Mentorship is a favorite subject of mine: I am a strong advocate that, with proper mentorship, even the most meager of talents can take root and flourish. I am also just as convinced that, without any mentorship, even the most gifted people in the world are slated for an on-going cycle of ill-informed decisions.

Will Herman‘s recent article on VentureBeat highlights an interesting phenomenon when it comes to mentorship among entrepreneurs, though, and it’s one that I think is a bit different from what the rest of the world goes through when seeking a mentor. Will posits the question, Why do Enterpreneurs Flock to Loudmouths as Mentors?

In his article, Will focuses on what to do to make sure that you don’t fall into this trap. It’s worthwhile advice, and certainly worth remembering, but I personally prefer his original question: “What makes entrepreneurs flock to mentors who just happen to be the loudest guy in the room?”

When I look at the entrepreneurs I work and socialize with, I see four distinct trends that drive entrepreneurs — especially new ones — to gravitate towards what Will refers to as ‘loudmouths.’

Cult of the Personality
Call it charisma. Call it charm. Call it whatever you like, but some people simply instill confidence… whether or not there is really a justification for it. Whatever the root cause of it, these are people who find themselves being a magnet for people who want mentorship (either formally or informally), whether or not they are qualified.

The Cure: Don’t rush it. If you meet someone who sounds really good, take a dating-with-the-hopes-of-getting-married approach, not a weekend fling approach. If you ease into the relationship, it’ll sometimes be easier to tell if they are a mentor or just a great new drinking buddy.

Looking for a Life Raft
Making the switch from employee to entrpreneur is difficult. It’s an exhilerating rollercoaster that thrills you to the point of giddiness one second, and then terrifies you until you want to scream the next — all the while, tossing you around enough to make you queasy. More often than not, novice entrepreneurs want to find someone who can make them feel better. Whether they are looking for encouragement, advice or just someone who can understand their fears, sometimes the choice of mentor is driven largely by the desire for a bit of a security blanket.

The Cure: A mentor will tell you what you need to hear, instead of what you want to hear. Build our your support network to help you get the encouragement you need from multiple sources, so that you can find a mentor who can focus on being a mentor instead of having to pull double-duty as a cheerleader.

Lacking the Confidence to be Discriminating
Once you have a few years of experience in any given area, it gets easier and easier to recognize when someone is blowing smoke vs. when they are really worth listening to. One of the struggles that new entrepreneurs face is that they are often not yet confident enough in their own abilities to file the b.s. advice in the circular file. So they will take advice that they shouldn’t, simply because they are clinging to the belief that someone who has been doing this longer should know better.

The Cure: Even the world’s greatest advice from the perfect mentor is not always going to apply. You have to learn to pick and choose. One way to start is to make a pair of lists: “Conditions that must exist for this advice to apply.” and “Conditions that must exist for this advice NOT to apply.” And then compare each of those lists to YOUR reality and see which is closer.

Trying to Find a One-Size-Fits-All Mentor
I am not sure where this particular habit comes from, but I see this in people all the time: the assumption that they need one mentor who can mentor them in everything, and that they can only have one mentor at a time. No, no, no! You should always have multiple mentors, of all ages, from all types of backgrounds, covering all different aspects of your life (both professional and personal). Some of them will be more formal relationships, and some of them will be more informal. But by believing in a one-to-one relationship, you are not only limiting your growth potential, but you are eliminating potential mentors whose expertise may only be applicable for you in certain circumstances.

The Cure: Consider everyone in your life as a potential mentor in something. Everyone is good at something. And often times, that ‘something’ is not the same thing that I am good at. Whether it’s shopping on a budget, never raising their voice, staying positive in the face of adversity, or quickly assessing talent, there are endless opportunities for me to take lots of little lessons from a lot of different people. If I sit around and wait for the one right person to show up to teach me all of the big lessons, I could be waiting — and not making any progress — for a very, very long time.

