Fashion Accessories

Credit: Valerie Birkel @Valilliia_bi

It is the more cost-efficient way, but do we lose our integrity by doing that? At Baciano we design in Los Angeles and even if there are some contradictions to do so, it is worth it. Here are the pros and cons of designing in the USA.

Designed somewhere else photo.Cons:

Having an in-house design team can be more expensive than just picking out clothes from a catalog. Often an in-house design team is not only hired when it’s time to design the next collection but is working year-round on improvements, new design, and other things. This means a minimum of 3 extra salaries for your company.
Designing your own clothes take up a lot of time. If you only have a little team that is also involved in other parts of the business, this could cost you time for other tasks. This usually applies more to small companies without a corporate structure. Most family businesses are run like that.
Hiring an external designer might be more time efficient for you but can cost a lot of nerve. It can be difficult to pass on your vision. Every designer has their own vision and style as well and It can be almost impossible to bring both visions together to your liking. Both parties often end up stressed and unsatisfied. Compromises shouldn’t be an option when designing your next collection.
Once the designs are done, receiving the final samples usually takes a while as well. When the first batch of samples comes in, almost 90% of the time there will have to be alterations done on almost all of the pieces. It can take up to 3 runs until the final samples are good to go.

Pros:

Your designs are unique. You can be sure that no one else has the pieces you are selling which drives the value of your brand up a lot.
It’s a great feeling to accomplish things on your own without using work others did for you.
You have full control over everything including materials, colors, cuts, and alternations. It is important for a clothing brand to create clothing that is tailored to their target audience. Buying mass product usually doesn’t do that.
The USA still is one of the most powerful countries in the world. Being able to decorate your brand name with a USA label is a huge benefit. People trust the quality of your clothes more than if they come from Asia. It’s a great advertising opportunity.
By designing in the USA, you support the American economy by creating jobs. This should be especially important to you if you are an American company that is driven by a wealthy economy. The clothing business is very dependent on exactly this. If the people are not doing good and don’t have money to spend, they won’t buy luxury goods like high-quality clothes.
Working against exploiting workers in poor countries. Where you could argue that these people need jobs (and you are right), the way they are treated is against humanity. Not supporting this way of business might lead the way for the conditions to change.
American standards and other countries standard vary in most cases. What means quality to us doesn’t mean quality to them. Maintaining standards is an important part of a business.

1. Stop Sending So Many Emails

Sometimes it’s much better to handle something in person or over the phone than using email. You should learn how to recognize such situations otherwise you may find yourself buried under replies to your emails. Generally, email is great for communicating well-formulated messages that require, at most, a simple confirmation. It’s much less suitable for extended group conversations where multiple participants share their thoughts with others.

2. Start Reading Your Emails Regularly

We know that the last thing you want to do before or after work is read work-related emails, but that’s how things have to be if you want to become an efficient email organizer. Depending on how many emails you receive every day, it may take just a couple of days or even hours for your inbox to start overflowing with new, unread emails. By reading your emails regularly, you ensure that the situation never gets too out of hand.

3. Start Checking Your Emails Throughout the Day

There’s no excuse for not owning a smartphone these days. Regardless of which email service you use, there’s a way how to make it work on all major mobile operating systems. Having your email on the phone allows you to easily read new emails throughout the day, which can drastically reduce the length of your scheduled email-reading sessions, the importance of which we’ve described in the previous chapter.

4. Start Using an Email Client

Web-based email services are great because you can conveniently access them from anywhere, even when far away from your own personal computer. But even the best web-based user interface can’t rival the features and convenience of dedicated email clients such as Outlook or Mailbird. Email clients are faster, can display emails from multiple email services in a single window, support keyboard shortcuts, come with powerful spellchecking capabilities, and are available for all operating systems and devices.

We’ve already mentioned Outlook and Mailbird, which are arguably the most popular email clients for Windows, but there’s also Airmail, an email client for iPhone and macOS by Italian company Bloop SRL, Postbox, a desktop email client and feed reader for Windows and macOS written and sold by Postbox, Inc., or Mozilla Thunderbird, a free and open-source cross-platform email client developed by the Mozilla Foundation, just to name a few available options.

