Time Management with a Priority Pyramid

"If I could just add a couple of hours on to my day..."

A millionaire was once asked how much money was enough. His answer: "Just a little bit more."

Many of us struggle with feeling like finances are tight, and if we had just a little more, we'd be happier. Ironically, we often think the same thing about time.

The reason it is ironic is because, while people have all different levels of income, when it comes to time, every person on the planet has exactly the same amount. We all have 24 hours in every single day. There is no option of a little bit more. Ever.

Do you think the following statements are true?

1. You have exactly the same amount of time to spend each day as everyone else.

2. God has given you enough time today to do what He wants you to do today.

3. If you have more to do than you have time for, then there is more on your list than God intends for you.

Strange, isn't it, how if someone is greedy for more money, we recognize that as being ungodly, but if someone is greedy for more time, we often see that as spiritual rather than the same exact ungodly greed? Our intentions may be good--we want more time so we can do more for God or others--but what we're really saying is that God is not giving us what we need.

So, if we have enough time to do all God wants us to do, but are feeling stressed and stretched and burdened by too much to do, then something needs to change. And it's not just trying to fix what we do. That's putting a band-aid on an infection but not treating its source. Time management principles are great, but do little good if the priorities behind them are not addressed.

Therefore, instead of giving time management tips, let's first look at the things that fill up our time. What do we do with the time we are given? Why do we do it?

If you want to be a good steward with money, you need a budget. Without one, you end up spending money on less-important things and neglecting your higher priorities. Time is no different. So here's how to start thinking through how to budget your time.

Get a blank sheet of paper (or a poster-board if you're really feeling motivated) and draw a large pyramid. Separate it into 4 categories using horizontal lines. Ready? Now fill it in, top to bottom, with the following categories:


1. What I MUST do.
2. What I SHOULD do.
3. What I WANT to do.
4. Extra stuff that takes up time.

Like a food pyramid, without the food. =)

Here's how the categories work for me:
1. What I MUST do. This only gets up to 3 things, the roles God has given me, the things I believe He has called me to be that deserve my highest priority. (Example: Being a godly wife and mother, helping women see their worth in Christ.)

2. What I SHOULD do. This category is the largest for me, those things that nag at me, that feel urgent. (Example: Be involved in church, keeping the house clean, building relationships with neighbors, keeping up with correspondence, etc.)

3. What I WANT to do. These are the things I would fill up my time with if I had a limitless supply. (Example: Writing for fun, reading, taking a painting class.)

4. Extra stuff that takes up time. Our days are filled with requirements that aren't necessarily priorities but just have to get done, like brushing our teeth (though I suppose that should go in the SHOULD category!), shuttling the kids (yes, that goes under being a godly mother, but in the day-to-day it feels like the extra stuff--you decide how yours works for you) or paying bills.

Now what? Part 2 (what to do with your pyramid) coming Friday!

Writing Wednesdays: How To Make Great Website Content

Joyce Jones with Segovia Studies did my brand new website and it's excellent. There are scores of things on there I never could have done myself.  You can check it out at kimberlyrae.com
and see the great job she did. She's so creative!

Testimonial Page Joyce made for my Website

So how did I get a great website? With an expert instead of myself!

However, no matter how good Joyce's work is, I had to provide the content. What did I want to say? How did I want to present myself to the world? An amazing website is great but if you don't have any reason for people to stay other than to be impressed at the site itself, that's like those movies that have great special effects but no plot. You might watch it once, but you probably won't come back.

So whether you're building your own website or having it designed. here are some things to think about:

1. Why are you creating a website? Is the main purpose for people to get to know you, find out about what you care about, buy your books? That answer should drive your content.

2. Keep it clean. I have a hard time with this. I love pictures and colors, but when I posted on Linked asking advice about my blog background, pretty much everyone said it was distracting and did not attract them but rather the opposite. I loved the photo I had in the background, but if it was going to make me lose readers it had to go. Joyce designed my website without a background color or photo. It looks very clean. Since there is so much information on a website, you don't want to distract from that with a lot of 'decorating.'

3. Be focused and targeted. After reading from experts like Rog Eager and Michael Hyatt, I realized I was being pretty random about growing my platform--lots of effort but not necessarily well-targeted effort. My current goal is to get people to sign up for my e-mail newsletter so I can tell them when the Sick & Tired series launches, so I've started focusing a lot of attention toward that (speaking of, if you sign up on the website, www.kimberlyrae.com, for my newsletter, you get a free download of my award-winning book, From Africa With Love!)