Mentorship is how we grow, both as people and as entrepreneurs. But, just like any other influential relationship, it requires exercising some judgement and not letting your fear or expectations run away with you.

Alora Chistiakoff is an entrepreneur, blogger, content strategist and project manager who has been developing online business and technology for startups for more than a decade.  She co-owns The Indigo Heron Group, Inc., a content strategy firm in Austin, Texas.

Recently, The Social Commerce editor, Craig Agranoff took WorkingPoint for a spin. Here are a few highlights from the article:

Most of the complexities of QuickBooks are not on WorkingPoint, making for an easier user interface.

The learning curve for utilizing WorkingPoint is very low and it doesn’t take long to be using it like a pro.

Definitely worth a try if you’re in the market for an easy to use invoicing suite.

Click here to read the full review.

I loved the show The West Wing. For a dozen reasons, I would break my general ‘no television’ policy and watch it because the relationships among the characters resonated with me from my time in both politics (when I was very young) and at startups. There is one social phenomenon that The West Wing portrayed particularly well, and which is always a struggle in organizations:  Telling truth to power.

In The West Wing, one of the on-going themes was how the staff needed to “manage” the President. Whatever his quirks or brilliance, the President was like all of us: a flawed human being with complicated relationships, who was not always easy or pleasant to deal with, who could unnecessarily complicated situations due to his own personal issues, but whom the team respected tremendously. So they were often torn between adoration and respect, and frustration and fear.

This pheonenon is something that renowned business coach and author, Marshall Goldsmith, wrote about in one of my favorite business articles of all time: ‘It’s Not a Fair Fight When You Are the CEO.’ Goldsmith’s point is something that everyone knows and yet rarely discusses: without careful planning and management, leaders can quickly and easily fall into a trap where they are stiffling honesty, innovation and independence in their teams, simply by virtue of sitting at the top of the social food chain.

I was reminded of this when reading Michael Hyatt‘s recent article, “Finding the Courage to Speak Up.” In his post, he acknowledges a fear of confrontation, and how he has had to tackle it in his role as a leader. It strikes me that this is the other side of the same coin.

And in the end, it all boils down to trust. Does the leader of an organization engender trust in his team:

• Do they trust him to let them be creative, independent professionals?
• Do they trust him to be honest with them about their performance?
• Do they trust him to support them in their professional goals?
• Do they trust that he will protect them in the face of unreasonable behavior by clients or vendors?
• Do they trust that he is a source of solutions, and not a contributor to the problems?

One of the reasons that I am a fan of the collaborative freelancer model of doing work vs. the traditional employee model is because, in an ideal scenario, it can require a higher degree of leadership accountability. If I am freelancing with a company, and the team I am working with is being led by someone who is abusive or unreasonable, it is often a much simpler process for me to walk away at the end of a project than it is if I am an actual employee. The model encourages me to be diversified in my client-base enough that it grants me the luxury of more choice when it comes to who I choose to work with.

How many times have employees seen a boss leave, only to be replaced by a new boss? It happens all the time. And it’s often an extremely difficult transition to make. In my corporate career, I have only ever stuck around through that transition one time. Every other time it happened, the working conditions that had made me want to stay in the job in the first place left when my old boss walked out the door. Statistically speaking, more than three-quarters of all people who leave their job, do so because they do not want to work for their boss anymore.

Again, this is a trust issue. And it’s one that is especially vital for entrepreneurs and small business owners. In many cases, you are your small business. And if the people you enlist on your team to build your business are not confident that they can trust you, then you are sunk before you ever get out of dry-dock. In my work with entrepreneurs, the thing I see most often is an entrepreneur who assumes the problems in his business are caused by those around him, and he is reluctant to consider if he could be creating the chaos himself, and the people on his team are merely reacting to it.

The flip-side of Michael Hyatt’s post is that fear of confrontation is not uncommon. Many people will find themselves taking a passive-aggressive position on a problem, merely to avoid a direct confrontation. And if you are the boss, and you have developed a reputation of being difficult or unpleasant to work with, then how many people do you honestly expect to tell you that? Isn’t it more likely that they will just quietly scurry away, and leave you standing alone, scrambling for a replacement?