5. Stop Subscribing to Newsletters

Websites and companies love email newsletters because they allow them to maintain engagement and sell products with minimal effort. While some newsletters are clearly valuable, most, sooner or later, end up being ignored. You may think that it’s no big deal to subscribe to a newsletter-after all, you can always unsubscribe later-but experience tells us that things tend to become unmanageable much quicker than it initially seems. We recommend you stop subscribing to all newsletters as a rule of thumb and use other communication channels instead to receive information from websites and companies, such as social media networks or RSS.

6. Start Using Multiple Mailboxes

Why have just one mailbox for everything when you can have several and use a different one for each of the things you do. You can start, for example, with one mailbox for work-related emails and one mailbox for personal emails. Some people like to take things further and use a privacy-oriented email service such as ProtonMail for potentially sensitive personal communication and a free and convenient email service such as Gmail for web services and online shopping. Another advantage of this approach comes in the form of better security. Having some degree of separation between various activities minimizes the impact of an email breach and gives malicious hackers less information to work with.

We know for a fact that spam accounts for 45 percent of all emails sent. We also know that about 14.5 billion spam emails are sent every single day, many being some form of advertising. To say that spam emails lead to a productivity loss would be an understatement.

What is Mobile SEO?

With the increase of competition, it is becoming progressively more difficult for companies’ websites to be found in search engines and therefore gain traffic. There is a need to search for new technologies that bring some kind of feedback, and it is from this search that the Mobile SEO came about. Mobile SEO consists of website optimization techniques for mobile systems. However, mobile SEO should not be considered a technology aimed only at mobile phones, but also at every system with a mobile interface that can access the web. The difference between using mobile SEO to traditional SEO, though, is not too great. Basic techniques such as keyword usage and link building will normally be used here. Therefore, it is necessary to take into account that mobile users have very different habits of traditional users, and it is this (considerable) difference that has further stimulated its evolution.

Search Engines vs. Mobile SEO

Contrary to popular belief, Search Engines has been adapting to new technology. Major search engines systems, along with other mobile access systems, already have their own Mobile Search Engines. A major breakthrough in the area of ​​mobile access is Google Mobile, which makes your mobile device’s access to Google features such as Gmail and Google Maps.

- Google Sitemaps for Mobile
- Bing Mobile Friendliness Test Tool

Mobilize your website and find out how mobile SEO and a call to action can help convert more sales while providing a better customer experience.
How to begin?

As previously mentioned, the techniques involved in Mobile SEO do not differ from traditional SEO techniques. Creating quality content with optimized keywords, using the link anchors well and building links for Mobile Search Engines is a good start. The biggest difference is how to make it easier for these Mobile Search Engines to find and index mobile sites correctly.

Sitemaps and Structure

In the Webmaster Tools, Google has a whole section on Mobile Sitemaps, explaining its structure and other specifications for the correct sitemap configuration. A mobile Sitemap can only contain URLs that serve mobile web content, the remaining links will be ignored by Google. Sitemaps currently support and automatically detect the following markup languages:

- Non-mobile (this includes most of the content)
- Mobile XHTML Profile (WAP 2.0)
- WML (WAP 1.2)
- CHTML (iMode)

Validating these codes is essential. The validation allows full code correction so that it can be viewed by any device without major problems. Some devices simply cannot read pages that are not 100% validated. One final thing is that Google always uses the HTTP “Accept” header to explicitly state that the site should return documents with mobile content, rather than standard HTML. If your site meets this standard, mobile content will be properly crawled by Google crawlers.

Keywords

The use of smaller keywords is indicated in mobile optimization because, according to surveys, they are more suited to mobile users. All of this makes sense when we consider how much space is available in mobile devices, which greatly restrict the use of extensive searches. This will make all the difference, after all it will all depend on how the content will be rendered and displayed on the mobile device, which could range from an Android or an iPhone, to a totally outdated mobile device. All these factors influence the research of this type of user. According to Google, a search by mobile device has on average 15 characters, around 30 keystrokes and takes about 40 seconds to be performed.