4.  Less is sometimes better. Have you ever been to a store where they had so many choices it was unpleasantly overwhelming? I was doing that with social media. I put all kinds of links out there--pinterest, Facebook, goodreads, twitter, etc. Then I realized I was doing things backwards. Instead of using my website and blog to get people to all those other social media sites, I should be using those sites to get people back to my website. I've removed everything from my e-mail signature except for my 'brand' phrase and my website. I also removed most of those things from this blog and left only the website for people to go to.

5. Have a recognizable brand. Seems everybody is talking about this these days. Having some phrase of 3-6 words that defines what you do or what you have to offer is apparently quite important. And it makes sense. You don't see movie titles or book titles that are really long. The shorter and more succinct they are, the easier they are to talk about. Like the movie, Taken. First people would say, "Have you seen Taken?" Then when I said no, they could elaborate on how it's about human trafficking, etc., but the short title made it easier to pass the word and word of mouth sells.

I had a hard time deciding my brand in the sense of everything being a consistent color and phrase. Since I write suspense on human trafficking, but also humor and encouragement for people with chronic health problems, I ended up deciding on two 'themes.' My trafficking one is red and black, but my author website and Sick & Tired materials are all a more cheerful green. My phrase for both is, "Know Your Worth, Change The World."

The experts say get a professional photograph done. I never bothered, but when Joyce (who not only creates amazing websites but is a professional photographer) posted the photos she took, I could see why they say it's worth it. She made me look better than I actually do! =)

It pays to do your homework. I've started following blogs of people more knowledgeable in this whole area than myself, and I've learned so many new things that are really helping me grow with marketing. You can be a great writer but you also need a great presence these days. I hope some of this will help you develop that great presence that makes people keep wanting to come back for more!

What do you find hardest about developing your brand or targeting your readers?


Videos on my Website: Why I Wrote the Stolen Series

Are You Sick & Tired of Feeling Sick & Tired?

Welcome to kimberlyrae.com!

Writing Wednesdays: 13 Tips for Writers

People contact me asking about options. They're working on a book but know nothing about getting published, or they know a fair bit but can't decide with so many options out there, etc.

Some new writers give the distinct impression they think that once they finish their book--wallah!-- some publishing company will want to publish it and suddenly they will be rich and famous. Sounds nice to me, but it rarely happens

Unfortunately, the realities are that there are companies that will want your book right away, but only if you pay them several thousand dollars first. You can have a published book in your hands, but you'll never be rich or famous if nobody knows about it. And with millions (literally millions) of books out there right now, no matter how you publish, you're going to have a lot of competition.

This isn't to depress you; it's to give you the reality so you can make a clear and knowledgeable decision about how to move forward.

In an effort to be as concise as possible, here are a 13 things I've learned along the way:

 13 Tips for Writers

1. If you want to be a writer, you have to be willing to learn, be rejected, and work hard.

2. Wherever you are at in your writing expertise, you have a lot more to learn. Be teachable!

3.There is an overwhelming amount of information and options on the internet. Find a few resources/blogs/people you trust and stick with them for most of what you need to know. It gets very overwhelming doing random searches for information, so do it sparingly.

Lady, put the computer down...it's not that bad...put the computer down...

4. Major publishers are harder to get in than ever. If you don't have a following of thousands of people already, expect it to be nearly impossible. I know that's disappointing, but I'd rather tell you now than tell you that after you waiting 6 months for a rejection letter.

5. Subsidy publishers are eager for your book, but that's because you will be paying them and so they will make money whether you do or not. I have not heard of one yet that has worked out to an author's benefit. Be very careful about any publisher that makes you pay them first--and that's not for printing books, it's for the actually publishing of your book (and possibly some "marketing" on their part, usually this runs in the thousands of dollars before you ever see your first book).

6. Self-publishing is easier, cheaper, and you get a book a lot sooner than other options, but know that you are the 100% sole marketer responsible. If you are self-motivated, have a great message, and believe in your book, this can work great for you. Self-publishing is also good for someone who only wants to run a few copies rather than ordering hundreds up front (if you do POD--Print On Demand-- rather than one that starts the print run in the hundreds of copies).

7. If you choose to self-publish, PLEASE create a good product. I can't tell you many books I've seen and read from amazon that have typos, grammatical errors, very homemade covers, or just aren't good writing. Kindle and POD have helped make self-publishing not the stigma of lack-of-quality it used to be, but books like that put the whole group down again.

8. Whatever you decide about publishing, get an editor, or have lots of people read the book before you ever put it out there. You can have 50 people read it, and the 51st will find that elusive typo everybody else missed. Believe me, it happened to me, except the person was about the 450th and the book was already on the market! Find people who will give honest feedback. This is one of my favorite parts in the process because I get to experience my book from a new reader's eyes. What was confusing? Did I get a fact wrong? Can I make this clearer? Is it age-appropriate?