Building trust is probably the single hardest thing to do, because it requires honesty, setting aside egos, not reacting emotionally and seeking to understand before being understood. Unless or until you demonstrate that you are not only capable of that, but that you’ve cultivated a habit of it, then the people you work with are always in danger of fearing your reaction just enough to avoid being honest with you.

And if you can’t keep people on your team, then who exactly is it that you’re trying to lead?

Alora Chistiakoff is an entrepreneur, blogger, content strategist and project manager who has been developing online business and technology for startups for more than a decade.  She co-owns The Indigo Heron Group, Inc., a content strategy firm in Austin, Texas.

There are many things that I think contribute to the power of the new contigent/freelance workforce shift in our economy.

I believe very strongly in the value of the empowerment and self-direction that it offers; I think that the opportunity for collaboration, creativity and individual contribution is much stronger; and I am a strong advocate that there are a set of unhealthy economic habits that many of us have formed over the past several decades that this model forces us to correct.

Everything from cramming ourselves into over-crowded cities to be physically near our job, to living beyond our means because we get in the habit of spending our next paycheck before it ever arrives: the ability to work independently and/or virtually can offer highly persuasive reasons to re-examine these habits. Within the Bootstrap and Lean Startup communities, cash efficiency for a business is critical — but that kind of discipline must start in the entrepreneur’s personal life.

I was thinking about this as I read VentureBeat‘s article titled “The world’s best renewable source of energy: Efficiency.” While the article in question is about actual energy use, power production and consumption is a power metaphor that applies far beyond forgetting to turn off your light switch when you leave the room.

Last year at SXSW, Werner Vogel, CTO of Amazon, spoke on one of my favorite panels of the conference about the future of cloud computing. When the panel was asked about their green policies and plans, Werner was emphatic: there is a direct correlation between being environmentally responsible and being fiscally disciplined (in the management of a data center). The environmental movement has often focused on the environmental impact of waste, and forgotten to point out that there is also a direct financial impact for both businesses and consumers.

Of course, like a startup with a great big chunk of change from a VC firm, it’s often hard to be sensitive to the downside of waste when you are flush with cash. This is understandable, and, to some extent, basic human nature.

But, as a business owner without outside funding, being efficient with all of your resources — cash, time, other resources, etc. — can be the difference between being in the black or being in the red. It’s a discipline that we’ve watched the past several generations shed a little more every year, as the cycle of buy-borrow-buy continues to grow exponentially.

And now we are at a new cross-roads. The choices are different, but they have costs. Starting a business or going freelance can be exciting, frightening and confusing all at the same time. Consistently, one of the biggest fears people experience is the fear of maintaining an on-going income. But, without fail, people with a discipline of living below their means are less fearful and better suited to take potentially risky opportunities. People whose mortgage payment is 60% of their take-home pay often do not have the same luxury.

In my work with other entrepreneurs, I find these conversations to often be inspiring. I often ask people about the lifestyle changes they have made in order to be able to get their business off the ground. Passionate people with a goal are often willing to give up a lot of creature comforts that they would have never before considered doing without when they were getting a paycheck from someone else. Suddenly the prospect of sacrifice for a reason is worthwhile.

So whether you are looking at how much you spend on daily coffee, your cable bill, or office supplies, remember: not using (consuming and spending money on) what you do not need is good for you, your business and the environment. Efficiency is the new black. And it’s a good way to help keep your business in the black, too.

Alora Chistiakoff is an entrepreneur, blogger, content strategist and project manager who has been developing online business and technology for startups for more than a decade.  She co-owns The Indigo Heron Group, Inc., a content strategy firm in Austin, Texas.

On the blog Startup Professional Musings, author Martin Zwilling wrote about the dangers of a dysfunctional startup team. While reading I was it, it occured to me that (not shockingly) finding the right business partners is at least as hard as finding the right spouse — and, if that is the case, then how on earth does an entrepreneur stand a chance of accomplishing this? Especially in the cases that multiple partners are necessary for a business.

