I went into business the same year that Apple went into near-bankruptcy. Because of this, I made the decision to go PC, even though I loved Apple computers and had used one at my corporate job. It seemed like the smart thing to do.

I spent the next 12 1/2 years cursing Windows, Microsoft and PCs and spent way too much time battling viruses, computer crashes and lots of other things I don’t care to remember.

Then one day about a year ago, malware took over my PC — and my printer and scanner, too. “That’s it,” I said. “I’ve had it.” My son and I already had a date to buy him a MacBook; instead, I bought two. The second one, for me, was a total impulse purchase I made in about three minutes. I’ve never looked back.

I love my MacBook not because it works — which it does, every single god damned day — but because it’s beautiful. I run my hands over its sleek body. My fingers move quickly over the keys that don’t clack. Even crappy Websites look good on the high resolution screen. With my Mac I can work anywhere — from my bed to Starbucks — and do what I do best: create. Steve gave me and others that gift.

Good bye, Steve. Thank you designing beautiful products and for your service here on earth.

Back in October I wrote a post about how I was looking for ways to offload some of the mind-numbing tasks that eat up a lot of my time — and that prevent me from doing those things that I absolutely love.

The first thing I outsourced was my business bookkeeping. The bookkeeper, who is fabulous and worth her weight in gold, has spent the last two months cleaning out my books, which were filled with errors. She’s also been advising me on how to improve my cash flow and which expenses to cut. Most important, she’s helping me become better focused on bringing in income, which is my strength.

Things moved a little slowly at first and I wasn’t sure I had made the right decision. But last week I realized I had. She came to my office and **while I worked** she paid bills, filled out tax forms and did all that stuff I used to spend hours doing. All I had to do was sign the dotted line on various forms and things. I literally was like, “OMG.”

From there, I seriously began considering how I could better use my virtual assistant. She’s been with me for a couple of years now, but it’s been on again, off again as I really don’t use her to her full capacity. I started changing that by looking at the tasks I do that I *hate.* I’ve been sending more tasks her way — everything from cleaning out my email inbox and ordering letterhead to helping me with some of my project work.

This is still a work in progress as I fight the guilt of sending her tasks that I don’t like doing, but it’s becoming much easier. I love it when she sends me completed tasks — stuff that used to take me hours is all done and ready to go!

The next thing I want to outsource is a big one for me because I have huge resistance against it — hiring a company to come plow out my driveway after a snow storm. Anytime it snows more than four inches, it takes me two hours or more to dig out. And with this series of storms pounding New England, I’ve been digging out — a lot — and it’s seriously cutting into my work time.

I’ve resisted outsourcing this chore because I’m of sturdy stock; I can shovel my own damn snow, plus it’s good exercise, blah, blah, blah. I’ll let you know how it goes.

Do you outsource certain tasks in order to free yourself up to do what you love? If so, what have you outsourced and how has it worked for you?

My friend mentioned that she was using a plan she found in a magazine to “jump start” her exercise routine for the new year.

Her comment made me pause for a bit. What makes it so that some of us are very disciplined when it comes to achieving one goal but not another?

For me, exercise has always been a priority. Yet, I’m not so disciplined when it comes to limiting distractions while working — especially stuff like email, social media, chatting with friends on the phone or responding to texts, cleaning off my desk, etc. etc.

My friend, however, can work 10 – 12 hour days without being distracted by social media and telephone calls.

Here’s what I’ve concluded: You have to have a really good reason for WHY you want to achieve a certain goal and you have to MAKE TIME to develop the new habits that you want.

These ideas aren’t new. Timothy Feriss talks about the WHY in his book, The Four-Hour Work Week. Dan Kennedy talks about the HOW in this blog post, Where Did My New Year’s Resolution Go?

If you have a goal you want to achieve — and have wanted to achieve for years now — you need put aside the standard advice of making your goal specific and quantifiable. Instead, consider the following ideas:

1. Why do want to achieve your goal?

Why you want to achieve a specific goal should be specific to you. It should be something you feel absolutely passionate about — so much so, that you’ll move heaven and earth to ensure you get it done. If not, you’ll give it up after a month or so.

