“I don’t want to,” my eight year old daughter said sadly when I asked her to clean her room. I asked her why that was her typical response. Her reply, “Because no one ever seems to want to help me.” I’d asked her that same question three years ago and her reply was, “It’s [the task] too big!”
In each instance, my thought immediately went to her being overwhelmed. Even though the payoff would be an allowance, she often wanted to forgo the money to get out of doing it! That is, until I reminded her of strategies to getting it done without the task feeling as daunting, with the biggest tip being: take baby steps and prioritize by working on one area of the room or category at a time (i.e., school papers, then shoes, then stuffed animals, etc.). But truth be told, she has no real passion for cleaning her room. 
When we coach our adult clients, or sometimes when we are being coached or mentored ourselves, there is also often a similar trend of resistance in some cases. This can be true whether we’re dealing with grunt work that doesn’t light us up (One word to that: Outsource!) or if we have been presented with quite a few cool tools that can help our businesses in the long run.
Let’s stay with the Web 2.0 theme: Introducing blogging, podcasting, video creation, talk radio, and social networks to people who are totally new to it in a six week period have sometimes invoked these types of interjections:
“I feel like I’ve been sprayed with a fire hose of information!”
“How can I incorporate it all?”
“I don’t have enough time.”
“I am not a techie!”
“AAAAAAHHHH!”
The baby steps and prioritizing come in handy again. And so does breathing. If rotating between using all the tools while learning them doesn’t float your boat after getting introduced to them, try this: Figure out which tool interests you the most and carve out a specified time daily or every other day to become one with it until you master it, and then move on to the next favorite and repeat the process.
And remember, you don’t have to take this journey alone. Take advantage of all the resources out there. The ones I listed in the previous blog post are just a starting point.
So tell me, if you have a favorite Web 2.0 tool, what is it and why?
If you haven’t tried out any of the tools, I’d also like to know why?
My inquiring mind wants to know!
–Carol Dickson-Carr
It was my pleasure to interview Ann Rusnak, a delightful woman I met on Facebook and became even better acquainted with on Twitter, on a subject near & dear to my heart: creating more in less time!