Specificity

Try to optimize your mobile website with what the user needs. The mobile user’s profile is usually to search for something very specific. Your search will depend a lot on the situation in which the user finds itself. They may be performing location searches while on the move, such as searching for a particular restaurant or flight time. However, the user could also be in the comfort of their own home, searching for a simple song or movie for their entertainment. Therefore, it is interesting to create specific pages and links for this visitor, preventing them from having to type too much to find what he is looking for, as well as make evident (in prominence) the essential information, throwing away distractions and generic information.

Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) Project by Google

AMP stands for Accelerated Mobile Pages, which are pages of sites optimized for simplified and almost instant loading when accessed via mobile devices. The project is an open source initiative of major content publishers and technology companies, aiming to improve the entire content ecosystem for mobile devices. Basically, an AMP page has an architecture that prioritizes the loading speed of the page. This architecture is divided into 3 different configurations:

- AMP HTML: a different HTML code, with restrictions and extensions, going beyond basic HTML. Most of your tags are normal HTML, but some are replaced by AMP-specific tags;
- AMP JS: responsible for ensuring fast rendering of AMP pages. Its main function is to render asynchronous everything that is external, so that no element of the page can block the rendering of another;
- Google AMP Cache: is optional, but stores all pages in AMP HTML cached on Google servers and improves their performance automatically. Other companies may also develop their own AMP cache.

When performing a Google search using the mobile phone, the configured AMP pages are marked with their acronym. When you click on a result marked as AMP, the simplified version of the page loads almost instantly. Also, very slow pages are receiving a warning mark for this problem, showing more and more the importance of having a fast loading website (you can also check and apply some tips to improve the loading speed of your site and avoid this negative alert on your website).

When configured, an AMP page becomes a second version of the page, with the same content as the original version, being generally identified with “/ amp” at the end of the link, which makes it easier to identify its performance in isolation in web reports Analytics. This also ends up raising another question that can become a problem – duplicate content.

Content

As in traditional SEO, the challenge is to generate relevant, quality content that the user often looks for, agreeing with their location and their information needs. This information must be presented in an accessible way, guaranteeing the user mobility, regardless of the content, device and browser used. Adding new technologies and adapting them to what the user needs is an increasingly constant role in our area. Knowing how to analyze each point, studying pros and cons, and comparing with existing technologies is just the thing to do.

The online world is often evolving and advancing in technology. SEO is still vital as we all need our online presence to be in front of people searching for relevant keywords to our business.SEO seems to be getting more difficult to achieve, especially when search engines like Google keeps updating their algorithms and today, Google’s algorithms search out for what should be of the utmost quality, professionalism and organically authentic.

Gone are the days of keyword stuffing, article spinning and piling on any backlinks. If you think about it, anything that is published online should be of quality and value, that you yourself would prefer to find, which makes sense as it will in turn bring about the right response – the lead generating response that all of us are seeking.

Right from the start when setting up your website, the most important thing in matching these updates is making sure your site is optimized to the best with quality content and avoiding any poor or “thin” content. This means avoiding keyword stuffing, and posting poor content that offers little or no value to readers. This applies to all content and including your most important landing pages. Therefore quality content is the key in SEO that matches the latest updates of Google’s algorithm.

Gone are the old ways of SEO, although some of the following still apply:

Meta Tags – The relevance of meta tags are however still of vital importance for user experience. They still matter as they are what will get you more click through rates.
Blogging – it has to be better quality blogging. Already a few years ago there was emphasis in quality blogging, the emphasis is more so now and there is a greater push for better quality content. So content is king, still rules. Make your articles useful as well, something that you would want to read. Make them the necessary content that people are seeking, the type of information that’s helpful and relevant.
Ensure that your website is responsive to mobile devices – it means optimizing your site to work well on mobile devices – smartphones, tablets, etc. Google will penalise websites that are not responsive. If your site has been built before 2010, it’s probably not mobile device friendly. Just test it over your own smart phone.
Backlinks – this still apply but only quality backlinks matter now. Quality link building involves things like quality guest content and local directories – anything natural and helpful to web users. This can happen only if you have quality content on your website.
Most website owners, even those who have the bare minimum knowledge about SEO, know that quality inbound links is a key factor in ranking. Links act as indicators so that people on the net can find your site, which provide useful content in one way or another. Useful content can something informative, educational, inspirational, or even just entertaining. In this way, your content earns quality inbound links which indicate to search engines that your site is valued by others.
Quality content helps search engines do their job, attract quality links, initiates more social shares, and reduces bounce rates as they increase time on your site.

