I can tell you first hand, it’s like farming in Sicily.  Great view, rocky soil, boiling sun, and lots of sweat.  How crazy am I to think being an entrepreneur is the best thing ever?  Ask yourself if the person described below is you.  If so, you may just have sunstroke too.

1.  I am willing to work at least a gazillion hours a week (or more).

2.  I laugh in the face of financial and career risks.

3.  Fringe benefits, cringe benefits — who needs the perks of conventional employment.

4.  I am totally ready to be a huge financial success by operating my own business.

5.  My energy level is so high I have dents in my ceiling from bouncing off it.

6.  Yes, some might call me a control freak, but I neeeeed to control all decisions that affect my work.

7.  And some more might think I’m masochistic — Atlas has nothing on me in the never ending “pursuit of a positive result through a great deal of effort” department.

8.  I feed off ambiguous situations — just call me Sookie Stackhouse.

9.  Unfortunately, I’m use to people laughing or belittling me for my relentless pursuit of just about everything.

10. Don’t blink, I just made another snap decision (or, intense soul searching in the tradition of Hamlet is not my thing).

If you answered “YES !!” to all of the descriptions above, you’re ready to be an entrepreneur.  Warning: “yes” isn’t good enough.

You can take the actual (and serious) quiz and check your score at the fantastic website Thypin Oltcheck Institute for Women’s Entrepreneurship.

Whether you want to be more successful in your current position or you’re about to be thrown into the whirlwind of a new job or internship, learn basic skills for results-oriented communication, persuasion, and everyday negotiations.

Topics include:

• How to develop and grow relationships within your organization
• What is your preferred personal style
• Basic principles of everyday negotiation
• Project self confidence without being pushy

Exercises include:

• Diagnose your behavior patterns in a work environment
• Explore persuasion techniques
• Analyze conflict resolution and win-win results

Recommended age of workshop attendees: 17 years and up

No more than 45 attendees per workshop session

RECESSION PRICE $69.99 !!! (was $99.99 )

Enroll Now!

* cannot be combined with any other promotion or discount codes

WORKSHOPS HELD AT: University Settlement, 273 Bowery (south of Houston Street), New York, NY

Let’s face it. Not a lot changes between December 31 and January 1. It’s a solar new year that has no correlation to any actual change in our day-to-day lives. On the other hand, we’re shot out of a cannon on the morning after Labor Day. School starts, college gets serious, work swings into high gear, and lazy days at the beach fade into the past.

One of the top five traditional New Year’s resolutions is to get organized. Everyone has a different definition of what it means to “get organized”, so I’ll supply one for the September new year. Time is ticking away furiously until December, when the next slowdown hits as the holidays arrive, so come up with a plan to manage your time wisely over the next three months.

Time is the most precious resource in the Fall because life converges into a maelstrom of activity and overlapping obligations. So sit down and figure out the following three things.

First, what are your hopes and dreams for the upcoming twelve months? Another way to ask the question is, what are your long-term goals. Long-term goals should be the compass that guides your steps always, and they’re especially important when time is moving at warp speed and what doesn’t happen today may not happen until who knows when.

Second, what do you want to accomplish in the next three months? Do you need to start saving for the holidays? Are you preparing for the SATs? Does your company have goals that need to be met by the end of the fiscal year? Carve out time to plan how you’re going to make these things happen. It’s a truism that 15 minutes of planning a day saves one hour of wasted time each day. Imagine what one evening of planning can do for you, and then get to it!

Finally, realize you don’t have time for everything. You have to be ruthless about what you can reasonably accomplish, what’s truly important to you, and how much time you can devote to any individual endeavor. Now is the time to check your gut. Follow your bliss, put the rest aside, and by December you won’t have to worry about January resolutions. You’ll have plenty of accomplishments to toast on New Year’s Eve.

In this workshop you will learn tips and tools to organize your activities, your paperwork, and all your stuff.

Topics include:

• Does a messy desk mean a messy mind?
• Organize your desk & office space
• Tips for organizing your clothes, your closet, and other rooms
• Electronic document management

Exercises include:

• Articulate your goals
• Identify how to use your time most effectively
• Understand the IOK method

Recommended age of workshop attendees: 17 years and up

No more than 45 attendees per workshop session

RECESSION PRICE $69.99 !!! (was $99.99 )

Enroll Now!

* cannot be combined with any other promotion or discount codes

WORKSHOPS HELD AT: 305 7th Avenue @ 27th Street, 11th Floor New York, NY 10001

This seminar will help you identify and define career, academic, and personal goals and create a plan to achieve them.

Topics include:

• Components of effective goal-setting
• Creating a Life Plan with short- and long-term goals
• Translating goals into action with to-do lists
• How to measure progress toward your goals

Exercises include:

• Diagnose habits that impede goal attainment
• Write your SMART goals
• Develop an action plan tied to your goals

Recommended age of workshop attendees: 17 years and up

No more than 45 attendees per workshop session

RECESSION PRICE $69.99 !!! (was $99.99 )

Enroll Now!