Typos can really change your storyline...

...and they lived sappily ever after....oops, I mean happily ever after!

Let's eat grandma...or rather Let's eat, grandma.

He was doping...I mean hoping.

 

9. Print-On-Demand is the cheapest way to self-publish. I'd recommend Amazon's Createspace. They are user-friendly, have great customer service, and are connected with Kindle, so you can put it up easily on e-book as well. I sell about 3 e-books for every paperback, so getting in with Kindle is important.

10. Spend time on the extras. You may have a fabulous book, but if the two paragraphs on the back are boring, people aren't going to read it. Why spend so much effort on the inside and then fall short on your author bio or your back cover or the one sentence you put on the cover?

11. Invest in a great cover. People say you can't judge a book by its cover, but we all do. With Amazon especially you're not picking books off shelves and looking through them. People are scanning pages and pages of covers and if yours is boring, or worse, looks cheap, there are millions of better ones to choose from. If you don't know what I'm talking about, just go to amazon.com and check out the covers.

If you're a famous classic, you can get away with this. If you're a new author with a book nobody knows about...I wouldn't buy it. Would you?

12. Don't let rejection stop you. When I used to write a lot of articles for magazines and such, I began to expect 9 rejections for every 1 acceptance. Once I got the hang of who to write for and how, that number got better, but it was a realistic way to start. There are lots of reasons for being rejected that don't mean your work is bad. Keep going till you find the right readership. (Unless your work really is bad, in which case, learn and improve!)

13. Don't use God as an excuse for poor quality. That may sound mean, but agents and publishers get real wary when someone says, "God gave me this book," or "The words are Gods so..." and then proceed to say that's why the publisher really should want to publish it, or they won't take suggestions for improvements. If God had called you to build houses, He would still expect you not only to learn how to build houses, but to build them well. If you just started nailing boards together, telling people God told you build houses, you would get a bad reputation and actually dishonor your testimony rather than honoring God. So if God has told you to write, do so, but work at becoming the best writer you can be so your work honors Him.


There you have it. If you've learned some good lessons along the way, add to my list! It's always great to learn from someone else, especially someone a few steps farther up the path than we are. Helps us see potholes we might miss from our viewpoint.

Oh, also, if you have a question about any of this, please add it below and maybe it will show up as a future blog post! (With the answer, of course.)

Happy Writing! And may you live sappily ever after. =)



Related Posts:  Video: Step-by-step toward publishing your book

Video Tutorial: Mainstream Publishing Options

Are Great Writers Born That Way?

Some Stats that May Surprise You About Publishing

Writing for Ministry--Should You Write When Your Faith Feels Weak?

Yesterday I was struggling. My health has taken an unpleasant turn for the worse, and though I'd like to say I had an amazing attitude and spiritual strength, the truth is I was fighting fear, anxiety and plain old annoyance at a sickness that is never going to go away.

So what did I have the urge to do? Blog about it! I was trying to figure out why. Why am drawn to writing whenever I face a big struggle and am fighting my fleshly feelings? Thinking through it, I realized I'm in good company. Shepherd David, renegade warrior David and King David did the same thing. The Psalms are full of songs where David is struggling.

The Psalms don't present a pillar of emotional and spiritual strength. They present a real man with raw emotions and questions that many Christians would find sacrilegious. He cries out things like:

Where are You, God?
Why haven't You fixed this?
It doesn't feel like You're here at all.
Don't You care?
I'm crying and dying here, Lord. Aren't You going to do something?

Most of us don't want to write about weak moments like those above. But you know what? We should. If we want to have a real ministry, we need to have a real spirituality. Not the kind that makes us look good. The kind that makes us look weak and sometimes helpless and afraid and doubting God's goodness.

God called David a man after His own heart. It wasn't because David was so strong. Considering his writings, he was often weak. However, he took his doubting and fear and even anger to God. He was real about his weak moments. He admitted transparently that he was struggling, not just to God but to us. He did not wait to write until he was feeling strong so he could present himself in his best light.

But then...

Don't forget the rest! David wasn't just about airing his struggles. We've all read things by people who just complain and cry and talk about how life isn't fair. That's not ministry. That's whining.

However, though David admitted his struggles and questions, he would end his songs stating what he knew to be true. He started with feelings and ended with faith. Because of that, his psalms give such comfort, because we find ourselves in the beginning, and then we find God at the end. Our weakness, His strength.

Some of the greatest writing we will ever do is when we admit ourselves--our weakness, our struggles, our questions--and then lead our readers toward the truth of God's love and grace and presence.