It’s better to produce one piece of exceptional content than it is to produce dozens of useless articles just for the sake of doing it. But when it comes to content marketing you can’t afford to rest on your laurels, because if you don’t regularly produce new content, your competitors will outpace you. Your ranking will decline sooner than you know.

Note that freshness of content is also a ranking factor, indicating to search engines that a given piece of writing is relevant, especially when the search query in question is timely or newsworthy. Publishing content regularly can help improve your site’s chances of ranking for these timely queries.

Effective SEO is only possible with high quality content to back your efforts. Content is what help search engines to index and interpret your site, and it in turn bring about user engagement with your brand when it appears in search results, which is something search engines value highly. Investing in quality content creation is the only way to achieve lasting gains in your brand’s organic rankings. To assist you in this, HubSpot has a content creation kit that could be useful to you.

Our businesses also differ in terms of interface with clients. If you do “business to business” transactions, the number of people you interact with on a daily basis may differ from someone whose business relies on interacting with consumers. Appointments may be more practical in some instances than others. You have to tailor-make how you manage access to your particular situation if you are to eliminate distractions. Having said that it is important to note that some people do not mind spending the whole day at the office entertaining friends, visitors, and casual acquaintances dropping into the office whenever they feel like it. Do not be that kind of person. It sets the wrong kind of example to junior staff and can harm one’s productivity because these people take up time that you do not have and besides you want to cultivate a professional environment.

The demands of the day are enough to fill the eight working hours available unless if you tend to stay back and play catch up. How do you stay competitive in the market if there is no separation between work and play? Anybody serious about success and achieving effective results will put boundaries that are clear so that there is no confusion. Entrepreneurs are more susceptible to this especially when the workplace is easily accessible. The fact that you are your own boss even puts more responsibility on you to maintain self-discipline and self – management. I have written a whole book called, “Achieve More through Self – Leadership. In it I walk you through the practicalities of how you can get better results through managing self.

Appointments are an important way of not only managing time but managing life. They help you become more structured and productive. Some people seem not to be able to honour their appointments. I once attended a job interview that was supposed to start at 10:30am. By 11:30am there had been no communication about what was happening or when the supposed job interview was going to take place. I decided at the point that this company was probably not good enough for me to join because if you don’t respect people’s time you probably do not respect them.

You may be saying appointments are just not for me yet you never rock up at the doctor, dentist, lawyer or hairstylist without an appointment. Why is that the case? Because you simply won’t see the dentist without an appointment. They have given you conditions acceptable to them. We tell the world around us how to treat us by what we allow.

Some people are always available when you want to see them. If you are always free to see people at short notice, you are probably not that organized. The one who owns a diary will manage the one who doesn’t own one. Why? Because the one without the diary is always available, even though he is very likely to forget important meetings, dates and engagements because of a lack of organization. I used to have a boss who kept a diary and whatever you promised to do in the line of work, he would write down, including the day and time you said he would have it by. You would of-course forget because you didn’t record it like he did and when the time to deliver comes, guess who would be found wanting. It was then that I decided that I do not commit to an action that I am not willing to write down because, what’s written gets done!

You may be saying, “what if my business feeds off the “walk-ins? The fact that your business relies on walk – in customers should not be an excuse for disorder. Sometimes those who drop in unannounced may indeed be potential customers, suppliers, cold-calling salespeople, and even worthwhile business contacts. There is nothing wrong if the call is beneficial to you and your business but I believe there must be a structure and way of doing things that follows certain pre-set principles. I remember seeing a poster in an office that said “if you don’t have anything to do please don’t do it here”. It’s humorous yes, but true. Appointments help to structure your day and helps you allocate time to what’s important. This means you can focus on your most important asset: the paying customer. There is nothing as bad as walking into a place wanting to do business and staff are inattentive because there is just a demand on their time. I am more understanding if the personnel are not busy entertaining social visits at work.

