Playing with LinkedIn's Answers feature - A brief analysis, plus community advice on starting consulting (part 2/2)

Last week I wrote about my initial foray into LinkedIn's new Answers feature, and shared some of mine. Below I've included the answers I got to my (so far only) question How did you get clients when you started your consulting practice? Before that, let's briefly consider Answers' strengths and weaknesses.

Strengths?

• Opportunity to share knowledge and help others,
  
• Exposure to possible peers (increase connections) and clients,
  
• Increased repute

Weaknesses?

• Many answerers are writing pretty blatantly to self-promote,
  
• Ditto for questioners,
  
• "Quantity connectors" contact you. (Those who connect for the sake of getting many contacts, vs. only connecting with those you know - which is how I do it.)

So how is this different from newsgroups or other on-line forums? I think this system has potential, primarily due to the unique community - serious business users who trust the system (at least a bit more than other venues). Also, many users seem very motivated to share helpful answers - a privilege I've taken advantage of. (A fellow user agreed, commenting "This is great! I'm going to ask a question every week.") However, the system runs the risk of being "spammed" by the above self-promotions.

Is it useful? So far I've received one client inquiry, and made one solid connection, so there's definitely potential. Plus I just plain enjoy writing answers, so I'll keep with it for a while. And, I got some terrific answers to my question (shown below).

What about you? Are you a LinkedIn user? How've you used it - either Answers, or more generally?


Selected answers to my question How did you get clients when you started your consulting practice?

Kristian Walker

When I began freelancing (graphic design) all of my projects came via referral from someone else. This was also before LinkedIn. I had established a solid reputation prior to my "jumping ship" and used that to find work. I would aggressively work your network for leads. As your reputation grows, so will your project load.

Spencer Hill

Get a book called Book Yourself Solid by Micheal Port its about building a network or pipeline for future business.

Laura Young

I started with word of mouth like you and also got listed on professional referral sites (I'm a life and business coach). After that came website and a monthly newsletter. I'm an old gal so this was before blogging. Now I would say get a blog. It's a great traffic builder, gives value to your clients, is an excellent branding tool and it works as a prequalifier for clients as well. The clients who come to me now, after seeing my blog particularly, tend to already have made the hiring decision and are typically very well matched to me. I don't do any live networking or speaking any more as the web is so effective for me. I'll link my site below so you can see how my sites work together. And from a personal point of view, I find I enjoy my business much more because blogging gives me a freedom to be funny and off topic on occassion in a way that I would not do on my website. I even had someone hire me once because I was brave enough to put my highschool picture (I was a Greg Brady look alike) on the web. They figured if I was brave enough to do that, I could help them gain confidence as well! It's funny the things that are meaningful to people and make the difference in them making that initial contact.

Links:
http://www.wellspringcoaching.com

Tim Warneka

Write a book!

My book "Leading the Black Belt Way: Conquering the Five Core Problems Facing Leaders Today" has generated a significant amount of business for me.

There's something atavistically fascinating to people about talking to an author, and writing a book gives you a leg up on the competition.

Don't bother going the traditional publishing routes--they take far too long for a business start-up. Pick up a copy of Dan Poynter's book (see his website below)... and do it yourself!

I see that Laura Young (her answer's above) also has written chapters for inclusion into books written collaboratively. I imagine that her writing in this way supports her business as well (Laura?).

Good luck!

Links:
http://www.parapublishing.com/sites/para/

Michael MacKenna

The best way is to make yourself known as a person specializing in the area you plan to practice. The best way to do that is to make sure people know you by newsletters, web, blogs, books, articles, speaking at organizations, etc.

Jason Harrison

I wrote this answer on another post (Lead Generation) and it appeared to be helpful:

I have been considering this question from the perspective of establishing an independent consulting company so some of my ideas may be relevant:

1. Interim management opportunities: (+) useful to get stable income over a defined time period; (-) lower fee rates, pay commission.

2. Cold calling / direct mail shot: (+) makes you feel you are working; (-) poor way of generating new work - people rarely buy from a cold call.

3. Website: (+) often helpful to have a website covering who you are, what services you provide, who you have worked for and what you charge once you are gaining interest from people, the site is of most use to direct people to if they require more information about you; (-) site design, set up and maintenance can be expensive in time and money - best designs evolve over time.

4. Contacts network: (+) good source of connections and potential work; (-) network needs to be both deep and broad and a successful entrepreneur separates out friends/colleagues from potential clients.

