

But as I don't really like to get up before 10:00, that would really be like a whole day off.

So I kind of me from like 4:00 in the afternoon, which does count as a half day because some of my clients are in California. So, yeah, still a half day. That's what I am thinking of doing. If you do not work nine to five and you do work for yourself, I'd love to know when the last time you took a day off was. Do you take half days off in the middle of the week? Do you take full days off in the middle of the week?

There is someone I know that is taking weekend Wednesday and having Wednesdays off in the middle of the week also. And I hate to say this because I don't really see this in my future, but when's the last time you took a whole week off and the world did not burn? I would love to know. Please message me at [email protected]. Thank you for listening and have a great week.

Hello and welcome to the traveling introvert. Today, I want to talk about things I've learned about inbox zero, and I previously done an episode on inbox zero and am it inbox zero? I totally understand. Does not work for everybody. I just want to talk about my experience with Inbox Zero. So for the past, I guess six months I've managed to hit Inbox zero. You know, I'd say consistently two or three times within that time period and I would get it. And I would be

 like, yes!  Give it two or three days or a week. And it's back to inbox, not zero. I want to put any numbers in there, but and I didn't mind. I was like, OK, well, I got to inbox zero, but stuff's going on and, you know, so on and so forth. However, I'm happy to say this is the first week that I've managed to have inbox zero all week. And I'm so stoked about it because it means that it is for me anyway, obtainable and sustainable, which is really important.

So here are the few things that I have learnt from my experience with Inbox zero. One. It's much harder for emails to get lost in the shuffle or get further down my inbox because my inbox is zero. Most of the time when it isn't like Oh, I got this email great, I don't check my mailbox as often because I don't feel overwhelmed by all the emails that are there. Or I might miss something and it might slip down the rabbit hole.

And one thing I really realized is how much easier it is for me to unsubscribe to emails that I don't want anymore. I know that there are apps out there that you can use to help you unsubscribe from things, but you might not get emailed as frequently or you might forget or it slips through the cracks. And so when you see an email and I'm like, who is that person? Why am I getting emails from them? It is so much easier for me to just go and click, unsubscribe and then never see it again because it has popped up in my mailbox.

And I think that is one of the key things about having inbox zero. Now, the first few days I'd go to sleep and then wake up and obviously have 40 or 50 or 60 emails in there. And I would make a point of being like, I am going to go in there and clear them out. And as the days have gone by, when I wake up in the morning, there are less and less emails in there. It's also part of the process was moving some of my business emails to my business email and keeping some of my personal emails in my personal, because that was a can be a blurred distinction sometimes because, you know, some people in person.

But you want to do a business thing. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So those are the things that I have learnt from my experience with Inbox zero in my personal mailbox. Now in my business mailbox, I also got to mailbox zero there, but it has been harder to maintain and I haven't figured out why yet. It could be because a lot of things that I want to get back to and I do use the snooze function, which I love, but it still doesn't quite work.

I also use streak for Gmail because I'm currently creating a lot of events and all those people I want to keep track of and see what stage they're at. So that helps with reminders. But I still haven't been as consistent with inbox zero, so I haven't gone above, say, mailbox ten, but it's still not the pretty mailbox zero thing. So that's what I'm working on for my business email. I mean, there is obviously the you know, I have multiple emails that I check, but these are my two main ones of my business, my personal, so personal.

I think I have nailed it, it is that the business needs a little more tweaking. So maybe it takes two weeks instead of one week for me to deal with mailbox zero. Now, like I said before, it is not and will not work for everybody. It happens to work for me right now and I look forward to continuing to work for me in the future. I know people that don't archive their mail or they don't go in and ruthlessly unsubscribe or think they're going to come back to a thing.

And as someone mentioned that they have a deal with or next folder, that they put some things in that they want to do or deal with when they they have a time set aside for things to do with my email. And they go in the next folder. I might play with that for my business, for my business email, but I'm scared that I won't check the next folder. So I need to figure out a way to, like, either put it in my calendar, like check next folder and there's a set time every day or I don't and I make it a color and then have a notification or reminder or something.

I mean, I know there's multiple ways of doing this. I just haven't figured out what's going to work for me. But that is my experience and the things that I have learnt from Inbox zero. Thanks for listening. If you have any questions or anything you want me to answer on the podcast, email me at [email protected] Helping introverts build thier brand and get hired. Have a great rest of your week.