It’s been a bit over a month since I left Cape Town, we’ve moved into our new flat in downtown Calgary and I’m loving my new, spacious, sunny office! Andy and I totaled up all our addresses we’ve had since we got married 10 years ago and we were rather taken-aback by the number. How many times have you changed your home in the past 10 years? Can you guess how many homes we’ve had?

Our current home is our 11th address in 10 years! Looking back, we seem to move in cycles, with 2 years of lots of moving, followed by two years of relative stability, staying at one address. Over the past 15 months we’ve enjoyed time in Cape Town South Africa, London UK, a USA roadtrip (Colorado, Utah and Wyoming), back to London, back to Cape Town, two Eastern Cape roadtrips, back to Cape Town, on to Calgary and then a few trips to the USA and within Canada (Arizona, Texas and Vancouver). Phew! We’ve loved every bit of it, AND we’re both feeling ready for some (relative) stability again. Perhaps a few years in Calgary at one address? We’ll see…

Tweet This Post

Read more..

Cath: A big, warm welcome to Productive Flourishing Readers coming over today from my guest post on Charlie’s blog, The Four Essential Drives That Every Creative Needs to Stay Motivated and Do Genius Work.”

I get a lot of questions along the lines of “How do I figure out what I’m meant to do with my life?” It thrills me that we’ve entered an age in the world of work where the idea of doing meaningful and purposeful work is actually on the agenda and we’re no longer seeing work as just a vehicle for earning money so that we can get by. And it excites me that so many people are asking questions about “What’s it all about?” and “How do I use my life well, rather than just getting by each day?”

Tweet This Post

Read more..

This post is part of a series of posts on how to problem-solve and negotiate change the agile way, rather than using traditional goal-setting and productivity techniques. The posts in the series so far are:

• How to use your whole mind to problem-solve and negotiate change.
• Kicking off the problem-solving process: The problem with problems

The problem-solving and change process

In the previous post I gave you an overview of the four stages in the problem-solving and change process:

Tweet This Post

Read more..

I often get questions from people, via email, Facebook and Twitter, and they’re such great questions that I’ve decided that I’m going to start sharing these questions (and my answers to them) with you occasionally. I’m hoping that this’ll be useful to you for two reasons: firstly, to get answers to some of the questions you’re asking, but perhaps more importantly, so that you realize that you’re not the only person asking these sorts of questions. I know that at the times when I’ve grown most and gained the confidence to take a bigger step out into the world – a step I had been too afraid to take before, the thing that facilitated that perspective shift and the confidence to overcome my fears was hearing that other people (even the ones that look totally sorted!) struggle with the same fears, self-doubts and tough questions that I do. So without further ado, here’s the first question, from the brilliant, Andrew Caldwell…

Tweet This Post

Read more..

“If a stretch was any faster, it would be exercise.
If a yawn were any faster, it would be a hiccup.
If a smile were any faster, it would be a twitch.”

Tweet This Post

Read more..

I just got back from a wonderful retreat in Phoenix, Arizona, with the very smart and warm Charlie Gilkey, the inspirational and deeply grounded Pam Slim, and a bunch of wonderful, funny, fun, open-hearted and smart creative entrepreneurs (Crystal, Willie, Lori, Rachael, Kyle, Cheryl, Marissa, Avien, Ivan, Karen, Desiree, Angela and Patricia… miss you guys already! Here’s a picture of us all.)

My main purpose for going to the retreat was to connect with like-minded people because, even with Twitter and Skype and all, online businesses can be pretty lonely – especially when the friends you do get to see and hug in the real world don’t have online businesses and don’t understand the challenges of being a solopreneur and working across the internet.

Another big area I wanted to explore and get some resolution on was the whole thing of my “long line” and my “essence” – the thing that, when people think about it, would make them think, “Ah, we should call on Cath for that…”

Tweet This Post

Read more..