One reason I get to the gym regularly is because about five or six years ago I had excruciating lower back pain. Because I had been running since high school, I had pretty much blown out the disks in my lower vertebra. After months of physical therapy — and knee surgery to boot — the doctor said it might be best to give up running.

Because I was getting older, I realized I needed to find a way to remain healthy through my 40s, 50s, and well into my 60s, 70s and 80s. So instead of coming up with a short-term goal of “lose weight,” I decided to ensure I was living a healthy lifestyle — one that would last me until old age.

2. How will you achieve your goal?

To achieve a big goal, you have to break it down into little steps and then ensure you have the resources to tackle each step (i.e. information, time, money, etc.).

For me, attaining my goal of being healthy meant I had to join a gym, something I was loathe to do. (I used to *hate* the gym — that’s why I ran. Freedom. Outdoors. Nature.)

A couple of years after joining the gym, I began working with a personal trainer. Then, I made a huge step and learned how to use the strength conditioning machines. Now I’m at the gym at least four days a week doing strength conditioning and cardio. I also limit my alcohol intake and while I don’t count calories, I do make an effort to eat healthy meals.

All of this has meant that I’m in better shape now than I was in my 20s.

3. What will you give up to reach your goal?

Dan Kennedy hit the proverbial nail when he said that you have to make time to achieve your goals and that to do so you have to give up something else.

This doesn’t mean that you have to give up something good, only that you need to monitor your time to figure out where it’s going . . . so that you can determine what you’ll remove in order to make time for your goal.

For me to make exercise my priority, I’ve had to juggle my son’s schedule with my exercise schedule, say “no” to people who want me to do things during my scheduled gym time, and go to bed early on those mornings when I have to be at the gym by 5:00 AM.

You may have to watch less TV, spend less time on the computer, or ask your spouse to take over some household responsibilities so that you can reach your goals.

What’s your experience with achieving goals? Do you have one thing that you’re very disciplined about and something else you haven’t been able to achieve no matter what you do? Please share your experiences.

Michele Linn of the Content Marketing Institute emailed me this evening to ask where my article was . . . the one that was due last Friday.

Uh oh. I hadn’t done it . . . because it wasn’t on my schedule (even though I swear up and down I put it there).

In the last six months or so, lots of things have fallen through the cracks. I find myself doing more and more mind-numbing tasks — tasks that eat up tons of time — and less of what I really want to do. I find myself getting flustered and angry and resentful.

Matt Cutts has been writing about his 30-day challenges on his blog. I do 30-day challenges with myself but I haven’t been too public with them.

I’m changing that because I want to make a HUGE change. I want to off load the tasks that make me unhappy and upload the projects that make me happy. (See Kel Kelly’s post, Lick Subway Railing or Attend Networking Event?, about happiness in business.)

Even though it’s not Nov. 1, I’ve already sorta kinda started my 30+ day challenge. I hired a bookkeeper. This is huge for me because I’m one of those people who thinks she has to do *everything* herself.

In other words I have a very hard time asking for help.

But I need help. First off, let me just that I’m a marketer and while I know how to add, subtract and balance my checkbook, anything beyond that makes my eyes glaze over.

Second, I started using Quickbooks Online (huge mistake) and now my books are rife with errors. (The bookkeeper suggested I go back to the desktop version. I’m following her advice — it’s why I hired her.)

Third, I spend hours entering data and pushing buttons and trying to make sense of it all. It never makes sense. It’s like it’s written in Sanskrit.

And last, I HATE ACCOUNTING!

Glad I got that off my chest.

So travel with me during November as I learn how to let go of tasks and make room for the things I do want. As my former coach Sharon Teitelbaum told me repeatedly during my coaching calls, I’m the CEO of DH Communications, Inc. I shouldn’t be doing low-level tasks that I can pay someone else to do. (Sharon, btw, is fabulous. If you’re considering work-life coaching, call her.)

What’s your take on the DIY trap? Do you offload everything you can? Or do you get bogged down in details?