Zwilling references Patrick Lencioni’s popular book, “The Five Dysfunctions of a Team” in identifying the killers to successful startup teams. (And, naturally, these could also count as the killers to any marriage.) The list is short, but covers a lot of ground:

• Absence of trust
• Fear of conflict
• Lack of commitment
• Avoidance of accountability
• Inattention to results

As I read through this list, I thought about all of the business partnerships I have seen in my life — both the successful and the disasterous — and considered how they originally formed, and which origins seemed best poised for success, versus the ones that seemed like a nightmare (from the outside, anyway).

Married Couples
The first category to which I was ever exposed (thanks to my parents), and the category into which I now fall, is one with very long odds: married couples as business partners. This one is probably the roughest for me to objectively assess (for obvious reasons), and is the one where I have actually seen the most disaster.

Of all the myriad of problems that are common in these types of business partnerships, the bottom line is that, no matter how hard annyone ever tries, separating out a married relationship from a business relationship when your spouse is your business partner is never entirely successful.

Siblings
There are some magnificent horror stories about siblings as business partners. What I’ve experienced is actually that the siblings themselves are often capable of sorting out the necessary groundrules to work together, if they must. Where I’ve seen things become more complicated is if they are feeling pressure from mom and dad.

Most siblings will sort out their own roles and pecking orders as kids. And, often times, they’ll do this regardless of what their parents try to enforce. Whether they all end up as cliches (e.g. The Bossy Eldest, The Invisible Middle Child, The Baby, etc.) or not, the fact is that they are often going to find a way to sort things out. I have seen this dynamic work really well in business partnerships, because it gives them an unspoken language to use with each other. (On the other hand, this can be extremely difficult if there are other leaders on the team who are not part of the sibling team, because they are not part of the loop at all.)

Personality/Psychological Profile
I know several entrepreneurs who have historically relied on this method. Whether they used the Meyers-Briggs or the StrengthsFinder or some other assessment tool, their focus was on finding the combination of traits that they felt would be complimentary and necessary to make a business successful.

I have seen this go both ways. On one hand, this does help with some initial expectation setting, but in the end, there are still other factors at play. One person told me that when he met his future business partner, he took him out to get him drunk half a dozen times so that he could ‘meet the real man.’ Interesting (and slightly amusing) technique, even if the guy’s wife wasn’t wild about it.

Long-time Friends
This is one of the options that I often see people warn against, but which I have — on occassion — seen be extremely successful. I think the key is the nature of the friendship, and how long and close it really is. In the case of a long-time casual friendship, I have not seen as much success. Where I have seen it work a bit better, is a life-long friendship that is more like a sibling relationship than anything else.

What I have seen in those cases is a level of honesty that many other relationships tend to lack. When you’ve known someone since elementary school, odds are that (just like with your siblings), people know each other well enough to lose some of their fear of being honest — even sometimes to the point of being brutal. The bedrock of friendship can be strong enough that people have learned over the years how to handle conflict with each other.

Virtual Strangers
This one can be a crap shoot. I’ve watched a number of people I know (including my father) attempt partnerships with people who appeared to be what a business needed — either in terms of skills, network or existing business — and then seen it blow up because the people couldn’t figure out how to work together.

On the other hand, I’ve also seen this be a strong opportunity for a clean slate. People who are dilligent can define the roles and expectations, figure out the right accountability structure, and lay out the groundrules right up front. No emotional baggage to get in the way. While I’ve seen this approach fail more than succeed, I have to admit that when I see it succeed, I’ve seen it be better than most of the alternatives.

Former Colleagues
This is the one I have seen be the most successful. Most of us are at least a little bit different at work than we are in our personal lives, and so people who know us from work and have worked with us before, know how we handle professional situations that are likely to come up in a business environment. They’ve already got a professional respect established, and often times they go into a partnership with a clear idea of whose strengths make sense to be applied to which part of the business.