In conclusion, you know your business situation better than any of us. All we can do is make recommendations that will enable efficiency that leads to growth. Some of you may actually need a personal assistant who will put order in your office and focus on the things you are not willing to do that will enable to focus on the highly value things you ought to do such as running a business.

Do you think successful people are just plain lucky?

Successful people did not become successful because they were lucky.

They did not achieve success by accident. Being at the right place at the right time, meeting relevant people, reading the appropriate book, did not come about accidentally or by luck.

Luck is brought about by Labour Under Correct Knowledge.

Successful people prepared themselves. Instead of giving up on anything they started and wanted to achieve they got stronger by learning more.

Success is a methodical, orderly and deliberate process of deciding what you want to do with your life, what are the steps that you need to undertake to get you there, and lastly what you will do once you get there.

One of the most important aspects, if not the most important aspect to success, is the ability to visualise your successful outcome and stay focused on it until you achieve it.

“Imagination is more important than knowledge, knowledge is limited.” – Albert Einstein

Successful people understood the potential power behind knowledge, yet they also understood that, for them to close the gap between where they are and where they wanted to be, they would have to piece together the enigma that is most often referred to as “life”.

They had to build a picture, a vision, of success in their mind, and then go about taking action on creating that envisioned life.

In much the same way, you have to be serious about your present and future, you need to have the knowledge that is required so you, too, may close the gap: you need to be and remain determined to devote yourself to taking massive action to build your business of succeeding in life.

You, too, will need to see the end, your dream and destiny that you desire in your mind’s eye. It is up to you to take the necessary and relevant action to make it all happen. It’s just like going to the doctor with a particular health problem.

The doctor may prescribe a medication for you to take four times a day, yet he cannot be there with you to ensure that you are taking the medication.

It comes back to deciding to be responsible for your life.

Have you noticed how it all stems from that one attitude? Being responsible for your own life.

Your success, your being responsible 100% for you to live your dream life starts here.

When you accept 100% responsibility for yourself and your current life situation, you will have the power to move towards those things you truly desire in life: which is success in all areas of your life.

This life-changing article is about possibilities and opportunities, knowledge and tools. It will help expose your unique course in life.

It will inspire, support and motivate you to excel, to do what successful people do, to have all that successful people have, and to become a shining example of a successful person.

Here, you’re not being told what you couldn’t do, instead you are being told to shoot for the stars. And above all, you are being shown how to shoot for those stars.

“A person is what he thinks about all day long.” – Emerson

Interesting thought, wouldn’t you think? So much so, it’s worth repeating: “A person is what he thinks about all day long.”

Success and happiness cannot happen if you possess the same old thoughts and beliefs.

If you do not change your mind, if you do not get rid of the unsupportive thoughts and beliefs, you will inevitably remain stuck in your old ways. Not much, if anything, will change.

Let’s give you a quick overview on how change comes about:

Your BEHAVIOUR, how you act (or perhaps do not act), controls your success or failure. Your ability to attain high levels of success is dependent upon your actions and behaviours. Your results are the outcome of your behaviour. Now let’s consider where your behaviours come from and what controls them?

Your FEELINGS command your behaviour. Every action that you take is first filtered through your feelings that reside in your subconscious mind. How you feel about something determines what you do and how well you do it. So where do your feelings come from?

Your ATTITUDES create and influence your feelings. Your attitude is your perspective from which you view life. Whatever attitude you have about anything will affect how you feel, which, in turn, affects how you act. Where do your attitudes come from?

Your BELIEFS create, control and influence your attitudes. What you believe about anything will determine your attitude about it, which will create your feelings, and then which will direct your behaviour and action. Belief patterns are so powerful that two people who are in the same situation could perceive things completely differently. It only requires us to believe what we see and how we see it. We all have thousands of beliefs – big and small. And where do your beliefs come from?

Your THOUGHTS create, control and influence your beliefs. Your thoughts are real and are immensely powerful. Everything you accept from the outside world and everything you feed yourself from within is a product of your thoughts. Everything starts as a thought.

