Chicken Crust Pizza from Your Lighter Side

Avocado, Mozzarella and Bruschetta Chicken from Iowa Girl Eats

Slow-Cooker Spicy Buffalo Chicken Sandwiches Every Day Food Blog (Martha Stewart)

Kung Pao Chicken Burgers from Iowa Girl Eats

Chicken Week: Chicken & Wild Rice Soup from Iowa Girl Eats

Easy Chicken Masala from Yours Truly

P.S. Clearly I have a bit of an obsession with recipes from Iowa Girl Eats! They always look mouth-watering

Photo credit 1, 2, 3

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Today’s guest post comes from Kristen Walker of Project 20 Something. I asked Kristen to do a guest post because I love the life wisdom she shares on the Project 20 Something blog and on social media! 

We often get so caught up in our own “stuff” that we get lost in our thoughts and worries and plans, and we end up blocking out the rest of the world. I’m sure you’ve had the experience of being in a crowded place (a store, the metro/bus, the gym) and even though you were surrounded by people, you didn’t actually see any of them because you were up in your own head.

The trouble with this is that 1) your thoughts are usually focused in the past or the future, which means you’re missing the experience of the present moment and 2) you don’t connect with anyone around you, leading to the feeling of isolation in a crowded room.

So how can you remedy both of these struggles at once? Try doing one random act of kindness every day. These can be small things, like holding the door for someone, paying the toll for the car behind you, or letting someone go in front of you in the Starbucks line.

If you’re like me, you’ve probably heard this suggestion before and thought, “That’s nice, I should do that.” And maybe you’ve even tried it before and felt the warm, contented after-effects of helping someone out without asking for anything in return. But what if you made it into a practice? What if you committed to doing one random act of kindness every single day?

You don’t have to plan them out in advance. In fact, it’s better if you let the opportunities come to you because then you’re more tuned in with your environment and the people around you. Plus, when you’re doing nice things for others, you feel connected to them, even if you never speak to them directly.

The best part is, it’s a win-win situation: you’re bringing positivity to others, and you bring more peace into your own life.

So what random act of kindness will you do today?

Kristen Walker is a professional life, career, & relationship coach for people in their 20s and 30s who are craving clarity, balance, and purpose. She co-founded Project 20-Something, a coaching company focused on helping Gen Y-ers create the life they want to live. For a free hour-long phone coaching session, fill out our quick contact form.

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Every Most weeks, I feature a roundup of interesting articles, blog posts, and fun graphics that caught my eye throughout the week. Sometimes they’re themed and sometimes I just go with the flow. This week: a random mish mash of links about productivity, keeping it real online, and valuing yourself as a young entrepreneur. 

Easy Ways to Defeat “Fuzzy Brain” at Work: I definitely struggle with days where I feel wildly unproductive. I feel like it’s harder when I have no one telling me what to do!

Lessons Learned: First Months as a Young Trep: My friend Jenna from college recently launched a digital marketing consultancy that focuses on SEO, SEM, paid search, and email marketing. She recently blogged about her biggest lessons so far. The most important takeaway for me: don’t undervalue yourself! Check out Part Dos as well (it has a little shout out to me!)

10 Tips for Juggling Multiple Projects and Priorities: Courtney lays out some guidelines for you.

On Social Media + Keeping It Real: Ever feel pressured to appear perfect on social media? I died laughing over some of the stories shared when Sarah of Yes and Yes asked people to be real on her Facebook page.

Are You as Busy as You Think You Are? Sounds like my conscious time management blog post! An awesome post on getting honest with yourself about how you use your time.

Transparency, Coaching, and An Americano: Want to know what a coaching session is like? This guy is letting you watch his!

And in delicious recipes: parmesan and garlic roasted edamame, strawberry coconut soft serve, and sesame ginger noodles with chicken and veggies!

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It’s no secret that I love being productive and efficient, especially online. When I worked at LivingSocial, I learned tons of great Google search tricks to improve my searching, find more relevant results, and uncover “hidden” gems, like a potential candidate’s email address.

Jenn of Avenue Gray (a fellow North Carolinian doing digital marketing who I met on Twitter, of course) was nice enough to let me guest post on her blog about my favorite little Google tricks and Boolean tips!

You may have learned but quickly forgotten Boolean searching from your middle school, high school, or college days of searching academic databases in the library to find scholarly articles for upcoming papers. If you’re like me, you blocked Boolean searching from your memory, discounting it as yet another skill that was relevant in school but irrelevant in the real world.

Allow me to correct you. Thankfully, I relearned how to master Boolean searches, as well as Google searching hacks, when I worked as a Junior Recruiting Coordinator. Let me tell you- finding resumes of potential great candidates is nearly impossible without Boolean tricks. But the best part? I now use these search tricks to find everything from new gluten-free recipes to interesting content for my clients to tweet to new blogs to follow.

Read the rest of the post over on Avenue Gray:

Google Search 101: How to Make the Most of the Search Engine

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Imagine your perfect work situation. Are you imagining?

If you’re like me, you want to start work every day feeling like you’re fulfilling your purpose by changing the community, empowering individuals, helping others grow their babies businesses, or something else purpose-y. It doesn’t have to come in the form of working with a non-profit or being a career counselor, but purpose- however you define it- is probably important to you. So we’ve talked about purpose.