Of course, the hard part is that if you are both working for someone else, then the pressures of business can be very different. Where I’ve seen this type of partnership experience the most strain is when the former colleagues came from a low-stress business environment into a startup without being prepared for the fact that the pressures were very different, and not all of them handled that difference very gracefully.

No doubt about it, finding the right combination of passion, skills, personality, temperament and communication skills is extremely difficult. And the more people you need to pull into the mix, the harder it gets.  It’s not surprising that so many people advocate avoiding business partners wherever possible.

So, are there any other ways you know of to find potential business partners?  And any particular feeling about which techniques work better than others?

Alora Chistiakoff is an entrepreneur, blogger, content strategist and project manager who has been developing online business and technology for startups for more than a decade.  She co-owns The Indigo Heron Group, Inc., a content strategy firm in Austin, Texas.

Upcoming Due Dates
1/31 – 1099 Forms to Recipients
2/28 – Paper 1099 and 1096 to IRS
3/31 – Electronic 1099s to IRS

About IRS Form 1099
The IRS requires businesses to file information returns to qualified companies and individuals by reporting the money you have paid them for qualifying events during a calendar year (January through December) using IRS Forms 1099 and 1096. The IRS uses these information returns to cross-check the payments you made to the companies and individuals with the income they reported.

The WorkingPoint 1099 report helps take the work out of tracking payments made to 1099 eligible companies and individuals. We’ve made it super easy to flag companies and individuals and with one-click, run a 1099 report showing how much you’ve paid them so you know who to send a 1099 to. Watch this 2 minute video on how to select a contact to be included on the 1099 report.

File Your Forms Electronically
Using the IRS FIRE system, you can electronically transmit your 1099 forms to the IRS. The benefits of using the FIRE system, is:

1. You extend your due date
2. You get a quick filing verification of your forms
3. You get time to make corrections
4. You don’t have to file form 1096

Everyone can use the FIRE system to file their 1099 forms, in fact, if you have over 250 employees, you must use the FIRE system to file.  To file electronically, you need to submit a form 4419 30 days in advance of the due date. After you’re approved, you’ll get a transmitter control code, which you can use to sign up for an account.

Vendors List
For your convenience, the IRS has assembled a list of vendors that can aide you in the transmission of your forms.

For more information on the FIRE system, check out IRS Publication 1220.

There is sometimes really great value in certain kinds of peer pressure. For some of us, one of the greatest motivators to getting something done is the knowledge that someone else is counting on us. This is often one of the most motivating factors about conventional work environments, where you show up with the goal of doing your part as a member of a larger team.

But how do most people deal with this when they strike out on their own? There is a nice security blanket to be had in that outside pressure — it helps shove us out of bed in the morning, when what we may really want is to roll back over and sleep some more. And while most of us probably grumble about that (at least a little), once you are working alone, trying to build a solo business, there are days when that outside pressure is easy to miss.

WebWorkerDaily published an article on this very issue this week. In it, they identified five keys to success for self-directed work. When I review the list they’ve identified, I see, not only good advice, but many of the same things that I continue to struggle with as I proceed through this journey myself.

Secret #1 – Stay on Course
This one is hard, because it’s often too easy to be tempted by distraction — especially if that distraction comes in the form of paying client work. This is particularly challenging if part of your new professional efforts involve a career change or shift from your previous work. If the people in your network know you as a Marketing Manager, then it’s easy to be asked to join clients in that role, rather than build a new web design business.

Picking your direction is key, and then identifying steps you need to take to grow your business as well as the steps you need to meet your client needs will give you a list of tactical things to do. And I’ve found that it’s often much easier to stay focused if you can move from task-to-task with a clear understanding of why each is important and what bigger goal it ties back to. There is very little as satisfying as a To Do List with a ton of things crossed off!

