Fundamentals: How To Make Your Website Disability Friendly

When I was first diagnosed with retinal detachment, I was understandably paranoid about losing my vision. Thankfully, a number of operations and a whole host of comments about my ‘dodgy eyes’ later and I’m still seeing, meaning that the worry has somewhat decreased. Sure, I could still lose my sight, but (and I hate to say this) so could you! Anything could happen to any of us at any time whether we’re expecting it or not. Worrying is futile. Better to get on and enjoy the things we can do, rather than worry over the things that one day we might not be able to.

However, having that fright has given me more empathy for those with more serious vision issues and has made me realise that just because you can’t see so well, doesn’t mean you should miss out on anything, not even the internet. That’s why when I stumbled across this article on making your website disability friendly I thought I’d share it with you guys. It’s amazing how just a few small tweaks here and there can mean the difference between someone being able to access your page, or being shunned by your site. Even if you’ve used up all your empathy having more site visits has got to be good, right?

Take a read here.

Fundamentals: A day in the life

I went to bed last night disappointed. Disappointed with England’s performance in the World Cup. Disappointed with the mango I’d purchased from Tesco for dessert, which I had to throw away because it had gone bad. And disappointed in myself for not getting my blog post for today sorted.

As I was falling to sleep an idea swept through my brain. Why don’t I do something different. And so today fabulous people I will be updating this post throughout the day to give you a day in the life of, well, me. I can’t promise it will be fabulous or fascinating, but I can categorically say, thank f*** it’s Friday!

Keep checking back throughout the day to see how my day pans out!

Alarm belts out on my iPhone. Hit snooze a thousand times.

Check emails & social mediah on my phone whilst still in bed (and trying to wake up). Come across amusing stories like this (and lots of hate for the England football team).

I woke up like dis. Although I did have my eyes open! Blooming bright flash!

Werk!

Meant to take a photo of my lunch & me doing some online shopping during my lunch break, but I went really lightheaded so ended up wolfing my lunch down and forgetting to take any photos, oops! It was Chicken Terriyaki 6″ sun from Subway incase you’re interested.

Now, back to work…

After a challenging (but amusing) day at work, some retail therapy is in order!

Also got my eyebrows did!

Rounding off the day with Pizza Express and a catch up with the bestie.

Got my car cleaned.

And now I’m home with a cuppa tea.

Not a bad start to the weekend.

Hope you’ve had a good day.

Fundamentals: Getting the day-to-day done

From: http://tartdeco.blogspot.co.uk

If I had my way I’d get back from work and settle down for an evening of social media scanning, YouTube playlist viewing and maybe a bit of channel hopping. Obviously if I were to do that I’d get absolutely sod-all done. So, how do I motivate myself to get all the day-to-day shizz done?

Easy!

I bribe myself.

Yup, in the same way that I get a treat if I complete all of my weekly goals. I also allow myself a small treat if I manage to tick off all the items on my daily to do list.

On an average day my to do list looks something like this…

• Promote blog
• Grocery shopping
• Check holiday entitlement
• Write blog post
• Wrap gifts
• Catch-up on paperwork
• Order Bioderma
• Book meal
• Emails
• Take out bins and recycling
• Tidy-up
• Make dinner
• Water plants

I’ll scribble the tasks down on a notepad and underneath the list draw a line, before adding in my incentive, my treat if I manage to get all the tasks completed. Often it’s something small, like, watching Made in Chelsea, or taking a hot bath. Not only does it encourage me to get my jobs done it also ensures that, once they are, I can reward myself with some me-time.

As for the weekly goals. Well, yeah, they’re not going so well at the moment. I’ve not actually managed to complete all three goals in any given week so far. On the plus-side it’s saving me a fortune on treats!

How do you motivate yourself?

Fundamentals: Goal Setting and Bribery (a.k.a How I Get Sh*t Done)

I’m a natural born procrastinator. I don’t mind admitting it. But I do object to giving into my inner time-waster. After all, there’s things to do, people to see, places to go, challenges to overcome, experiences to, erm, experience. No one ever achieved anything by siting on their ass all day, eyes pointed navel-wards.