When you write for ministry, remember David. Present yourself as the sinner you are, so then you can shine light on the God who loves sinners. Write when you're struggling. For one, it helps you think through why you are feeling this way and the truth that counteracts it. For another, it may help someone else struggling the same way. Just think how many people the psalms have helped!

May your writing comfort others as the psalms have, and may you, too, be a person after God's heart.


Related Posts: My New Year's Eve Party--Another Exciting Trip to Urgent Care

When It's Just Too Much

Bound by Fear? Envy? Worry? The Feeling of Our Infirmities

Writing Wednesdays: How to Write Your Memoir (in a NOT Boring Way!)

Last week we talked about why to write a memoir and the different kinds of approaches. Now that you know what style of memoir you want, the next step is to start writing!

However, if you don't want to just start at the beginning and end at the end (the so-in-so was born on this date at this place style, which is usually boring), you need a strategy to get started.

Get out a piece of paper and a pen and mark numbers 1-3. Then think through your life or the life of the person you are writing about. What are the three most significant seasons of your life?

For example, for me, I put:
1. Having health problems, specifically getting diagnosed with Addison's disease and when Hope was born--preeclampsia, eeclampsia, seizures, fluid on brain, wondering if I was going to die.

2. Living overseas in several countries, learning about cultures.

3. Writing then speaking about human trafficking, my books becoming bestsellers and making a difference.



Once you have your 3 main seasons, under each write the word "Moment" and list the most striking moment you can remember within each of the seasons.  Again, for example, here are mine:

1. Lying in the MRI machine, wondering if this day would be my last.

2. The day a riot started while I was on the street in a rickshaw, or the time I ate cow brains. =)

3. The first time I met a person who'd been trafficked.

Now, in my opinion, these 3 seasons are going to propel the force of your book, but you don't just want a random collection of stories. People want to know why they are reading something, and most of the time, unless they're related to you, they don't just want a bunch of memories. They want memories with a purpose, a lesson. Either what you did right and learned from, or what you did wrong and learned from.

So under your 3 seasons, write the phrase "The main idea I want my reader to take away:" and then think through what the biggest lesson of your life story is.  Mine:

God's dreams for us are better than our dreams for ourselves, even when it feels like He is taking everything away.

Now you have a theme that will carry through your 3 seasons, and all the other things that will fill in the holes.

Write about your 3 seasons, starting with your moment and working your way through that moment. Next chapter you can give the more practical details like time and place and era.  For example:

I start the first chapter with me lying in the MRI machine, wondering if I'm going to die that day. The reader does not know any details of why I am there, what is going on, how old I am, etc. But if the scene is written well, the reader will be so taken into the scene that they want to continue reading to find out the answers to the mystery I have presented. The next chapter I would tell the full story of how I ended up in the MRI, then work my way through to the end lesson learned. Back and forth throughout that first third of the book, I will tell older and newer stories that go with this main idea.

Then I can move on to the next significant season, doing the same. You can even have a new theme idea for each of the 2-3 parts of your book. Perhaps even split the book into a before Christ and after Christ 2 parts. Or before you learned your lesson and after you learned your lesson. For me, my book would go something like this:

1. Start with the intense scene in the MRI, leaving the reader with the question, how did this happen and how did you get to this point?

2. From there I would go back to moving overseas, all my big dreams and ideals, all the while with the reader knowing it ends with me having a lifelong condition that will destroy these dreams and wondering how I am going to handle it.

3. After the international stories, some funny, some sad, with lots of lessons I learn from the Lord along the way, then the big wham comes, the health problems get worse, things get bad. This is the "climax" point of the book, the big crisis that will make the whole story go one way or the other.

4. From there is my person struggle with losing my identity, my having to rearrange my idea of who God is and how He can still be good when my dreams are dying.  You want to tell your story in a transparent way that readers can relate to.

5. After this is the climbing out of the hole and finding the sunshine again. My books on human trafficking, how they are reaching more people than I could have had I stayed overseas and done what felt significant to me.

6. Conclusion that makes my final point, bringing the whole story together under my theme, leaving the reader satisfied and hopefully changed for good.

Time to get writing!!! You can do this. In fact, I just got an e-mail last weekend by a woman who attended my seminar several months ago, and now her book is finished and on the market. I'm thrilled for her, and can't wait to read her story.  Let me know when yours is ready, too!

Any questions?

Related posts: Writing a Memoir People Will Actually Want to Read!

Writing Wednesdays: Writing A Memoir People Will Actually Want to Read!