Secret #2 -Overcome the Sense of Disconnection
This one is particularly hard for us extroverted types. I spent the first six months attempting to work from home and having it drive me out of my mind. For me, it was the single biggest hit to my sense of daily sanity and it took months to start finding a solution that was of value. The problem wasn’t with feeling disconnected in my work tasks, it was feeling socially disconnected from a lack of daily face-to-face interaction with colleagues.

Ultimately my solution for this was co-working. As a growing trend, co-working has proven a sanity saver for me. Co-working spaces come in all flavors, and exploring the different options in your community is probably necessary before you find one that is a right fit. But one of the most valueable changes for me over the past year has been finding a place where I can go each day to work, surrounded by other people who are working, where I can take a break, chat with other entrepreneurs, and kick around ideas that may have nothing to do with my own daily work. It’s the ‘water cooler’ effect, and until I started my own business, I had no idea how much my emotional health relied on that type of daily connection to other people.

Secret #3 – Learn to Live in Exile
Professionally speaking, breaking into a new space can be hard. Getting your foot in the right doors to start carving out a name for yourself takes time, tenacity and sometimes a fair share of creativity. The single biggest help I have experienced is networking — and by that, I do not necessarily mean the version that is easiest or comes most naturally to me (social networking), but in person, face-to-face, local community networking.

Finding professional associations, Meetup groups that focus on your area of expertise, and professional networking groups for small businesses is a great way to start building a name for yourself in your community. And while web workers do not necessarily need to work locally, it’s often valuable place to start. It’s also a great way to meet other people in your field locally, which I have found invaluable for collaboration opportunities, brainstorming, and building some economies of scale.

Secret #4 – Take Control
Not everyone is a detail person. For some of us, the details of contract negotiation, tax compliance, corporation regulations and bookkeeping are enough to make us run out and get a job at Starbucks. (Add me to that list.) The bottom line, though, is that this is just part of the deal. So, for those (like me) who have a mental Control+Alt+Delete moment just thinking about those type of things, the best solution is outsourcing.

An LLC has less overhead involved than a corporation; and finding a bookkeeper that you can work with, a lawyer you can trust, and a CPA with some good discipline can make the difference between success and failure. The fact is, no matter how good your outsourcing options are, though, in the end it is still your business and you still have to fight past the moment where your eyes glaze over and you mentally check out. You must understand what the professionals you employ are recommending to you and why: they may be the jockey, but you are the owner of the thoroughbred. If the horse breaks his leg, the jockey can go find another job, but you are the one who has to deal with a lame race horse. Let them be the experts, but don’t use that as an excuse to remain blissfully ignorant about those aspects of your business.

Secret #5 – Offer, Don’t Wait to Be Asked
In retail, this is called “upselling.” Amazon and Netflix have both done a great job over the years of honing this process: “We see that you were interested in this, and so we’d like to recommend that.” This is often important to do with clients. Part of your competative advantage is your expertise. Odds are, your client is not an expert in your field, so they are counting on you to identify opportunities that they wouldn’t know to ask for. If you are not doing this, then you are missing an enormous opportunity — for both yourself and your client.

The flip-side of this, of course, is to be professional, respectful and responsible about this. If you have a client who can barely pay your the bills as it is, then don’t offer them something that they are not in a position to do, unless you are willing and able to make special arrangements (delayed payment, a trade for services, etc.). When I have clients in this position, I will often highlight some possibilities, but let them know at what point in the future they will make the most sense. It gives me the opportunity to maintain a dialogue with them about it, but it also lets them know that I respect their current situation and understand that they have to prioritize their expenses.

All in all, WebWorkerDaily’s list is an important thing to consider if you are either looking to start a business or if you are struggling with some areas of your business. It’s easy to leap in and then later discover that some aspects are harder to handle than others. But it’s also helpful to recognize that some things just come with the territory. There may be techniques to help manage them a bit easier, but in the end, a new entrepreneur simply has to tackle things that an employee never has to worry about.

And while that might be discouraging for some people, for others, those types of differences can be the entire point to striking out on your own in the first place.