So, it goes without saying you need to learn to control your thoughts. And when you do, you will automatically control your beliefs, your attitudes, your feelings and, consequently, your behaviour and actions.

The big secret to success:

Learn to control your thoughts and you will influence your behaviours and actions. It’s all a mind-set. That’s what we’ve been saying all along.

Success is predictable and is not achieved by accident.

Have the mind-set of the successful people and you will achieve success. Believe and it is yours!

“There is a great future in front of you, you can leave your past behind.” – Joel Osteen

Science of success experts have concluded that the brain is a goal-setting organism.

That is fantastic news for us: for whatever goal we give to our subconscious mind, it will work for us day and night, 24/7, to achieve it for us; to make it a reality.

The principal breakthrough that scientists made was that we do not need to waste our precious time and effort trying to change old thoughts and behaviours: we just simply create new ones.

And the other discovery they made was that we can continue to create new thoughts, new memories, new behaviours, new skills, and learn new things for as long as we are alive on this earth.

Now, with the new discoveries in recent years, it has been scientifically proven that our capacity to achieve and succeed literally has no limits.

Our brain has the capacity to continually learn during our entire lifetime.

Our brain can form new thoughts, can have new memories, and can learn new things by the millions, no matter what your age is. By the millions.

That’s how many new things we can learn, that’s how many new skills we can learn, that’s how many new thoughts we can have, that’s how many new behaviours we can adopt.

This is encouraging because there is no limit on your capacity to achieve new things.

No limits whatsoever for the human brain to learn, memorise, develop, achieve and perform at higher levels than ever imagined. It makes no difference what your age is: you are capable of learning anything new that you want to learn.

That adds to what we spoke of earlier: no more excuses.

“The future belongs to those who prepare for it today.” – Malcolm X

Your brain has the capacity to achieve way beyond what was ever thought possible. So now is the time to break out of your limited thinking and start dreaming big and imagining unlimited possibilities.

Becoming successful is not impossible.

It is a choice you make through a decision. Every day, step-by-step, you may climb the mountain of success if you’ve decided to do so, if you’re committed to accomplish what the others think impossible.

Design your future now.

Prepare to receive what you desire.

Thanks to the phenomenal advances made in cognitive science and the development of NLP (Neuro-Linguistic Programming), personal change, personal transformation, has come a very long way.

In fact, personal growth is no longer a mystery.

NLP has brought to light that change, transformation and growth can be fast, reliable, and even fun. It has shown us that we do not need to spend thousands of hours slaving away to increase our creative-thinking abilities.

By practicing a few simple exercises and applications, you can start your creative juices flowing, and you may even amaze yourself at the quality and quantity of good ideas that you can come up with to expedite your success.

It can allow you to achieve something you seek within days and months as opposed to years and decades. That’s the power of the progress science has made on how the brain works, and also how you can have your mind to be your best ally in achieving anything you want.

Learn to live as you like by no longer living as you dislike.

Are you ready to get on the road to success and fulfilment?

Bear in mind, much like everything else in life, success requires practice and massive, consistent action.

“Success doesn’t mean the absence of failures; it means the attainment of ultimate objectives. It means winning the war, not every battle.” – Edwin C Bliss

Do you feel as if you’ve outgrown your circle of friends? Perhaps you do not feel safe or understood any longer. There may be fewer and fewer things you can share with people in your habitual circle, and it leaves you feeling lonely or isolated. If so, you are not alone. Welcome to one of the core dynamics of continuous growth!

As we continue to evolve, many of us struggle with a sense of not quite fitting in with our traditional community or tribe: we may have expanded or changed beyond the borders of tribal norms, and no longer find the same sense of belonging there. Other members may have tightened the tribal rules to foster a sense of security. As a result, we may feel a sense of disconnection or alienation.

In truth, each one of us belongs to many tribes simultaneously: there is your original tribe – the family you were born into – and then there are all the communities of choice you have joined: your work tribe, your social circles, your faith-based community, your neighborhood, and more. These communities are not static; they are in continuous flux because they consist of individuals who are in continuous states of change. When there is a lot of change happening in either the individual or the community, a sense of dissonance results.