5. Project extensions: (+) best way of generating business - low or zero cost sale with upside of knowing the client and their organisation; (-) only downside is if you want to say no to an existing client.

6. Current client referrals: (+) excellent method; (-) only downside is that you can become typecast by clients.

7. Partnering: (+) good way of gaining capacity, additional expertise or increasing presence; (-) need to agree how to split revenues,

8. Conferencing: (+) a good way of getting your message across to lots of people; (-) public speaking is a 'game' of sharing just enough information and requires excellent presentation skills.

9. Writing: (+) good way of getting known - check the magazine is distributed to your client base; (-) takes time and gives little quick return.

10. Writing a book: (+) ultimate way of getting a message across; (-) ultimate investment in time and money.

11. Affiliation to other firms: (+) benefuit from other firm's reputation & access to clients ; (-) discounted revenues & loss of control over work.

12. Memberships: (+) building a network to identify client opportunities and emerging trends in the marketplace; (-) time and effort to cultivate a good network.

13. Google promotion: (+) getting your website on to the top listings of a Google search can be productive if your website is valuable and if you are experienced at getting all the various search phrases listed; (-) only useful if you are already working and if you have the time to invest in web advertising.

14. Training courses: (+) good way of generating clients who have seen you operate - low cost sales vehicle; (-) requires an investment of time and energy to develop and update the course.

15. Editorial board: (+) generates contacts/credibility; (-) time for no financial reward.

16. Industry Committee: (+) make contacts & share expertise; (-) many committees can become time sinks.

Curtis Hughes

Most good ideas have been covered here, but I too would suggest simply "getting the word out." Let everyone you are in contact with know exactly what you are doing. Create an image and a brand for yourself early on.

Also, once you define your target market, look for business lists from your local Chamber. Do a direct mail campaign to businesses that fall into this target market.

Lastly, look for partnership opportunities with firms that will compliment your services; or, where you may compliment theirs. This can lead to great referrals.

I was told during my first year to expect to .chase revenue.. This means, be open to any and all possible business opportunities, even if it is not perfect for you now. You never know who you will meet. I have found this to be true, and have met some great contacts from not-so-perfect opportunities.

I answered another LinkedIn question regarding advertising online and getting a website/name noticed. You can find the answer to that here.

Hops this helps,
Curtis

Bonny Albo

I'm impressed by some of the answers here, and will look into some of them further for my own business growth opportunities.

I won't rehash what others have already stated, but I will add to the list my most successful methods of attracting clients:

- Write a press release. Send it to your local media, any relevant journals/magazines in your field, and online PR sites. PR Wire really does work, provided you get an extremely well-written release sent out.

- Join online forums that are indirectly related to your business. For instance, I belong to several small business groups online where I answer writing related questions. I receive numerous leads (all without trying to sell a thing) through this option.

- Take the forums one step further and offer a free needs analysis to a select number of respondents. You could advertise this as well in your local paper (or even use it as your press release intro).

- Contact local business groups and ask them if you can speak at their next meeting. Don't bring along business cards however (since many now have rules about directly marketing to your listeners). Rather, provide a ti sheet at the end of the presentation with a list of the points you discussed. Your contact information will of course be listed at the bottom.

- Write a tip sheet (or use the same one as above) and offer it for free to the forums you subscribe to, newspaper readers, and so forth.

- Blog, but only if you have the time and want to position yourself as an expert. For more info on this topic, look at my other answers for a long how-to.

- Write filler for your local newspaper or magazines on your topic. They are always looking for short shorts about business or personal productivity pieces. If you can link it into some sort of academic research or personal experience, even better. If nothing else, you'll get a bit of cash coming in while you wait for the longer-term ideas to pull through.

- Talk to your local Welcome Wagon. Perhaps a bit strange, but they do offer packages (in some locations) for new business to the area. I received a LOT of calls from one of these promotions.

- Work with a writer to get an article published about your business in local business magazines. This is an excellent way of getting your name out there using the soft sell approach. Depending on the magazine's lead time (most are 4-6 months) you could have an awful lot of attention soon.

- Barter.

Best of luck in your new business,

Bonny
http://netwriter.ca/

Playing with LinkedIn's Answers feature - Goals, saying no, changing careers (part 2/2)

This is the second half of my answers to interesting LinkedIn Answers (I posted part one last week). Enjoy!

• How do you reach your goals?
  
• How Do You Say, "No."?
  
• How do you stay motivated and productive... all the time?
  