Now let’s hop on over to joy. You- like me- might want to interact with awesome coworkers, clients, and customers, play a little ping pong, drink the delicious free office coffee, and be able to leave work at 4pm on Fridays. We’ll put all of these things under joy.

So, most likely, your perfect work situation brings you both purpose and joy. Now imagine for a minute these two scenarios:

Let’s say you work with battered teens at a crisis center. You make a difference in their lives, which undoubtedly fills you with purpose. But maybe it’s taking a toll on you emotionally, maybe you can’t stand your cynical coworkers, or maybe you feel like your work/life balance is out of whack because you stay until 9pm most nights. Here you have purpose with no joy.

Now let’s say you work at a tech start-up. You love your hip, chic office, you love playing skeeball when you need a quick break, and you love the on-site gym where you can sneak in a workout. But maybe you wonder every day how much of a difference you’re actually making. Here you have joy with no purpose.

I think you get where I’m going- the ideal work situation, at least for me, combines joy and purpose. Without both, I think it’s difficult to feel fulfilled long-term. So here’s to finding both!

Have you found both joy and purpose at work? Have you had a job with one but not the other?

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And also:

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Every Most weeks, I feature a roundup of interesting articles, blog posts, and fun graphics that caught my eye throughout the week. Sometimes they’re themed and sometimes I just go with the flow. This week: any and all things related to life coaching! 

Interested in becoming a life coach? Here’s a career profile on Levo League about how to find or become a life coach.

The title of this New York Times article says it all: Should a Life Coach Have a Life First? What do you think about young life coaches?

I had a great phone call with Ashley of Your Super Awesome Life yesterday- so glad that I found her on Twitter and then read her post on Yes and Yes. Love her list of top 5 freebies for women in their 20′s!

Looking to launch into life coaching? Molly Mahar, a well-known life coach, offers online courses through her business, Stratejoy.

Love this piece from Amanda Abella (who describes herself as a “Millennial Movement Mastermind”): Work/Life Balance- Seriously?

Confused about life coaching? Here are 10 life coaching myths.

If you need some guidance on where to start if you’re thinking about life coaching full-time or on the side, read this piece on one woman’s take on life coaching certifications and more.

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When I read the description of Project 20-Something, I obviously wanted to connect with them immediately since I “secretly” want to be a life coach one day! Project 20-Something is “a life, career, and relationship coaching business that exists to help people navigate and overcome quarter-life issues that are typically faced in the late teens, twenties, and early thirties, such as career satisfaction, relationship challenges, and general goal setting.”

I’ve since connected to Kristen, one of the co-founders, and arranged to guest post on their blog about conscious time management. My post is now up on their site!

Conscious Time Management

People often ask me how I have time to blog or make home-cooked meals. Often these questions are prefaced or followed by “I don’t have time for that,” as if I must have extra hours built into my day.

I respond that, for me, those things are priorities. I have made a conscious decision to post on my blog regularly and make healthy, affordable meals because it adds value to my life. It might mean waking up 30 minutes earlier to toss ingredients into my Crockpot, skipping an extra TV episode, or blogging during lunch.

Read the rest of the post over on the Project 20-Something blog!

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No matter your work role- a freelancer working with clients, a corporate employee coordinating with a sprawling team, or a start-up hustler living a fast-paced lifestyle, we all have days where we just want to pull the covers over our eyes, curl up with a cup of coffee, turn on Friends, or take a road trip to get away from it.

On those days, it can rough to remember why you usually love your job and the many successes you’ve had. The awesome client response to a project, the great feedback from your boss, the sweet thank you note from a blogger you worked with all seem to be instantly banished from your memory. So here’s an idea: keep track of all of those encouraging odds and ends so that you can refer to them on a “rainy day” at work.

Where to create your collage:

• Photoshop (if you already have the program)
• PicMonkey (though you won’t be able to edit it)
• Polyvore (you could save it as a draft so that it’s not publicly visible)
• Evernote (better for words than photos)
• Pinterest board (keep it secret if you want)
• A bulletin board (yes, a real one. Not an online one!)

What to include:

• Thank you notes (or photos of them)
• Text from positive emails, tweets, or Facebook messages sent by your boss, your contractor, or your client
• An article with your byline and headshot
• Screen shots of your successes (like that graph showing a 500% increase in your site stats for your blog!)
• An autograph of a famous-in-your-industry individual that you were able to meet
• An image of a graphic you designed

Do you have a “rainy day” work collage? What would you include?

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Why is our generation so flaky? Why doesn’t anyone follow through? Why do people take on 10 million projects and then fail to complete them?

Is it because they’re volunteers and there is no pay incentivizing them? Is it because only full-time work, not contract work, would motivate them to stick to deadlines? Is it because they don’t like being managed by individuals their own age? Is it because we’re the Idea Generation and hate actually executing?

Or is it all managers’ faults? Do they not set realistic expectations? Do they try too hard to be laid-back, when really they should be hard asses?

I don’t understand this ever-increasing phenomenon, though I admittedly having fallen prey to this terrible trait before- yes, this is the pot calling the kettle black

How do you work more effectively with those who tend to go MIA or offer a handful of excuses for every missed deadline? Do you follow up constantly? Let them set their own deadlines? Give them one chance to succeed and then kick them to the curb? Patiently hold their hand?

Or is it me? Am I wrong? Is our generation reliable and my expectations are just too high?

Let’s hear it!

P.S. Check out How to Avoid the Idea Generation Trap on 99u!

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