I’ve spent the last few months cleaning clutter out of my home. The garage, the cellar and the spare room had become stuffed full of no-longer-used items such as old books, toys, bikes, clothes, baby stuff, old computer equipment, out-dated electronics, broken things that were still usable (they just needed to be “fixed” hahahaha), etc.

Cleaning out the clutter, while a dusty and dirty job, was oddly therapeutic. I came away from the process having learned two valuable lessons:

1. I need far less *stuff* than I think I need.

2. Having empty space has allowed me to think more clearly.

Both lessons have profound implications, but the second one is key. Clutter takes up space — physically and mentally. You have to maneuver around it, move it aside to make room for other stuff, clean it, organize it, and deal with it.

Too much clutter can make you feel anxious and out of sorts. It can also keep you from achieving your goals as it “blocks” you spiritually and/or emotionally.

As I worked my way through the physical clutter in my house, I began noticing that in addition to the physical clutter, I had a TON of digital clutter:

• Multiple email addresses and accounts — I spend over an hour every day just dealing with email, most of which I’ve never asked to receive.
• Multiple social media accounts — I manage my own Twitter, Facebook, Buzz, LinkedIn, and Google Reader accounts.
• Megabytes of hard drive content — My poor little MacBook is stuffed to the gills with client projects as well as my own stuff.

I’m on a mission to begin eliminating some of this clutter because you know what? I have at least a half dozen really cool projects that I started for myself — and that I’ve not finished. On top of that, I have two big fat hairy goals that I’ve had on my goals list for years, both of which I really want to achieve.

I can now see I haven’t finished projects that really excite me nor reached my big goals because I let all this clutter get in the way.

As with removing physical clutter, you have to start off slowly and do it in stages, otherwise you get overwhelmed. My goal this month is to eliminate much of the junk and spam email I receive. This is easier said than done as companies send so damn much of it!

I’ve been unsubscribing from email I never asked to receive, and I use Gmail’s Priority Inbox feature, which makes it super easy to delete the crap I don’t want. I also use the “Report Spam” feature, but I’m not sure if that does any good.

I use a Yahoo email address for any commenting I do online. This address gets picked up by the scrapers who in turn send out mass spam. This keeps my business account fairly clean while making it easy to delete the spam in one fell swoop.

I’ve also separated personal email from business email. This means I don’t have to deal with non-pressing but still important items until my “off” time.

Do you have any other tips that have worked for you?

And, what has been your experience with eliminating digital clutter? I’d love to hear it.

A few months ago, while deep in the planning stages for my son’s bar mitzvah, I added up the costs of a typical bar mitzvah party, looked at the number for a long time and then said to my son, “Dude. I could take you to California for a week and give you a better time.”

His response, “Can we tour Google?”

“Uuuuhh, sure.”

The first thing I did, after hearing my son’s request, was to find out if Google even offered tours. In fact, they do! However, according to the Google page I read (which of course I can’t find now), the only way in is through a Google employee as employees are allowed to host two guests per month.

Pulling some strings, I snagged a tour . . . and off we went to California for eight days. Woot!

Touring the Google Campus

For those of you who haven’t seen the Google campus, it is . . . amazing. I hadn’t been to Mountain View since I left California in 1999 and was astounded to see building after building that make up the campus.

According to our tour guide Karen Wickre, Senior Manager, Global Communications and Public Affairs, Google employs over 8,000 people in Mountain View alone — which is one reason why the company has dozens of cafes / cafeterias / smoothie and frozen yogurt bars through out the buildings.

To have thousands of people descend on the local area during the noon rush hour would cause instant gridlock.

In fact, according to Karen, due to having access to so much food, new Googlers often gain 15 pounds, referred to as the “Google 15″!

“We also lose lots of man hours when people leave campus,” said Karen. “People have to get into their cars, drive somewhere, eat, and then come back. By providing on-campus cafeterias, people can eat here with other Googlers and save time.”

In the hour that Karen generously gave us, we visited three or four buildings, a couple of the cafeterias, one of the gyms, the post office, and one small work area that wasn’t off limits to the public.