How are we to deal with this? First, it is important to recognize that tribal allegiances were historically forged for survival. They were adapted over the course of centuries to ensure the safety and survival of the group. Survival required that individuation be sacrificed for the trade-off of security.

In modern society, the tables are flipped. Whether we enjoy it or not, change is essential for survival at every level of being. The pace of change is driven by technological advances and happens with increasing rapidity: sociologists estimate that more change has taken place in society over the course of the past 100 years, than in the totality of the previous 6,000 years. Individual adaptation now is a requirement for survival, and the pace of individual change does not always match the pace at which our various tribal communities evolve. The resulting dissonance can cause intense friction and pain.

Dissonance also results from confusion between the concepts of ‘connection’ and ‘community.’ We tend to equate one with the other, when they really relate to different qualities. Connection relates to connectivity: the objective physical technology or media that enables us to build community, but which does not represent the quality of that community. Connectivity simply offers the opportunity to connect with others through internet, texting, phone calls, or any other social networking options.

Community is the result of building relationship through meaningful interaction over time. There is no shortcut; it is a process that develops when bonds of trust and intimacy are nurtured and honored.

And here lies a caveat: When we confuse connectivity with community, we depersonalize the sacred nature of true community and start relating to people as objects. Instead of developing intimacy over time, we collect friends on social network sites or try to buy people’s allegiance. Yet friending is simply an act of connecting; it does not create intimacy.

In fact, social experiments indicate that technologically dominated connectivity results in alienation and social collapse over time. In a groundbreaking social experiment conducted by Josh Harris, one of the founders of social networking on the internet, he found that the more people’s private lives were exposed by 24/7 technology, the more their sense of intimacy and relationship deteriorated until the community collapsed in violence and self-destructive behavior.

It is time to revisit our concepts of community so we can create tribes that offer a true sense of intimacy and belonging.

In his 1987 book, The Different Drum: Community Making and Peace, psychologist M. Scott Peck described several core characteristics of true community. Beyond the obvious components of inclusivity, commitment and participatory consensus, Peck pointed out the quality of embracing diversity through realism. When each member contributes their unique viewpoint from a place of humility and goodwill, the community benefits from a broader perspective in which to better grasp the full context of a situation. In other words, mutual tolerance helps members to embrace one another’s different viewpoints as an integral part of the whole, instead of imposing a forced compliance to groupthink or cohesion.

In an environment like this, members experience and express compassion and respect for one another. They allow others to share their vulnerability, to learn and grow, and to express who they truly are. When conflict arises, they learn to resolve it with wisdom and grace. Members listen to and respect each others’ gifts, accept each others’ limitations, celebrate their differences, and commit to find solutions together rather than to fight against each other. Indeed, the true spirit of community is the spirit of peace, love, wisdom and power. The source of this spirit may be seen as an outgrowth of the collective self or as the manifestation of a Higher Will.

Does this description of community sound spiritual to you? It is indeed, because Spirit is the common denominator among all of us, regardless of how separate we feel from others.

As human beings, we often experience a socio-economic sense of separation from others because of different opinions, beliefs, expectations, language, culture, or interests, since each one of us expresses these in a way uniquely different from anyone else. And still, we continue to differentiate! In this ongoing process, we continue to evolve or devolve in response to life. A community that felt like a good fit last year may no longer work today; the places where we felt embraced, now may suffocate us. Over the course of a lifetime, we can expect to outgrow and change allegiances to many of the tribal communities we once belonged to.

And yet, when we transcend the layers of physical appearance, mental beliefs and socio-economic conditioning, we find in the presence of Spirit a common denominator in everyone around us. Perhaps it is time to expand our tribal definitions to embrace a spiritual community that includes all of mankind as children of God.

Mother Teresa admonished her nuns to see Jesus in every leper they encountered, to find His presence as they looked into the eyes of the homeless. When we can look past the issues that divide us to find omnipresent Divinity in each other, we will uncover the foundations of true community.

Spiritual community transcends all socio-economic borders, beliefs and backgrounds. It is inclusive because it operates on voluntary self-responsibility and mutual compassion, and its doors are open to everyone.