* cannot be combined with any other promotion or discount codes

WORKSHOPS HELD AT: University Settlement, 273 Bowery (south of Houston Street) NY, NY

In a Nutshell:  3 Tips

• Make it a daily habit to plan for and schedule at least one hour for work that requires careful thought.

• Use a visual device (an egg timer, or a sign that says “Think”) to broadcast that this is your time to be left alone.

• Inform your colleagues of your new technique so they understand and support your efforts.

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Social networks are roiling with chatter about one of the latest time management tips. It’s gone viral, and it’s called The Pomodoro Technique™. My guess is that it’s attracting so much attention because it seems to solve an overwhelming problem in a deceptively simple way.

Let’s take a step back before I launch into exactly what The Pomodoro Technique is.

One question that is desperately blurted out during every single time management workshop I conduct is, how do I get off the email/text/phone call/constant emergencies merry-go-round and find some quiet time to think and work. It seems to be almost impossible to do so, when everyone thinks it’s his or her right to expect a response to every inquiry, no matter how small or irrelevant, within minutes if not seconds. It takes superhuman powers to resist the urge to constantly check email or answer the phone.

The Pomodoro Technique brandishes a kitchen timer as both shield and spear in this insane world. The tick-tick-tick of the timer warns would-be interrupters to stay away. At the same time it’s a weapon for battling a lack of self control. Here’s what you’re supposed to do.

Each morning write a list of to do’s to complete before you sign off for the day. You work your way down the list in 25-minute intervals, with each interval devoted to one task, and 3 – 5 minute breaks between intervals. The kitchen timer is set at the beginning of each interval.

I like this tip because it ties into one of the themes of my Time Management workshop: Don’t multitask! Don’t interrupt your work flow every five or ten minutes and hop from one task to another. Our minds just aren’t built that way, especially when we need to work on a task that takes concentration. It takes 10-15 minutes to become immersed in a task, so jumping around is without a doubt a huge time waster. This technique is also good for anyone with serious procrastination issues.

Years ago, when I worked on FORTUNE magazine, I went through a period when my right-hand person was promoted and his replacement hadn’t started. Being one person down wasn’t considered an acceptable excuse for not getting things done. The only way I made it through was to figure out The Pomodoro Technique on my own. It took intense amounts of willpower, but setting aside chunks of time and focusing on only one task at a time, even if my mind was shrieking “Stop and work on that other thing”, was the key to successfully surviving that period.

Having a kitchen timer would have been nice touch. And it can be an effective way for you to signal to the people who stop by your office to leave you alone until a 25-minute interval is over. But don’t use the lack of one as an excuse not to give this method a try.

Take control of your time, improve results, and decrease stress.  This seminar teaches time management strategies that can increase your productivity through proven and practical techniques.

Topics include:

• Six steps to control your time
• Mastering planning and scheduling tools
• Tips for work and study
  
• Using time management to reach your goals

Exercises include:

1. Diagnose your time management strengths and weaknesses
2. Identify priorities
3. Practice planning a typical week

Recommended age of workshop attendees: 17 years and up

No more than 40 attendees per workshop session

RECESSION PRICE $69.99 !!! (was $99.99 )

Enroll Now!  Limited number of spaces available!

* cannot be combined with any other promotion or discount codes

WORKSHOP HELD AT: University Settlement, 273 Bowery (south of Houston Street), New York, NY

Easier said than done. Because what you’re really being asked to do is break well-established patterns and habits built up over a lifetime, and concentrate on building new ones that may be radically different. Which is where kids come in.

A week or so ago The New York Times published a very interesting article about programs designed to help children develop a skill that has its own buzz phrase: executive function. In other words, if pre-school children develop the skill of self-regulation (i.e. self control), they are able to train their minds to “avoid distractions and mental traps and focus on the task” at hand.

You can see where I’m going with this. Half of effective personal leadership is figuring out which of your well-worn mental habits (read: mental traps) time and again lead you in the wrong direction. What’s interesting is that this article makes a good case for a correlation between executive function at an early age and success in later life.

But don’t despair. Studies have shown that “practice helps; when children or adults (emphasis added) repeatedly perform basic exercises in cognitive self-regulation, they get better at it.” This is in a laboratory setting, which is difficult to translate to a classroom. The advantage you have is that you’re an adult, you understand why you want to eliminate your mental traps, and you’re motivated to do it.

So when you identify an inefficient mental pattern that you want to scuttle and replace it with an effective one, think of it as an exercise that builds new mental muscle. Overcoming procrastination, one of the most common time-wasting culprits, is the cognitive equivalent of replacing your daily stroll around the block with a muscle-building one-minute mile.

At the end of each of my workshops, participants write an action plan with three new habits they’re going to implement right away. Breaking an old habit and establishing a new one can take up to thirty days of consistent practice before it sticks. Thirty days can seem like an eternity when it comes to establishing a new habit, but no one seriously imagines it takes less than thirty days in the gym to get buff. Now, when anyone asks why it’s so hard and taking so long for you to get into a new groove, you have an impressive comeback. Just tell them you’re busy bulking up your executive function.