We also saw the beach volleyball area, the outdoor eating areas, the Corporate Store (in beta) and the funky bicycles that Googlers use to get from building to building.

Even more astounding, however, was the bus depot. To reduce pollution and traffic, Google buses its employees to various points around the Bay Area, including San Jose and San Francisco. We’re not talking vans — we’re talking full-sized coaches equipped with wifi!

I came to the Google campus with a slight chip on my shoulder. Google is a big company, it has made some questionable moves (re: the initial roll-out of Google Buzz), and it sometimes feels like Google is trying to take over the world.

But I came away with a new-found respect. I was simply blown-away at how the company treats its employees, its respect for the environment, and its visionary thinking.

We could all use a little Google dust in our businesses.

In addition to visiting Google, my son and I made stops at the Apple campus and the Intel Museum.

Unlike Google, Apple doesn’t offer tours, so we settled for walking up and down Infinite Loop and buying a t-shirt from the Company Store (which is open to the public).

The Intel Museum, on the other hand, was way cool. Free and open to the public, the Museum features a well-laid out historical timeline of the founding of Intel and the development of the silicon chip. I learned about Intel’s “Copy Exactly” strategy and how it manufactures wafers.

The museum even includes a history of Intel’s marketing and advertising — including its audio logo.

The lesson I learned from Intel? Don’t be afraid to be different and keep things simple. Intel’s founder, Bob Noyce, for example, wrote Intel’s business plan on one sheet of paper.

Because I focus on B2B Web marketing, I sometimes forget that everything a company does is marketing — from the way it answers the phone (or doesn’t answer the phone) to how it treats people who obviously aren’t customers.

Google gets five stars for its corporate tour — it’s the best one I’ve had. And the fact that Karen, a senior level employee, took time out of her incredibly busy day to show two tourists around campus says something.

How many companies would do this? I’m thinking not many.

And Apple? Steve, honey, you could easily build a pretty cool Apple museum or visitors center for the Apple faithful. Having one would go far in generating a little more good will. I love your products and I totally admire you, but you could do more to give people a peek behind the curtain.

I’m one of those people who reads books cover-to-cover, including the acknowledgments, the prologues, the introductions and the testimonials.

You can learn quite a bit about the author/s by reading this information: who is in his/her network, how the book idea came about, who edited the book, and sometimes how long it took to write or the obstacles encountered.

So I was tickled to read Jason Fried’s and David Heinemeier Hansson’s list of people who inspired them on the Acknowledgments page of their new book, Rework. (Fabulous reading, by the way. Five stars.)

The 37Signals founders included the typical names you see in books of this type, i.e. Seth Godin and Jeff Bezos.

But they also included lots of other “big” thinkers who have changed our world, including Julia Child, Thomas Jefferson, and Frank Lloyd Wright.

Love it!

While walking the dogs this morning, I pondered my own list of people who have inspired me in some way in the last 25 years, both personally and professionally. Herewith my list, in no particular order:

Jane Austen
Virginia Woolf
Sharon Teitelbaum
David Meerman Scott
Mark Victor Hansen
W. Clement Stone
Brian Halligan
Anne Holland
Mac McIntosh
Steve Jobs
Barbara Stanny
Bob Bly
The Founding Fathers and Mothers
Doyle Dane Bernbach
Jim Fannin
Leo Babauta

Who inspires you?

Nancy Lublin, the founder of Dress for Success and the CEO of DoSomething, wrote a thought-provoking article, “Let’s Hear it for the Little Guys,” for the April issue of Fast Company.

In it she talks about why we should focus on the followers of visionary thought leaders.

“I think we’ve got it all wrong,” she writes. “We’ve overdone this whole leadership/founder/entrepreneur thing. And we’re not spending nearly enough time crediting the folks who turn all that visionary stuff into tangible reality: the chief operating officers, the mid-level managers, the staffers. If the word didn’t have a pejorative tinge to it, I guess you’d call them followers.

