Saturday morning, found me driving to an African drum camp that I never found. Following the directions on the flyer, I found only miles of dirt road… Felt like I had entered an alternative universe where things and places aren’t where you expect them. Cell phone out of service range, I drove back down the mountain.

Car packed with camping gear and clarity still fighting for a solid hold in my head (last week was a bit murky), I decided to hit the coast, the magnificent Pacific Ocean at the beautiful Mendocino coast.

An hour and a half later I arrived. The road I was on intersected with Highway 1, the coastal route. Should I go left or right? A sign caught my eye: Mendocino Coast Writers’ Conference at the College of the Redwoods. Cool!

I caught the end of the agents’ panel Q&A and then casually sauntered into a breakout session called “Writing off the Map” for non-fiction writers. The session leader, Andrew Todhunter, shared numerous tips, suggestions, and anecdotes from his experience as a professional writer.

I picked up all kinds of great ideas from his candid talk. What I want to mention here is a tool he used to help himself out. The example is a writers guide, but you can tailor it for anything you do regularly that also challenges you.

Your Own Personal Writers Guide
Whenever he observes habits or patterns about himself writing he writes it down. For example,

• He is always miserable writing before he breaks a story. (So when he is feeling miserable and discouraged when writing, he reads this and remembers, “oh yeah! I always feel this way before I break a story!”)
• Another one was, “I can’t write on my desktop computer. I can only write on my laptop.”

The guide is a reference for when he is having a tough time–the murky times. We know ourselves the best, so what better way to help yourself out of a funk than by getting help from yourself when not in a funk?!

I’m adding these to my own writers guide:

• identify main theme and supporting points (when lost in an article)
• reading books and magazines really inspire me when stuck
• shut the door when I need to focus!

What an awesome turn of events for the weekend!

Merlin Mann of 43 Folders recently brought up an excellent concern about over-organization of email folders. My experience has been that it is indeed easy to go overboard in setting up folders to file “useful” or “of interest” emails…especially when really excited about getting organized after a long bout of chaotic habits.

I haven’t read his MacWorld article that Gina Trapani refers to in her post about slimming down to an effective system using, what she calls, the Trusted Trio.

They both say that just about any archived email can be found with a good search program. Sounds good. Sounds simple.

So I went back to my email program to give my folder organization a stern looking over. Could I narrow down my folders to 3 or 5? Nope. Sure, I did see folders that could easily be deleted and that never should have been created in the first place (yikes!) But what else did I find?

I saw three main types of folders that I use frequently:

• what I call “Ready to send”. Mostly client related: forms, generic communication, invoices/receipts. These are all in one folder.
• 1:1 client communication. Most, not all, are time sensitive. I do refer to previous emails, but usually not more than two months old. A good search program might suffice, but this is easy for me as is.
• the rest (and there are quite a few) actually aren’t emails at all! This is how I track developing ideas and store project research. I’ve long thought there is a better system for tracking this information, I haven’t made it a priority to discover it yet.

Many thanks to Merlin and Gina for providing the compelling arguments that encouraged me to review my system!

I forgot to mention that The Union also posted a slide show on their website to accompany the article they did about my house going solar (which I posted about here.)

Tuesday night’s Stitch n Bitch found me hosting 11 women, 2 of which actually stitched (knit) and not many of which bitched. All ate, drank and were generally quite merry.

I got to catch up with Wendy, the ever entrepreneurial cook-as-a-hobby turned personal chef. Check out her solution to cooking for her own family–brilliant!

She was finding that when she got home from a day of cooking for other people, she just didn’t have it in her to cook for her family. [within every problem, therein lives the solution] She rented an industrial kitchen at a local community center for a Saturday afternoon. She invited 4 friends (insta-sous chefs!) who had indicated they would love her services but weren’t quite up to the price.

Wendy did all the shopping, menu planning, and brought the equipment. The friends brought music and $160. They spent the afternoon cooking, dancing, & laughing (I suspect a little red wine may have been imbibed as well). They went home with 10 meals for 2 people (or 20 meals for 1 person) in containers that could be frozen, then popped in the oven or microwave.

Everyone had a great time and went home with good food. $8/plate is a pretty good deal, especially if the alternative is 1. expensive restaurant, 2. fast food, 3. eating nothing, 4. 5th quesadilla in as many days, 5. week and a half old leftovers.

The sixteenth issue of the Project Simplify newsletter The Weekly Simplifier is now archived on our newsletter archives page.

Here is a brief summary of the contents:

1. A Note From Shawn
Wishing for Maui; This newsletter has something for everyone
2. Quote of the Week
by Thomas Edison
3. Article: (The Lessons of) Biking for Groceries
by TWS Co-Editor Lance Brown
4. This Week’s Simplification Tip
Mouse Shortcuts
5. In the News & On the Web
In The News: Teenage bedroom transformation, preparing for an organized school year, and experts say clearing clutter saves time and money
6. Featured at ProjectSimplify.com
A Robot Reads Our Blog
7. Keep Smiling
Overheard at the Office (and Elsewhere)

Read the full issue here.
Subscribe to The Weekly Simplifier here.

[posted by Lance]

I mentioned in an earlier post that my one year term as Toastmasters Area 64 Governor has come to a close. It officially ended June 30th, but I volunteered to help with the coordination of the recent Officer Training because I remembered how quickly the responsibility fell on me at the beginning of my term last year.

The training was last Saturday, July 29th, and I considered that to be my last official duty as the Gov.

On Tuesday, at our regular club meeting, I received a most unexpected and kind honor from fellow Toastmaster and former President Cheryl Domnitch.

Cheryl presented me with roses and fresh tomatoes from her garden as a show of appreciation for my volunteer work for the Area clubs. How sweet!

You know, just meeting and connecting with so many wonderful people and learning what I did was awesome. And the opportunity came at a good time–having a year-long commitment to coordinate several events in one area was good discipline for me (haven’t been in the same area for more than 3 or 4 years since high school). I still considered myself new to the area and appreciated the opportunity to meet people in a leadership role. I think about how much I gained from the experience and am filled with gratitude. To be honored in front of my club was icing on the cake!!

[btw: the title, Running Before Walking, referred to the fact that I volunteered for this District office before holding a club office. I had been in the club for about 3 months.]

I’ve just posted the instructions for an Excel command to combine the contents of different cells into one.

While the example situation is for mailing list structuring, I know that I’ve wondered how to do this in the past for different reasons, though specifics elude me at the moment. Call me a geek if you will, but I was excited to see this work for the first time!

The page is the second to be added to the Instructions page–a page which will continue to grow.