• I want to shift my career to game development field. What are the things i want to do for that?
  
• How do you work?

How do you reach your goals?

I am curious how do you guys reach your goals?

In these days both work and personal life gets more and more blended.
How do you reach the goals that you set for yourself both personal and professional?

Do you use certain methods, lists, use coaches or perhaps something completely different?

1) Get clear about what you want, and 2) make it happen, step-by-step. The catch: These days it's very difficult to get your head above water long enough to do 1), when you're being overloaded with requests, email, commitments, etc.

What I recommend to clients is the first get on top of all their day-to-day communications, commitments, and information, which gives them the clarity to ask the bigger questions. Luckily, once they're up and running with the system (I teach David Allen's "Getting Things Done"), it's straightforward to fast-track your goals by breaking them down into projects, and ultimately into concrete, specific actions.

Hope that helps!

How Do You Say, "No."?

"No" is one of the smallest words in English.

But, "No" is one of the most difficult words to master, whatever language you speak.

Yet, there is a time - an absolute time - when we are compelled to say, "No."

If you've ever said "no" to an invitation, a forwarding request, an endorsement, etc., how did you say it?

Did you say it so that you could preserve the contact for a prospective future relationship?

Or did your "no" include everything: No invitation, no forwarding, no endorsement, no future relationship?

I think it's difficult to *know* when to say no, unless you know everything you've committed to. Otherwise, you'll have no sense of whether the opportunity you're presented with is worth pursuing, and therefore worth giving something else up for.

If you've decided to say no, I find the most direct - but compassionate - approach is refreshing. It's still a no, but if I ask someone for something, and they come back with "I won't be able to help at this time because ____," I feel OK about it. This is *much* better (and clearer) than not answering at all, or putting off saying no by beating around the bush.

How do you stay motivated and productive... all the time?

I am not a lazy person. Perhaps quite the opposite. I prefer having more things to do than I can physically handle (more things get done), which has somewhat become my motivation to keep going. However, I must admit - this sort of schedule-based overload started to get to me. Sometimes it would take away my desire to do any work whatsoever, knowing that in the short-term it is unattainable no matter how hard/fast I try.

So I figured a change is in order. A new set of daily routine is up for adoption. So I come to you, managers, CEOs, project managers, executives, career advisers...

We all have rules that we live by (in our professional life). However, what keeps you motivated to stay productive? How do you keep yourself going 100% of the time, every day?

Great question, Artashes. First, I think it's natural for our motivation and creativity to vary - we're not machines, working constantly and steadily. That said, there are ways to monitor and adjust your motivation and productivity. Productivity is the easier one - it has to do with efficiency, and choosing what you work on. I use David Allen's "Getting Things Done" (AKA GTD) methodology to manage that. It's based partly on the notion of needing to have a complete inventory of your possible actions. Otherwise, how can you know what the most important one in the moment is? It's a radical approach, and very different from traditional ABC models.

Stepping up a level, motivation stems from values, and a lack of motivation can indicate a disconnect between what you care about, and what you're expected to do (your commitments). Going back to GTD, once you have every commitment listed in front of you, you can then then start asking questions about purpose and values. Often, however, we're so swamped with the day-to-day overload that we can't get enough air to even *ask* those questions...

I want to shift my career to game development field. What are the things i want to do for that?

I am a software professional working in a company as a developer. Now i want to shift to Gaming Industry

A few general approaches:

• Learn who the leaders of the field are - individuals and companies - and become and expert in them. What the business is like, what changes are happening, etc. If you see an event that's relevant, send them a short "I noticed that ..." email. Keep it brief, and it's best if you can offer some insight that would be helpful to them. The point is to not ask for something, but to offer something of value instead.
  
• Start your own "skunk works" project, maybe open source, to demonstrate your talent.
  
• Buy copies of games that are like what you'd like to write. Become an expert in them, comment on user forums, find bugs, suggest improvements, create add-ons, etc. Let your passion and creativity shine!
  
• If you're flexible, ask for an internship, even volunteer - maybe as a tester.

How do you work?

Time management is something I take seriously. When presented with opportunity, I study how other executives, CEOs and professional managers manage their daily time routine.

Could you please share how you spend your day and what set of rules make it the most efficient?

You'll find as many answers to your wonderful question as you desire, depending on how much time you're willing to invest in the search. There are many styles of self-management, and finding one that works for you may be a good goal.