“The world needs people who can follow intelligently. Good followers ask questions. They probe their leaders. They crunch the numbers to ensure that their visionary boss’s gorgeous plan actually works.”

For over a year now I’ve been trying to figure out why I’m not hard-wired to “think different.” I’m definitely not a Steve Jobs, Seth Godin, or David Meerman Scott.

Once I read Lublin’s article, however, I realized that the world needs people like me — those of us who implement others’ vision.

Lublin calls us “followers.” I call us “pragmatic implementators.” We’re the ones in the marketing trenches.

When I give presentations on social media, SEO, and Web marketing to groups, I find myself answering very, very basic questions.

“What’s ‘viral marketing’?” a corporate communications manager once whispered in my ear. She was too embarrassed to ask the question openly.

“How do I open a Twitter account and post things?” people ask constantly.

“How do I use Facebook for business?”

“I heard meta tags are dead. Why do I need to optimize my site?”

“How do I leave a comment on a blog? And, do I even need a blog?”

Visionary thought-leaders are wonderful. But someone needs to teach people not only how to fish but how to string the pole and bait the hook.

Taking someone’s vision, breaking it down into bite-size chunks and action items people can actually implement takes real skill — and patience.

You have to show people how the “vision” works in language they understand so that they “get it” in about 10 seconds.

The best part of when I give presentations is when I hear a collective “ahhhh” from the group after I’ve demonstrated some how-to. “Oh my gosh!” someone will say. “You make this so easy! Thank you!”

I’m a real fan of visionary thought-leaders. We’d wouldn’t advance without them. They push the envelope and get us to stretch in ways we hadn’t thought about.

But after reading Lublin’s article, I realized I needed to take pride in being a pragmatic implementator — especially when I get an email like this from Marketing Coordinator Rochelle Otterstrom at Burnett + Company, LLP :

“I’ve implemented some of the web SEO strategies taught at the IGAF Marketing Conference by Dianna Huff. Our Google ranking has increased, we’ve received more calls citing our website as the referral, and our Hubspot website grade has improved! Even better, I received kudos from my firm’s Partners.”

Woot!

The world needs us pragmatic implementators, too. What do you think? Do you agree or disagree?

As motivational speaker Mark Victor Hansen says, all of us can come up with excuses for why we can’t (or haven’t) yet succeeded.

I’m not educated.
I’m over educated.
I’m under qualified.
I’m over qualified.
I’m too poor.
I’m too rich.
I’m too fat.
I’m not healthy.
I’m handicapped.
I’m too old.
I’m too young.
I have kids.
I’m not married.
I’m the wrong color.
I’m the wrong ethnicity.

And the biggie — I’m a woman.

That’s the excuse the woman behind the Men With Pens persona used to justify using a male pen name and why she kept her gender a secret from almost everyone, including clients. According to her (him?), she made more money writing as a man than she did as a woman.

When I first read her coming out of the closet post on Copyblogger months ago, my first thought was, “Of course. We all know this.”

My marketing women friends and I acknowledged that yes, it’s still a man’s world. And, yes, you can find lots of data that show women still aren’t filling leadership roles — despite a large pipeline of very smart, very capable women.

Sadly, sexism does still exist, as evidenced by our last national election cycle. No matter what you think of either woman, Senator Hillary Clinton and Governor Sarah Palin took a beating in the media — by conservative AND liberal outlets — and were castigated for their clothes, their looks, their body images, and their motherhood.

Male candidates, on the other hand, rarely went through this type of media bashing gauntlet. John Edwards, for example, managed to keep a mistress on the side without too much trouble or media inquiry.

I hashed out my anger and my confusion about this issue after the Men with Pens post came out with my colleague Mark W. Schaefer, who had originally addressed a related topic on his blog, “‘Social Media Expert’: Women Need Not Apply.”

Mark encouraged me to write about sexism in business, but I held off, not wanting to come across as an “angry woman.”

After much grappling, however, I realized that we are what we make of ourselves.

If you want to use an excuse like gender to explain why you haven’t achieved your goals or why you can’t be successful or why you can’t make as much money as male copywriters, then that excuse will hold you back.