But sometimes getting off your ass isn’t enough. You also need a bit of a kick up the booty (more often than not, in my case, a rocket!). And that’s where I find goal setting and bribery comes in useful.

I used to set big scary goals, ones I was too afraid to tackle, or which were too vague to know where to begin. I’ve since learnt that those training guru types who talk about SMART goals and breaking things down into ‘baby steps’ are allowed to be smug, because they’re actually right. Gone is my goal of ‘eating more healthily’, replaced instead by ‘drinking at least 500ml of water each day’. Well, at least, that’s one of this week’s goals.

You see, for the time being I’ve decided to set myself weekly goals. I’m all caught up with the crap that was cluttering up my spare room (and my mind) and I’ve pretty much got the housework into a sort-of routine (more of that in a future blog post) so I need something to focus my mind each week to set me in the right direction and stop me sitting on the sofa reading magazines and eating cream cakes (you laugh, it could so easily happen!). I borrowed the idea of weekly goals from Anna Saccone. She was talking about them in one of her YouTube videos and I had a bit of an epiphany (a.k.a a that ain’t actually a bad idea moment).

But then I had a reality check and knew that a smug feeling of satisfaction wasn’t going to cut the mustard for me. Oh no, I was gonna have to incentivise these babies – that’s where the bribery comes in!

And so for the last couple of weeks, this is what I’ve done…

1. On a Sunday evening I think about what I want to have achieved (above the day-to-day) by this time next week.

2. I write these down as my three ‘weekly goals’.At the moment I use the Notes app on my iPhone, so I can carry my goals around with me – no excuses for forgetting what they were!

3. I then choose an incentive which I’ll treat myself to upon successfully completing the goals.

4. Throughout the week I check in and tick off anything I’ve completed and refocus on anything that needs more work.

5. Then, at the end of the week, if I’ve achieved everything I’ve set out to do, I treat myself.

Here’s this week’s goals and bribe!

I’ve also come up with a version of this for day-to-day to do lists, but that’s for another time.

How do you motivate yourself?

Far Away Places: My Top Tips For Working Away From Home

http://instagram.com/p/cuNPozMAsd/

One of the reasons I went AWOL on this here blog a while back was because I was working away from home a fair bit at a series of conferences, exhibitions and launch events.

I always find working from home a bit odd. On the one hand I enjoy being out of the office and interacting with our customers. I like staying in a fancy hotel and having a slap-up dinner on expenses. What I don’t like is missing home and the feeling that you’re working 24/7. And, certainly, for a self-confessed introvert, like me, the whole experience can be truly knackering.

With this in mind I thought I’d share with you some of the tips which help to keep me sane when I’m working away from home…

1. Comfort is key – Whether you’re driving or flying wear something comfortable to travel in, especially if, like me, you’re going to setting up a room full of products and marketing materials when you arrive. The last thing you want to be doing is lugging boxes of literature around in a suit!

2. Double-check the details – Sense check that postcode before you enter it into the Sat Nav. It only takes a few seconds to key it into Google Maps to make sure it’s taking you to where you expect it to. So much better than a mid-route Sat Nav fail! Make sure you have all the paperwork you need for flights, hotel check-in and for the event itself. Create a checklist a few weeks ahead of the event to ensure you remember everything. Chances are you will be running around like a mad thing nearer to the time and will be more likely to forget something.

3. Pack light – taking only hand luggage means you can exit the airport more swiftly if you’re flying and allows you to fit your case in with all of those products and marketing materials if you’re driving!

4. Be sure to pack

• Presentable PJs – bear in mind a midnight fire alarm could result in you being stood outside with your work colleagues, so chose your nightwear accordingly
• Minature toiletries – easier to pack and lighter to carry
• A phone charger
• A spare pen and paper
• Tissues
• Mints
• A few hair bobbles and hair clips – a lack of time and different water makes bad hair days a real possibility when you’re working away from home – be prepared. A small can of dry shampoo is also a good thing to stash in your bag – just in case!

5. Phone home – find the time escape off for a little while to call home. It will help to keep the home sickness at bay and also give you some sanity as it gives you the opportunity to talk about something other than work!