I became fascinated with the question after adopting the methodology in the book "Getting Things Done" (AKA "GTD") by David Allen. The results blew me away, so much, in fact, that I'm now consulting in it. I think Allen's primary contribution is the realization of the role a full mind plays in our daily stress, and reduction in our ability to focus and re-focus during the day.

Another Allen contribution is identifying five phases that "stuff" has to go through in order to be transformed into "work," something many other books miss. For example, getting organized has to do with tools, but that's just one piece of the puzzle.

I think you've taken the first step toward improving your self-management - asking the question. Just by being *aware* that there's room for improvement, you've opened the door - good show!

• Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity

Playing with LinkedIn's Answers feature - Time, cutting costs, and the meaning of life (part 1/2)

I've been trying out LinkedIn's new Answers feature in the two obvious ways (asking and answering) to see if a) I can help people, b) establish myself as an authority, and c) open myself up to networking and potential clients. So far I've asked one question (How did you get clients when you started your consulting practice?) and answered a dozen or so of the deepest or most interesting ones.

In this post I'd like to share some of my answers (more next week). None were voted "best answer," but hey - maybe folks found them helpful.

In a future post I'll look at if and how this is valuable to self-employed consultants. In the meantime, I'd love to hear from anyone who's had luck with this feature, or LinkedIn in general.

• Are you getting the time to get your job done?
  
• What do you value in life? And how do you create value for yourself?
  
• What type of work would you do to attain a higher degree of work and personal-life satisfaction?
  
• What are some creative ways you have cut costs for your company or for your clients?
  
• What type of strategies do you have to manage and reply to all of your email every day?
  
• What is the meaning of life

Are you getting the time to get your job done?

Specifically, I have been involved with three turnaround situations. Short of it, business has been performing poorly due for years to a number of reasons: lack of focus/direction, goals and objectives, etc.

However, when there is a taste of change and the balance sheet shows a positive trend, the leaders tend to get greedy, and demand more in a shorter time. This causes a stress on the organization, the process, and the people. Once the trend slips on the goal of "taking the mountain", there is a sour taste in the leader's mouth.

Your thoughts, opportunities, risks, suggestions?

I think there are two factors - how much you've committed to doing, and how much time you want to allocate to doing it all. Given the hectic pace of modern work and life (much as you indicate in your description of the turn-around) not being totally clear on either of these can lead to problems, either leaks in your system (things you committed to but didn't follow-up on, or were waiting for, but didn't get), or terrible work/life balance issues (stress from being over-committed, not enough time at home, etc.)

Once you're 100% on top of your life (i.e., you know everything you said you'll do), you can start figuring out what's most important, and making the most mature choice possible in the moment. In addition, you start getting clearer about what you can delegate, and what you *don't* want to do. This may also enable meaningful conversations with CEOs, partners, etc. about what's realistic. ("Here's what's on my plate, here's what I have time for, what do you want me to focus on?"

Hope that helps!

What do you value in life? And how do you create value for yourself?

I am looking to gain insight on others on what they value in life, be it their relationships at home, at work, in social settings, in nature, in the quality of their life.

Big question for all, but good to think about.

Determining value is a personal choice, and requires introspection. Personally I like this list of values (from a progressive think tank - see URL):

Empathy, Opportunity, Responsibility, Prosperity, Strength, Community, Protection, Service, Fairness, Cooperation, Fulfillment, Trust, Freedom, Honesty

But the trick, as you point out in your second question, is how to *live* those values. As Jacob Bronowski puts it, "The world can only be grasped by action, not by contemplation."

In other words, there needs to be a direct connect between values and actions. In fact, I'd argue that the opposite (a disconnect) is what leads to much internal suffering.

And how to connect them? Adopt a self-management system that brings the "rubber to the road," i.e., one that captures those actions that move your values ahead, and facilitates your moving forward on them. The methodology I teach (based on the book "Getting Things Done") is ones such approach.

Good luck!

• How Democrats and Progressives Can Win: Solutions from George Lakoff, A new DVD documentary
  
• Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity

What type of work would you do to attain a higher degree of work and personal-life satisfaction?

I'd say it depends on what you love, and what you are good at, which varies from person to person. Life's a balance between ideals and reality, but a first step might be getting clear about what you love - where your passion is. Often we compromise - I like this quote from the story "Is Your Job Your Calling" (URL below):

Everyone tries to do something that seems like the wise thing to do-but that you shouldn't do: compromise. You've got two competing needs or desires-say, independence and security-and you try to find the position that's halfway between them. Typically that doesn't work.