Building this type of community takes time: time to listen, to hear, to respond and to participate. Take a few moments to read the description of spiritual community again. Then, make time in your life to foster that type of connection with people who matter to you. You are one of the architects of community in your life, and you can participate in building a tribe where you belong.

What would happen to you if your home life was more organized than it is right now? Can work-life balance be achieved? What are the tools at our disposal? Could scheduling appointments and keeping them at home help us save time and prioritize?

What is the challenge we face? I sometimes find that time spent at home can be the busiest time, especially in the times we live in. Imagine someone working from home, home-schooling children, and sometimes even doing a side hustle. Imagine also the full-time home-based entrepreneur. How do they manage to do all they need to do in a day?. We are living in a time when many entrepreneurs and even company employees have adopted work- at – home culture. This comes with its challenges as the lines become blurred between home and work. These blurred lines and constraints on the limited resource called time result in over-worked, under-rested, burnt-out individuals. Whilst good time management has been encouraged and indeed, embraced in the workplace, I believe more needs to be done in changing the mindset for the elusive work-life balance to be achieved.

What are the tools at our disposal? To manage time effectively at home, there are many interventions one can employ including setting goals for the day, prioritizing wisely, setting a time limit for every task, organizing oneself, and instituting the discipline of appointments. Yes, an appointment at home! We can spend time pontificating on the pros and cons of each intervention, however, I believe we need to focus on appointments and see how this can powerfully change the course of one’s day regardless of whether it’s a workday or weekend. Life is busy as it is without any intrusions. The question is how do you handle the one who announces that they are at the gate. These can be friends, neighbors, a salesman of some product you do not even need. I am not promoting regimentation here but rather a culture of filling your day with what’s important. Everything that we succeed at is because we carefully plan and execute it. I am a firm believer that you cannot manage time if you do not manage yourself thus I implore you to incorporate planning and appointments into your repertoire. I am not talking about something I do not do. I have to achieve many things in a day therefore I set appointments with my work, others, and myself.

Could scheduling appointments and keeping them on the home front help us save time and prioritize? Whereas we have established that it is a normal business practice to set appointments and keep them, we need to abandon the liberal open-door policy of allowing all and sundry to have access to us as and when they please on the home front. Please understand where I am coming from. We each have greatness within us but for us to achieve it we need to culture great habits. Employing the use of appointments at home and seeing only those people you had agreed to see removes non-essential encounters especially during the most productive hours. I know this will vary with culture, geographical region, or even level of affluence, whether you live in a low density or high-density residential area, but doesn’t negate the need to be organized and effective. Controlling access determines how organized you are and how well you will work and rest when the time for scheduled rest comes.

What do we need to do differently? We need to be disciplined and diligent, learn to say no, now is not a good time, let’s make an appointment for next week. What are the benefits of this approach? You are not always fire-fighting to meet deadlines, You are not always tired because you have not taken time out to rest. You have set aside enough time to spend with your loved ones or a loved one. If you are a busy person, I am sure you appreciate what I am saying. Whether it’s time to work uninterrupted, family time, or “me-time”, it takes some kind of order to enjoy it.

I am not saying that those that come unannounced are bad people. No, not at all, they probably are people you enjoy spending time with. Nevertheless, there must be prior communication so that you can attend to your visitor(s) when it is convenient for both you and them. It can be quite disrupting and a whole day can just pass by without achieving anything that you had planned to do.

As we grow older we begin to appreciate that rest and recovery need to be scheduled. The fact that I am relaxing doesn’t mean that I don’t have anything to do. One therefore cannot assume that just because you are at home you are available. Maybe you have scheduled that time to rest. That is important. You need to make an appointment with yourself, spouses need to also set aside time for each other. Parents need to schedule a time to spend with their children. When you have some sort of order in your life you determine who sees you and who you see. It also means that your relationships will be healthy and that makes you a happier person.

In conclusion, I believe that the work-life balance can be achieved. There are many tools at our disposal just like it is in the workplace.I believe we could do more and be happier if we are disciplined enough to make only the commitments we can keep.I am certain that setting appointments and keeping them at home help us save time and prioritize.