6. Pick your socialising wisely – taking time out for yourself is fine, but you need to make sure you time it properly. Some social events you will be expected to attend and stay until the end of (especially if you’re organising them). Understand which ones you need to stick out and which ones you can duck out of, for example, Gala Dinner = gotta go, after party pizza = perfectly acceptable to take yourself off to bed.

7. Don’t make a tit of yourself – don’t drink too much, snog anyone, or start controversial conversations unless you want to be the talk of the office for all of the wrong reasons! And if you’re organising the social events, err on the sober side of tipsy. Trying to organise other guests who may be under the influence is difficult enough sober!

8. Make the most of any downtime – it’s rare but if you do get some time to yourself take a bath, read, blog, catch-up on cheesy TV, go for a wander around the grounds of the hotel, do yoga. Do something for you.

Do you work away from home? What tips would you add to this list?

Fundamentals: I Need a Routine

Image credit: themerrymumy.blogspot.co.uk

I’m not a great fan of routine…

Saying that, I’m not a great fan of the polar opposite either. In fact, as I find myself increasingly dashing around trying to locate items, constantly being late and being painfully aware that I could be achieving more each day if only I were a little better organised – well it made me think that perhaps routine isn’t such a bad thing after all?

The concept of routine isn’t completely alien to me. I have the basic structure in place. I manage to get myself to work and remember to put on clean underwear each day. But a cursory glance at my list of aspirations for 2013 tells me that if I want to be looking at a page full of ticks come 31st December 2013 I need to pull my finger out. I’d love to use the old excuse that there aren’t enough hours in the day, but to be honest there probably are, I just need to make better use of them.

Once I’d realised that routines weren’t so bad after all. I took action. That is to say, I looked to Google for inspiration. Back came the search results: charts to help kids remember their pre-school routines, business blogs telling me to only check my emails at set periods during the day, housewife style blogs which scared the sweet bejaysus out of me by suggesting almost ritualistic cleaning routines and more colour coding than a Dulux paint chart.

To quote Sinatra. If I was going to do this, I was going to have to do it ‘my way’. Picking and choosing the tips I liked from the web and intermingling them with a system which works for me. I’ll talk you through my strategy and my progress in a series of blog posts. But before I began I wondered if anyone has any top tips for routines? Is there something you do which works for you? Are you an OCD list maker or a free spirit? Hope do you keep on top of the day-to-day without sucking the spontaneity out of life? Leave a comment, I’d love to know…

First things first…

Writing the ‘about’ this section for this blog has proven to be fantastically difficult.

Read any guide on starting your own blog (or in fact writing in general) and it will undoubtedly tell you that you need a niche. Something that separates you from the rest. An area of interest that makes you unique. Something which makes you stand out.

And that’s just what I did. My previous blog persona was all about saving cash, being a frugalista and trying to live a champagne lifestyle on a beer lemonade salary. Trouble is there were other things I wanted to blog about which just didn’t fit into that style of blog. I started to feel bored and then, worse, trapped. It was like being on a long-haul flight where 99% of the movies on the in-flight entertainment package just aren’t your bag.

I thought a break would do me good. It did. It made me realise that whilst my previous penny-pinching blog wasn’t right for me, I still needed an outlet for my writing and so Fabulous and other f*words was born.

I love the word fabulous. Even though it’s so completely and utterly overused. At first my concept was about me trying to live a fabulous lifestyle, but having to overcome the inevitable obstacles that get in the way – the frustrating f* words. Then I realised that life wasn’t as black and white as being fabulous or failing. Best of all there were lots of f* words which described this sizeable grey area – family, friends, food, finances, fun… – when you think about it life is full of f* words.

And, in essence that’s what this blog is all about… life. I don’t really know what subjects it’s going to cover, or where it’s going to go – much the same as I don’t know how my own life is going to play out. I would say to expect some journal-style entries, some reviews, mentions of fabulous things which I come across and, well, probably some of the more random ramblings from my brain.

All I can say is I hope you enjoy what you find here and come back regularly to see what’s new.

What do you think? Do blogs/writers need a niche? What subjects do your favourite blogs concentrate on? Leave a comment and let me know – free chocolate to the first person to leave a comment :).