           I started a memoir for two reasons. The first was my family history—or rather the lack of it. My grandfather was in World War II. My grandmother had to have a double wedding with her sister, even wearing identical dresses, because of difficult financial times. My grandparents went through the Great Depression. They lost their first baby. The served God, raised children, and gave us grandchildren a beautiful legacy.

            Only they never put it in any form we have to keep. I want to tell my own children their stories, only the stories died with them. I have hints of stories, but not enough facts to create a history from them.

            The second reason for my memoir was equally important. I had been having unusual, difficult health problems for over ten years. As I faced my second pregnancy under the category of high-risk, still with a confusing and undefined condition, I wanted our stories on paper for my own children and grandchildren to know and learn from—if I were not around to tell them myself.

            Life is fragile. And beautiful. And each of us has experiences worth recording.

            So if you are considering writing a memoir, here’s the question you need to start with:

Why do you want to write it?

1.      To share about family? (You don’t want to lose your own history?)

2.      To tell about an era or historical event? (You were in Vietnam and want the world to know what it was really like?)

3.      To become famous? (You know juicy secrets about a famous celebrity and this is your ticket to stardom?)

            Next, keeping in mind how you answered the above, there are different ways to approach writing a memoir:

1.      Chronological—in my personal opinion, this method is phenomenally boring. If I see “Chapter One: So-in-so was born on such-and-such a day in such-and-such a place,” I immediately want to close the book, or at least skip about three quarters in to the interesting part.

2.      Topical—this is when you tell your story from subject to subject. For example, all the love stories in one section, then the difficult stories, then the happy stories, etc. This can be interesting if, say, you are writing about the past four generations of your family, and reading about their similar experiences throughout different eras of history would be interesting.

3.      Random—like a blog, a random memoir goes along like a conversation, with you giving incidents as they come to mind. This works if you want your memoir to be casual, or if you have a lot of great stories within specific topics that might get too much if you keep them together.

4.      Event-based—these are best when memoirs are created from an important event people are interested in. When the author of “Let’s Roll” wrote a memoir about her husband, people were interested because he gave his life on September 11^th saving the lives of others.  In that book, the chapters bounced back and forth, starting with the event people were most interested in, then going to the person’s life story, back to the event, then back to the person’s life, until they combined in the culmination of the person’s story as well as the event.

5.      Historical or Era-based—this chronicles your journey through historical events or eras that resonate with the reader’s memories. Say you were actually there when sliced bread was invented, you planted a victory garden during WWII, or were at Woodstock, or JFK’s funeral. Your story, told through the eyes of history, pulls readers into the history with you.

            Regardless of how large or small your audience will be, you will want your memoir to be, well, memorable—and for good reasons, not bad ones! Therefore, you want it to be well-written, and presented in such a way that, like any other written piece, makes the reader want to read to the second sentence, to the second chapter, through to the end.

            You likely have a story worth telling. If so, it is worth the effort to turn it into a story worth reading!

            So once you decide what type of memoir you want, what next? Find out next week!
  

 This was published in Southern Writer's magazine earlier this year!

Writing Wednesdays: 21 Ways to Market Your Book on Amazon

I'm a pretty lousy salesperson. I don't like pushing something on someone who may not want whatever I have to sell.

However, I do love passing the word about something good or helpful I've found to people I think would really benefit from it. And I'm learning, from all this research on marketing, that passing the word sells things better than me trying to be a salesperson. Go figure.

Today I'm passing the word on a Kindle book titled:

Marketing Your Book on Amazon:

21 Things You Can Easily Do For Free
to Gain More Exposure and Sales

Link to Author's Blog

If you don't have a Kindle, never fear--you can download it straight to your computer. You need to have it on a computer for a reason which I'll get to later.

If you find general information about social media marketing overwhelming, or you're just getting started and you need to know where to start first, I believe this book will really help you. It focuses only on Amazon and how to increase your visibility and sales through that avenue. 

This isn't just about getting on the Amazon Bestseller list. Even though my books are Amazon Bestsellers already, I still learned a lot of great new tips of how to use Amazon to get more people finding and buying my book. In fact, I went to a writer's conference that taught me some of these tips, but I learned more from this book than I did from the conference!

I especially like how, by reading the Kindle version on my computer, I was able to follow her instructions immediately by opening new windows and going step-by-step through the process she presented.


Well, there you have it. I was able to click links actually in the book that took me directly to what she was talking about, so I could follow her instructions right then (while they still made sense!), then move on to the next instruction.

This is a definitely helpful resource if you have a book for sale on Amazon but don't know how to utilize things like the Amazon Author Page, Author Central, etc.

So what are you waiting for? Here's the link below so you can check out this resource right away!

Marketing Your Book on Amazon