Monday, December 28, 2015

Cleaning up your website.

It is that time of the year when we gather with family and friends, ringing out the old and bringing in the new.  Most of us make resolutions or goals for the coming year.

When it comes to your business one of the best things, you can do to start the year right update  your website.

When was the last time you went through your website with a fine tooth comb to make sure it was up To date, and all the links go where they should?

Case in point: I have a client that I built a website for eight years ago. It is a great website it has some items to buy online and classes, etc., but it had been neglected – we all just get busy and feel that everything is fine. She did notice some of her books sales were down, but she chalked that up to the publications being older.

She contacted me to put up her latest book and shopping cart. As I was looking through her website, I noticed there were a lot of things that should probably be removed or updated. So I asked her "do you need any other updates?" As she went through the pages of her website, she was horrified to find her shopping cart was out of date and not working right. She had some pages that needed to be altered because things had changed – you get the picture.

She may have ended up paying more than she though for the simple addition,  it turned into a major overhaul. We didn’t touch the design – just contents, links, shopping cart and a few pictures.
Now she is thrilled to be starting the New Year with a fully functional updated website. 

This will not happen to her again because she will make sure to have an inventory of her website yearly…


How about you?

To success beyond measure and friendships that last a lifetime…

Pamela Jacob Artista Design 
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Saturday, December 12, 2015

Time Management - Pomodoro

Many years ago, I read about the Pomodoro time management technique and then as things often do I didn’t do anything with the information. I was reintroduced when I started using an online project manager. Since them I have found it to be amazingly useful.

The Pomodoro technique is a popular time management life hack. The technique allows you to work in sprints (called Pomodoro sessions) and maintain regular breaks. This has been proven to keep your mind fresh and fast helping to maintain focus and effectively manage distractions.

If you feel there is not enough time in the day, you have too many distractions and you are always struggling to finish anything this is something that has proven to work in resolving all these problems and more.
The Pomodoro Principles

  • Work with time, not against it
  • Eliminate burnout
  • Manage distractions
  • Create a better work/life balance.

All you need is a good timer - here is how it works.

  1. Choose a task that you want to focus on
  2. Just one task at a time
  3. Remove all distractions
  4. Set your timer to 25 min
  5. Work on your task until the timer rings.
  6. Take a 5 min. break – you have just finished your first Pomodoro!


Repeat steps 1-6 three more times, followed by a 20 min break
It’s not as easy as it sounds, that’s 25 minutes of steady, focused work on ONE TASK. 

  • NO Multitasking
  • NO emails
  • NO phone calls
  • NO checking Facebook, Twitter, Instagram
  • NOTHING!

NO DISTRACTIONS ALLOWED

The amazing project tool (I talked about at the beginning of this article) has the Pomodoro timer built right in. It is called Kaban Flow – simple to use and FREE. Who doesn’t like that!

I would suggest you go to the Kaban Flow website and sign up you will love it!
When you do go online and sign up make sure and view the very short tutorial you will be using this system like a pro in a matter of minutes.
Let me know how you like Kaban Flow and most of all how the Pomodoro system has helped you.


To success beyond measure and friendships that last a lifetime.
Let me know how the Pomodoro System has helped you!

pamela@artistadesign.com or call me 801-910-4825.