Alora Chistiakoff is an entrepreneur, blogger, content strategist and project manager who has been developing online business and technology for startups for more than a decade.  She co-owns The Indigo Heron Group, Inc., a content strategy firm in Austin, Texas.

If you missed the January 15th payment due date for estimated taxes for 2009, it’s not too late to avoid a penalty. According to the IRS,

“If you file your 2009 Form 1040 or Form 1040A by February 1, 2010, and pay the rest of the tax you owe, you do not need to make the payment due on January 15, 2010.”

Don’t wait! Complete your tax forms and send in your payment to avoid penalties.

I don’t know about everyone else, but I have a this great productivity fantasy: I have a single, slick, easy, clean interface that is fast, portable and platform agnostic that allows me to update everything from my blog to my to do list to project plans and email in any format that makes sense (voice, typing, hand-written, etc.). In this fantasy, I can share piece with people as makes sense, and I can collaborate with others on things we are working on together.

It’s a nice fantasy. Unfortunately, the reality always falls short.

Yesterday, while reading yet another new list from Mashable about Online Productivity Tools for Business, I was struck by how much time I spend reading things like this. And it occured to me: productivity advice is like dieting.

Discipline, discipline and a little more discipline
Like dieting, being more productive is a matter of discipline. It’s refusing to get sucked into distractions, and it’s understanding how your energy levels throughout the day impact your ability to accomplish different kinds of tasks either more quickly or more slowly.  You can’t lose weight if have donuts for breakfast every day and never exercise.  We all know that.  The only solution is eliminating bad habits — even the ones that seemed to make sense at one time, but which are time wasters today.

We distract ourselves with tools
What’s hardest of all, though, is that truly becoming more productive requires that we give up the hope that a gadget is going to make all the difference. It’s like buying a piece of gym equipment.  If you use it to hang your clothes on, then it’s not going to be a valuable weight-loss tool. It’s not about the tools. Unfortunately, the market can focus on the tools because it’s a better business model.

We usually know what we are doing wrong
The part that I always find the most interesting, is that when you talk to people about their desire to become more productive (or more organized, or to lose weight, etc.), in almost all cases, they know what they need to do. But, for some reason, they just aren’t doing it. Whether it is starting the day with a workout, or closing down TweetDeck while trying to work, more often than not, the source of the problem is usually pretty clear.

We want cheats
The problem is that we want a magic wand that is going to allow us to keep our bad habits, and help us accomplish our goals anyway. Like dieting, we know that we are our own worst enemy and that in order to make a true and lasting difference, we have to change.  We want to be able to lose weight, but we don’t want to have to give up cheeseburgers and ice cream to do it.  Change is hard, and it rarely seems fun, and it’s a hit to the ego to know that we are what is in our own way. So it’s less distrubing to spend time and money shopping for gadgets and gizmos that will allow us to see results without having to change.

So, while Mashable’s list has some really good tools on it — many of which I do use and often recommend — the bottom line is that I have signed up for a lot of tools that are designed to help my productivity. Out of hundreds that I’ve sampled, I use three or four.

Next time you start to lament your productivity (or anything else), stop yourself and do a check: do you know what the solution is already? And, if you do, what’s stopping you from implementing it? I’d be willing to bet, it has almost nothing to do with a tool.

Alora Chistiakoff is an entrepreneur, blogger, content strategist and project manager who has been developing online business and technology for startups for more than a decade.  She co-owns The Indigo Heron Group, Inc., a content strategy firm in Austin, Texas.

The WorkingPoint Community is made up of small business owners, like yourself, and we want you to get to know each other. We’d like to introduce you to Josh Melhorn at Chattanooga Sports Network:

ChattSportsNet.com was formed to bring the latest online sports news/blogging/networking technology to the Chattanooga area schools. With ChattSportsNet.com, the coaches, faculty, parents, boosters, players, family, basically anyone who wants to promote their player(s) sport is given the tools to publish a blog.

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