On the other hand, you can say, “Yes, sexism (and other -isms) exist, but I’m not going to use it as an excuse.”

You can claim your power the way many of the women did who headline the Simmons Leadership Conference. At this conference, you’ll find women from all industries and walks of life who are making radical changes in their communities and across the globe.

I’m especially excited to hear Sheryl WuDunn talk about how women in the developing world have lifted themselves and their communities out of repression and poverty.

I’ll be attending the conference, Friday, April 30, 2010. I’m looking forward to meeting other powerful and successful women, celebrating my own successes, and getting inspired to make even bigger changes in the coming years.

Will I see you there?

(A HUGE thank you to Mark who encouraged me to overcome my fear about addressing the topic of sexism and who thoughtfully responded to my lengthy emails. Mark, you’re the best. I hope we’re able to meet face-to-face one day.)

Like many people, I have a computer hard drive crammed with files: documents, audio, video, PowerPoint presentations — you name it, I have it.

When it was time to replace my aging PC a couple of months ago, I got price quotes for a blazing fast Windows 7 machine that came with mega huge storage. “You won’t need another machine for a few years,” said my IT person.

I was all set to buy it when I walked into the Apple store with my son to get the machine he’d been saving for for months . . . and a half hour later, walked out with a 13″ MacBook Pro.

(And let me just digress here a minute to say that I cannot find the words to express the entire Apple experience. From the store displays to the packaging to the product themselves, you just don’t find anything like it — anywhere.)

At first I thought I’d use the machine as my personal laptop. It’s small, it’s portable, but it definitely was not a business computer.

When my aging PC started acting funny, I began migrating my business to the Mac — thinking I’d purchase a larger iMac later in the year.

In the process of moving, however, I discovered having a “small” computer was actually quite freeing.

Based on the “less is more” principal, here’s how having the small MacBook has made me much more productive:

1. I dumped (almost) all of my software — With the exception of the slimmed down version of Microsoft Office for the Mac, all other software is now cloud-based, including:

Basecamp and Highrise from 37signals — I use Basecamp to manage client projects and Highrise to keep track of contacts and tasks. (Highrise is far superior to Google Tasks / Gmail contacts). I can also access both applications through iPhone apps.

Harvest — This nifty application lets me keep track of time and expenses, and it syncs with Basecamp. And, with the handy iPhone app, I can track time while on the go.

Quickbooks Online — Quickbooks desktop software is bloated and hard to use. I hate it with a passion. But most accountants like it, and truth be told, it is easy to send your QB file to your accountant at tax time. QB Online, however, is much easier to use and because it’s online, I can access it from anywhere.

WordPress — Although I made this change before purchasing my Mac, it still counts as part of my overall “become more productive” goal. Instead of two Websites (my DH Communications site and my blog), I now have one site — simplifying everything. And again, I can access my site, and make changes on the fly, from any place that has an Internet connection.

Yield Software — I use this application to help me with SEO and PPC for clients. Don’t know how I lived without it.

2. I cleaned up my hard drive — Last year I spent a week cleaning out my physical office and removed piles and piles of paper. This past month I’ve cleaned out megabytes of unneeded files gathering dust on my hard drive. Cleaning out all this junk has made it much easier to find the files I need on a day-to-day basis.

3. I work glitch-free — With my PC, I was spending increasing amounts of time dealing with technology. Due to anti-spam, anti-virus, anti-malware, anti-pop-ups, anti-scripting, anti-anything software and browser plugins, nothing worked right.

Clients would point out things on Websites that I couldn’t see. Java never worked properly, rendering some applications useless. Then of course, there were the famous Window reboots that would happen right in the middle of a project I was working on. Argh!

Now everything just works. I’m finding I’m much more productive since I don’t have to stop mid-stream to deal with some “small” technological glitch that would leave me pulling out my hair.

In short, having my MacBook has freed me to do what I love: Create.

Have you moved from a PC to Mac? If so, what kind of Mac do you own and what do you find is the biggest benefit?