The reason I'm thinking about this is that I just resigned from a steady job to do something risky, but which I care about. Will it be a mistake? I hope not! (I wrote about it in "Commitment Time! (Taking the big leap)"

Best of luck.

• Is Your Job Your Calling (extended interview)
  
• Matt's Idea Blog: Commitment Time! (Taking the big leap)

What are some creative ways you have cut costs for your company or for your clients?

At the individual level, helping people to become more efficient (and therefore more effective) can both cuts costs and generate more income. Why does this happen? Consider time/money wasted:

• looking for information (vs. doing something with it),
  
• responding to inquiries/commitments slowly (or not at all) (vs. quick turn-arounds)
  
• working on the wrong (low-ROI) tasks (vs. ones that impact bottom line and goals)
  
• etc.

Why do I care? I teach people how to work on the most important things, with a sense of relaxed control. However, the big picture is that, once a client gets on top of all of her work and life commitments, she often has some "aha" moments at the forest (vs. tree) level, which can translate into the innovative/creative ideas that she's great at - new product ideas, improved ways to do things, etc. Fun!

What type of strategies do you have to manage and reply to all of your email every day?

I set my clients up using the "Getting Things Done" methodology, which applies to *all* inputs in life, including email. It has you emptying your inboxes every 24-48 hours, but not necessarily *doing* everything in them (impossible), but making decisions, and putting reminders of actions in appropriate places for when you have time to do them.

Email is tough due to the volume, and the addictive nature of it. There are good resources listed below, including the 43 folders links.

Finally, you should consider how quickly you really need to respond to emails, which will depend on your job, and your business. Checking too frequently can stop you from doing the "heavy lifting" work that might be more valuable to you and your organization. I've included a link to my article "Depressurize your email with a 24 hour response time" in case you'd like to read more.

Good luck!

• Matt's Idea Blog: Depressurize your email with a 24 hour response time

What is the meaning of life

That depends on the framework(s) you use in interpreting life, and what your goals are. If you choose a religious framework, then you can tap into their questions/answers.

If not, you have to determine your own meaning, which usually involves tuning in to what you love - your passions - as well as your skills. There are many books on the topic. One I like is "Is your genius at work" by Dick Richards, but anything that gets you asking questions and thinking is good. You might also enjoy Steve's post "How to discover your life purpose in about 20 minutes".

The catch? Often that internal voice that knows what you love and what you're good at is very soft, and can only be heard when you quiet down your mind. Some people find meditation helps, but for me I needed something more applied/mechanical - which is exactly why I teach the "Getting Things Done" methodology for getting on top of everything in your work and life. I found that once I cleared my head of the low-level things, I had mental room to ask (and answer) the bigger questions. Good stuff!

• Is Your Genius at Work?: 4 Key Questions to Ask Before Your Next Career Move
  
• How to discover your life purpose in about 20 minutes
  
• Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity

Information provenance - the missing link between attention, RSS feeds, and value-based filtering

The current spate of RSS feed-reading tools is missing a major feature: None of them (Bloglines, Google Reader, NetNewsWire, etc.) provide help with answering the major focus problem, "Which feeds should I pay attention to?" They are great at collection (one of the five GTD workflow phases I teach clients - gathering new feeds, and sorting them by source, date, number of unread, etc.) but that's just creating a bunch of haystacks. They still require us to laboriously look through each to find the needles (i.e., to assess value).

And this leads us to the real problem:

The links from source to value are one-way, with no feedback.

Here's an example. You're reading through your feeds, and find a post that takes you to an interesting idea (The Rule of Least Power, for example). You jot some notes, save the URL, then move on. Repeat. The problem is the feed reader doesn't know that the article did something important to you - gave you an idea, changed your perspective, made you angry, whatever.

It's like loosing the Chain of custody, or not knowing a painting's provenance. Without completing the cycle back to the source, the reader can't filter feeds by importance, leaving it to us to do manually. (For example, see Bob Walsh's 80/20 Your information feeds idea - though determining which 20% is valuable is hard - and Marshall Kirkpatrick's Open Sourcing My TechCrunch Work Flow.)

Naturally there is work going on in this area. Google has its trends feature (click here if you're a Google Reader user - found via Robert Scoble's article 25,000 items read on Google Reader), and NetNewsWire's neat Sorting by Attention addition. But without having note-taking integrated in the information stream (which suggests standards, or an OS-based solution), tools are limited to impoverished metrics (e.g., clicked-on-post, flagged-feed, sent-to-someone, bookmarked-it), and can't do a good job for us.

