The Must-Read Books For Women Entrepreneurs

I recently had a chance to participate on a very popular website by sharing my favorite book for women entrepreneurs. It was so hard to pick just one book; I’ve read so many and refer them to people who are in different stages and processes in their career. As I was forced to narrow it down though, I chose one that I still think about often and has really made an impact on me. The site, Toilet Paper Entrepreneur, just went live and is already ranked on Google’s first page - very exciting! Check out the tip from #92 - she seems very smart. :) "The Must-Read Books for Women Entrepreneurs" is brought to you by Toilet Paper Entrepreneurs (great blog for small business owners).

Meanwhile, this picture of the stacked books represents the pile on my kitchen table that I need to get through. Ugh, how do you squeeze more time out of the day?

My Initial Twitter Experience

I REALLY didn’t want to begin twittering and have resisted for a long time. I am already feeling the time-suck of social media by writing two different blogs based on two completely different interests, trying to beef up my LinkedIn account and navigate all its capabilities, maintaining a personal FaceBook page where I post pics of my baby, and helping my company utilize our corporate Delicious and FaceBook pages.

I decided to start VERY slowly with Twitter. I created an account and then sat on it for days. Then I gradually searched and followed experts and thought leaders to see what they were doing. I have changed my profile about 10 times and will probably keep changing it until I decide what my objective and strategy is for Twitter so that when I finally narrow my focus I will already be up and running. Three of my observations:

-I am not tweeting with my best friends and I don’t necessarily want to. I am on Twitter to follow the experts in a field and soon hope to establish my own niche and develop an expertise. This is not my FaceBook account and the two audiences are very different.
-Again, it’s not so much the tool. Twitter is just another medium in which experts get their message across.
-I really like that I can access Twitter from my BlackBerry. While the application is a little slow, it gets the job done.
-Writing a compelling message in 140 characters is actually pretty difficult

Social media will dominate you and your time unless you proactively take control, know your purpose and objectives, and set aside time in your schedule. Most importantly ABIDE by that time. If you have a Twitter account, follow me here: @jennymunn

Technology and Productivity

Efficiency experts are always touting the benefits of not logging onto email first thing in the morning. They say that you are much more productive if you’re being proactive at getting strategic tasks done instead of reacting to emails. When I once mentioned this to a previous boss she said we didn’t have this luxury since I was in a sales position and clients depended on us responding in a timely manner. Understandable but I have always still wanted to try this experiment.
So I very much enjoyed reading this article: E-mail, instant messaging and Internet use are rampant, but do they make us more productive? It mentions that in 2007 Intel conducted an inside experiment where they asked certain team members to turn off their email during certain times of the day. These workers reported being more productive and recommending it as a company policy. The article also has some great statistics about time spent on tasks before, during, and after distractions such as email, IM, phone calls, texts, and coworkers. Very interesting!