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Why You Need an Ideas Notebook

Why You Need an Ideas Notebook

Here's the scenario. You're a writer, say. You put words on paper and put those papers into the hands of people who read them. Or maybe you put words on screens and let Twitter do your billing: I PUT A WORD HERE. COME READ IT. Whatever your method (paper, pen,...

How to Set Up a Self-Hosted WordPress Blog (The Complete Guide)

How to Set Up a Self-Hosted WordPress Blog (The Complete Guide)

{Have you checked out the free 7-day Start Your Blog Challenge? Sign up here.  Want a free PDF ebook of these instructions? Go here.   Starting a blog is one of the very best things that ever happened to me, and I love to share with folks why blogging is a great...

This Week in the World (Links)

This Week in the World (Links)

This week I continued another month of eating a modified Paleo diet. I saw Flight, with Denzel Washington, and remembered why I hate watching addicts in movies (although I did like the movie). I read a few more books, but was more proud to read an entire Vanity Fair,...

How Can I Help You?

How Can I Help You?

Claire here. You're on my blog, ClaireDiazOrtiz.com, where I write things. Good things, bad things, things in the middle between bad and good. Today, I'm writing to ask you a kinda weird thing. Here goes. What do you need? Yup. Is there a way that I can help you? I'm...

What the Most Successful People Do at Work

What the Most Successful People Do at Work

Laura Vanderkam has done it again. Vanderkam, author of books like 168 Hours: You Have More Time than You Think, has become a feature in my email inbox ever since I read ones of her books for the first time and started emailing her incessantly. (I tend to do that. I'm...

Where Do You Have Excess?

Where Do You Have Excess?

We all excess in our lives, and yesterday a smart man made me remember this fact. This week, I had another amazing time at Catalyst, a great leadership conference that takes place a few times a year in various cities. While in Orange County for the event, I got to...

This Week in the World (Links)

This Week in the World (Links)

This week, I breathed the California air. (And had a lovely, inspiring time at Catalyst West.) I finished some books, including My Life in France, which I loved. Chronicling the Julia Child early years, it made me obsessed with her, and I now want to get every book I...

It’s Time to Be a Catalyst Leader

It’s Time to Be a Catalyst Leader

  Are you a leader? Want to be? Listen up. Some of you may be familiar with Catalyst. A massive, massive(ly) successful leadership conference that happens a handful of times every year. It's been going on for 14 years, and it's a movement. A big one. I've been...

This Week in the World (Links)

This Week in the World (Links)

This week, I flew on some planes. I ate a lot of chicken. I read a wonderful book, Give me the World, about Leila Hadley, a New York socialite-cum-travel writer who wrote a book about her year in the world with the six-year old son during the 1950s. One of the best...

Why I Don’t Read (Many) Novels

Why I Don’t Read (Many) Novels

I read a lot. This week I finished my 63rd book of 2013, meaning I'm well on my way accomplishing my 150-book annual goal by New Year's Eve. That said, I don't read a lot of novels. Last year, I can count on ten fingers the number of novels I read among the 150 books...

50 Ways to Say No

50 Ways to Say No

I'm learning to say no. Heck, anyone who's word of the year is REST better start getting better at it, right? In attempts to practice my NO muscle, I pulled together a list of 50 ways to go about saying the dirty word. The important part about NO? It should be:...

This Week in the World (Links)

This Week in the World (Links)

This week, I watched Lincoln. A good movie, if long. I drank Kombucha, which I love, but realized how important it is that it is cold. Ice cold. I read some more books, and particularly liked Four Kitchens: My Life Behind the Burner in New York, Hanoi, Tel Aviv and...

What I Will Say to My Daughter About Endings

What I Will Say to My Daughter About Endings

"It's not over. It's beginning." At least this is what I will tell her when she sighs about something ending. The kindergarten school-year, say, coming to a close. "But it's all so over..." She will moan. Small hand in mine. Walking away from the building I will walk...

What Happens When You Don’t Rest

What Happens When You Don’t Rest

I'm back, with another post on rest. (It is my word of the year, after all.) I have been talking a lot lately about the effects of not resting, and what it means to not give your body the important rest that it needs in order to accomplish all those big, bold things...

How to Waste Time Well

How to Waste Time Well

I'm not always good at wasting time. When I don't try, I can be found some Saturdays lying on a couch somewhere watching a delightfully nonsensical reality television program as the hours tick by into night. Although this works on occasion to provide true relaxation...