How would this work? I haven't thought it through (suggestions anyone?), but maybe a cooperative set of browser plug-ins, sort of a "Zotero meets PageAddict, gets married, has kids" mashup.

The bottom line is I want something that knows when an information stream - podcast, web page, blog post, email, or video - passes the scribble test.

Thoughts?

Notes on using a digital voice recorder for taking reading notes

In October I asked your advice about using a digital voice recorder for transcription, primarily to smooth out my reading workflow (see How to read a lot of books in a short time). I bought one and I've been using it since mid-November. Following is a report on my experiences and recommendations.


WS-300M: A nice product

I opted for the Olympus WS-300M, a combined voice recorder and music player. It's about $80 on Amazon, and is compatible with Dragon Naturally Speaking (I took Eric's advice to check hardware compatibility).

The unit itself is great, though a tad pricey and pretty small - so I have to be careful not loose it. Main likes:

• USB mass storage - Just plug it in and voice files (WMA format) are immediately available. No drivers, etc.
• Music player - I admit I haven't used this, but I like the option. Not sure the output amp has enough power...
• Nice selection of features - record quality, mic sensitivity, folders, etc.
• Recording time - Long! I use the HQ mode, which provides over 17 hours. (You can get 66 hours in LP mode.)

There's really not much to dislike. The built-in mic has a lot of handling noise (understandable, and you can buy an external mic), and having only two mic sensitivity settings is a bit all or nothing, but overall it's not holding my reading workflow back.

Sadly, the same isn't true for Dragon.


Dragon: Not so good

The program is pretty good in some ways, but I had a number of issues with it, primarily:

• Recognition rate too low - I had to make a lot of corrections.
• Making corrections was too slow - The program learns via corrections, so this is important. However, waiting for the menu to pop up was excruciating.
• Slow overall performance - Start up, recognition, etc. all took a long time. Clearly one needs a very modern machine to run this on.
• Poor quality headset - The included headset broke after only a few uses. Official replacement price: $30.

Ultimately, performance was a deal breaker, and I've concluded that manually transcribing and typing is faster.

As an alternative, you can have someone else transcribe for you. Some possibilities (I haven't tried them): CastingWords: Podcast Transcription Service and SpeakWrite: Voice to Document Dictation Service.

(You can find more on typing vs. recognition on the Davidco forums: Typing at 300-400 words per minute?, Best Voice-Recognition Software??, voice recognition, Voice Recognition Software, Help! Touch typing software?, and Alternative to Mavis Beacon's Typing?)


Reading Workflow

So how does it all come together? It's simple, really. I record notes as I'm reading into the recorder, usually during exercise or those "between" moments (waiting for an appointment, etc.) Longer reads are broken up into separate recordings, one per session. The recorder has five folders (each capable of holding tons of files), and I use one folder for each book/video/podcast I'm absorbing. Once I finish, I create a "transcribe ____" action.

When I get to the transcribing, I fire up my editor (see My Big-Arse Text File - a Poor Man's Wiki+Blog+PIM), download the audio file, and start listening and typing. To make this efficient, I never use the mouse. Instead, I switch rapidly between the two programs (alt-tab), using the pause/play shortcut (ctl-p) to catch up on the typing. Simple!


Surprises

This approach works great, and has led to a few surprises.

First, I like having the five folder limit - It keeps my eyes from being bigger than my stomach. Otherwise, I tend to keep reading (i.e., creating more work), and avoid the (more difficult) transcribing part. However, once they're full, I "heat up" those transcribe actions to make some room.

Second, because the recorder's so small, it's easy to have with me, so I'm not having to capture reading notes in multiple places - it's all in the recorder.

Third, I used to abhor transcribing - it was one of those actions that seemed bigger than it was. However, I've trained myself to look at the play times for the files, and they're just not that long! I'm more likely now to just jump in and do it.

Finally, I've found I really want the recorder with me all the time. Not just for reading, but because I'm noticing sounds I want to share with others, especially my six-year-old's delightful impromptu singing, which is really precious to me.


Future

For the future, I need to improve my typing speed and accuracy.

Also, I'm experimenting with ways to make sure I use what I learn from the reading. Specifically I've created a script that nightly selects a random entry from my text file and emails it to me - a kind of "brain blast from the past." More later.