Sarah Wilson

The three best efficiency tips I’ve ever found

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So, this week I’ve packed up and racked off to Bali for “annual leave” (are such things relevant when you work for yourself?). I’ve vowed not to work. So I’m posting in advance a short best-of series. I’ve been on this experiment…trying different tricks and meeting various gurus for just over a year. Some work. … Read more

The three most authentic gurus I’ve met

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So, this week I’ve packed up and racked off to Bali for “annual leave”. I’m here with four boys – Jim, Sam, Jason and Karl (a little more handsome than the lot below). Boys are funny on holidays. They arrive at consensus in crazy cruisy ways. All cool, so long as they get a surf in.

Anyway. So I’m posting in advance a short best-of series. I’ve been on this experiment…trying different tricks and meeting various gurus for just over a year. Which have worked? I’ve narrowed my take down to a mini-list of three.

It’s also the first day of Spring. Sniff some wattle for me!

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1. Marketing guru Seth Godin. We chatted about giving art as a gift. The guy is very much the real deal. There are a lot of efficiency experts out there who preach only answering emails once a day and who – magically – reply to your correspondence within 5 seconds…. It kind of shits me. Or makes me have a little heart sink.

So how do we start giving gifts? How do we become remarkable? “The aim is to elevate connecting and sharing to the same level as breathing or eating lunch every day,” he says.  By which he means, we start giving and then give some more and eventually it becomes a way of life. Seth walks his talk. He makes money from public speaking and his books. Then he spends the rest of his time giving freely. He intentionally doesn’t monetise his blog or any online webinars he gives and he expends a lot of energy connecting and helping people. I can vouch for this personally. Read more here.

2. The Dalai Lama. Yep, met the guy and chatted about how to stop head chatter. He’s a man true to brief. But who has the common touch. He knows how to tell the Western world what they need to hear.

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tuesday eats: kale pesto

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Everyone has got a little excited about kale. Every time I write about it I get stacks of emails. So I thought I’d post a great kale pesto recipe. Healthy as. And you can freeze it...which I’m radically into right now.

kalepesto.WEBThere’s a lot of recipes out there. I like this one.

1 bunch kale
2 Tbsp hemp oil
1/2 cup sunflower seeds
2 Tbsp fresh basil
1 lemon, juiced
3 cloves garlic, minced
1/2 tsp Celtic sea salt

Add the ingredients to a food processor and whip with an S-Blade until finely chopped.

This one for quinoa with walnut kale pesto from glutenfree girl also looks good.

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organising your things neatly

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I love patterns. I get a kick out of arranging the accouterments on a cafe table (sugar dispenser, fork, napkin) in lovely stabilising shapes. I’m not a neat freak. I just like patterns and seeing if things can be placed more pleasingly. Which is why I whooped when I found things organized neatly.

tumblr_l7h46ajoH81qbycdbo1_500It simply posts pics of things placed “just so”. It’s a delightful human quirk…this need to order things artfully. And I like how certain things appeal to us more…like having a thicker border at the BOTTOM of a painting than at the top.

I like arranging rolled up sugar packets and beer labels in patterns on bar tables. You?

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Sunday Life: on the importance of having space

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This week I clear for myself some space.

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On Tuesday I was walking to the post box while talking to my accountant and reading an email attachment on my phone. I passed an old lady in a pink beret sitting at a bus stop. Just sitting in the sun. Fifteen minutes later, she was still sitting there, staring into space. She wasn’t compulsively filling the space with music or texting or twittering. Or, to be generationally appropriate, knitting. She kept her space a vast, unhindered void.

I’m not sure if it’s because it’s become a tired cliché, but “time poor” just doesn’t quite cut it in summing up the collective yearning these days. Instead, I’ve noticed we now all ache for “space”. Space is something my generation hasn’t had since we hung out in sandpits building racetracks for our HotWheels.

This week I played with this ache. I mean, it’s not something you can go out and buy, or bottle. You have to play with it conceptually.

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Me doing the Good News Week thang

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Not sure if you saw it… I was on Good News Week on the Ten Network on Monday night. It was a bit of an election wrap-up. I had a lung infection. And stupidly took a “night” cold and flu tablet. So I was strung-out-dopey all night. Who does that?? I actually don’t remember much of the night. Apart from being stupified by Akmal and getting choc chips down my bra.

Here’s the links (I like how this first one paused on my “Yeah, right, as if elephants fly” expression):

TBH, it was one of the most terrifying things I’ve done. I live in fear of being asked to 1. dance 2. sing 3. do a Theatre Sports-like performance in public. I ran a very real risk of this happening. I ran to the loo all day.

Also – I’m not funny. I mean, I roll with punches and have a good sense of humour, I reckon. But I don’t do gags. In my head I do. And often they’re really bloody funny. But I think my outward awkwardness means the execution will always be dorky. The timing is not syncopated.

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tuesday eats: chocolate, green tea and red wine

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Yep, all of the above. I love them all. They are an injection of happiness. My body actually smiles when I have them. Same with zucchini, oddly. And brazil nuts. It’s funny-but-totally-get-able: because all three are great sources of antioxidants, I have a very healthy attitude to all three. I don’t binge on them. I … Read more

finding your daily launch pad

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The lovely Clare Lancaster at Women in Business posted this interview with Gwen Bell, one of Fast Company’s Most Influential Women in Tech, 2010. It touches on some really great points, including how to get mindful for the day…. for everyone out there feeling like they’re doing too much, which is sooooo a theme this month. Too much, all layered up, swamped, drowning….and not doing things with heart and care.

Don’t know about you, but I’m BUSTING to come home to myself.

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Last month Gwen unplugged, she did a digital sabbatical – no blogging, tweeting, Facebook or email for 31 days. Clare spoke to her about it and got some really lovely, poignant answers. For the whole interview go to Women in Business, a site for chicks doing it online. PS Clare is a GREAT web strategist, offering e-courses on how to build an e-businesses…e-hah!

And bear in mind this: Gwen experienced her most profitable month during her sabbatical.

Gwen on: how when you grow up you have to enforce your own breaks…

When we were students, someone enforced breaks. You’re taking the summer off. You’re taking the winter break off. School is closed during those months. Load up on library books and prepare for self-study. Because the library will be closed, too.

I think our entrepreneurial selves are like students, without those enforced weeks off.

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sunday life: why you should read slowly

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This week I learn The Art of Slow Reading

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I’ve never been a big reader. Even as a kid. Which has always surprised people who assume that just because you wore glasses with an eyepatch for 18 months (when I was 12) and spent lunch in the library means you were a bookworm. Truth be known, I only ever got as far as Double Love in the Sweet Valley High series.  Which I suppose doesn’t really say much in either direction.

As a kid, if Mum caught us reading it was code we weren’t doing much and she’d hand us a basket of nappies to hang on the line. A resting heartbeat in a child would get her antenna up and she’d swoop in with a bundle of kindling to start the fire. So we stayed outside. And avoided the brown questions in Trivial Pursuit.

That was my excuse then. Now, like everyone else it would seem, I blame the internet. Recently much noise has been made by many angry experts claiming the internet is making us stupid because it forces us to read too fast, skimming tidbits at the expense of absorbing nourishing knowledge. In his new book The Shallows, tech guru Nicholas Carr uses neuroplasticity theories to argue this hyperactive toggling is reshaping the pathways in our brains, rendering us incapable of absorbing complex insights and arguments. Let alone follow a family tree in a Tolstoy novel.

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