I’ve been looking into Marketing lately. And by lately I mean for the last year, and by “looking into” I mean “desperately trying to figure out.”

Every single bit of marketing advice I found started with one thing: choose your niche.

And that’s where I’d get stuck, every single time. So no matter how clever they were about leveraging your online presence or developing a marketing strategy, I never got that far, because I’d be over there pondering the niche issue.

Cue the recession.

Now, a lot of marketing and small business coaches will tell you there is no problem with the economy, that small businesses and solo professionals all over the place are doin’ it for themselves just fine. To those people, I say, “Bite me.”

When your biggest client is in the financial industry, there is an economy, you cannot stick your head in the sand and deny the recession, and those people make you want to hit things. Preferably them.

So there was more panic and more soul-searching and even a brief flirtation with renaming myself, but in the end it was all just me being a big avoidy-pants about choosing a niche. I was Wembling — waffling, panicking, flailing and wailing, all to keep from having to make this one decision.

It turns out, I was doing it wrong.

The thing is, from all the vague hand-wavey instructions I’d seen about choosing your niche, it was Really Important to be marketing just in one narrow market, because that gets you the best results. And I was interpreting that to mean I had to pick one industry, and start marketing just to them, which is what most marketing gurus either implied or explicitly stated. Except that wasn’t what I wanted, didn’t feel genuine, and thus I encountered this giant block of resistance. To the point where I was considering a whole host of other, stupider options, just to avoid making this one decision.

So I sat myself down, and opened up the Destuckification Sampler I’d downloaded. And calmed myself the heck down, so instead of imitating Wembley Fraggle, I had more of a Mokey thing going on.

Then I paid Naomi from Ittybiz a ridiculously paltry sum to join her new program, and she kindly carved out some time for me that wasn’t on the phone, and wasn’t email — she actually got onto Google Chat with me, which is my brain-fueling format of text and waiting and getting to go back later and see what the other person said. Except with much more immediacy than email.

And in less than an hour, I had a niche. And you know what? It was exactly what I’d been doing all along — a little of this, a little of that, and a whole lot of helping out small businesses who didn’t know where to look for help.

Because here’s the thing — Naomi is smart. She knew that a niche could be “design for monster truck rally promoters,” but that it could also be “one-stop shopping design for small businesses on a budget.” Which I did not know. But now the latter one is my niche.

Even as I type this, cogs are whirling and things are in motion to solidify my niche, including a convenient package of services for a single up-front price. Because I forget that the hardest part about starting a business is as much bracing yourself for scary sticker shock as it is finding a designer whose work you like. And apparently, unbeknownst to me, there’s a million web designers but not very many of us left who are comfortable doing print, too. And a brand new small business needs more than just a website, which of course I knew, because I work with small businesses all the time.

And soon, more of them will know that I know it, and hopefully pay me to do it.

It’s just me and my cats here, so I tend to do household chores on a pretty simple “as needed” schedule, with a few things that get done every other day.

Putting this schedule together has taught me a lot about my work habits, and when my brain will get in the way of getting stuff done.

For instance, the cat boxes. Gross chore, right? Stinky, heavy, dusty, ick. But here’s the thing — I had worked it up in my mind that it was also a time-consuming chore, lots of hard work! And so I tended to put it off until the last possible moment, to my cat’s utter disgust. (Bella got revenge by barfing on things. It was not good for either of us. And that was before the kitten!) Then one day, I sat down and sent an IM to a friend — brb, going to do the cat box. I trudged around, cleaned the box, washed my hands, and sat back down to IM — all done, back!

Much to my surprise, less than two full minutes had passed between messages.

I had spent far more effort avoiding this chore than I the effort it took to just get up and do it. So now when it comes in the schedule, I don’t drag my feet and put it off, because I know that it only takes two minutes. And when it’s done both my cats and I are all relieved.

How does this get applied to work? Well, if I get an email from a client asking about something I know will take less than five minutes, I do it right then. And then, instead of them waiting for my reply until it coms around on the to-do list, and me putting it off or forgetting about it in a ton of other emailed requests, we’re both relieved. And my clients think I’m awesome, and are more inclined to forgive when something else takes an extra day or two.

The second chore I tend to put off is dishes, and this one is where I found the really hard lesson.

I am really, really prone to overwhelm.

When I’ve been eating at home from leftovers and pre-prepared foods, then two days is just about right to have a sink full of dishes and use up one good squirt of dishwashing liquid, with most everything fitting in the drainer. I find the process itself kind of Zen, warming and soothing at once, letting my mind wander (well, as long as I don’t drop anything).

But if I’ve been cooking, or had people over, then there’s extra dishes. And that’s when I hit Dish Overwhelm — as soon as there’s more dishes than I can readily wash in one go, I start putting them off, feeling powerless and overwhelmed, and then more dishes pile up and nothing gets done.

See where this is going?

I made beer bread yesterday — it was delicious, btw — and now I have extra bowls and dishes piled up around my sink, overflowing the area and causing both physical and mental clutter. But I don’t want to wash them. Just looking in there makes me all tense and unhappy, driving away that warm, sudsy dishwashing Zen I was talking about earlier. The pile is too big and it feels like I’ve let it go too long (even though it’s dish day by my normal schedule), and so my instinct is to avoid it, let the pile grow even bigger, and blow my schedule completely.

Enter work, and the power of the to-do list.

Productivity blogs everywhere will tell you to have a master to-do list, and a daily list. My problem is, as soon as I start looking at that master list I get a big case of overwhelm and I don’t even want to think about how I’m going to get it all done with only five measly slots per day and more things coming in all the time.

So I procrastinate, play Facebook games, and generally let the problem get worse until I run out of dishes — well, okay, until deadlines force me into last-minute rushing. Or they whoosh past and guilt piles on with the overwhelm. That’s always extra fun.

How do I avoid this? By not keeping the master list.

I have deadlines noted down in my calendar, and I keep those in mind when I make my daily to-do list, but that master list is kept out of sight. I just deal with the small pile in front of me, 5 tasks per day (I slack on weekends and only do 3, or count things like “relax” and “hang out with friends” as tasks), and then tomorrow there’ll be another pile. The overwhelm is still there sometimes, looming especially when I sit down to make a daily list, but it’s not as scary as it would be if I had a giant list.

The thing is, a 5-task to-do list is a bunch of items I know I can succeed on today. The giant list of everything I need to do in the next few weeks/months/whatever is just an invitation to think of all the ways it can fail to get any of them done.

One sink full of dishes? I know I can do that. When it overflows onto countertops and starts to really pile up, that’s an invitation to dropped glasses, unwashed corners, and failure.

For next time, perhaps we can manage a pithy commentary on how taking out the trash is like marketing (my two most hated things in life), and how to outsource the stuff you shouldn’t be doing (like, say, vacuuming). Not to mention the bigger chores, like cleaning the bathroom and updating your website.

Until then, I have dishes to wash, cat boxes to clean, and the trash to take out. Wish me luck!

The original reason I went into graphic design is because I had the skills, and the job was available. I’d taken some related classes in art school, I had some programming experience and a lot of computer savvy, and most importantly, I needed a job. As an artist, I have an eye for making things visually pleasing, balanced and attractive. As a former programmer, I learned how to think logically, and while html is a very simple language, it still helps.

The reason I’ve stuck with it is because I like to make things look good that might otherwise be plain, or just plain ugly. I think the world is a better place with the purple house in the middle of a street full of white, with gargoyles and decorative cornices on the otherwise boring banks, and beautiful earrings on power-suited businesswomen. I prefer to see, and create, a business card with a little bit of flare, a website whose form and function works for the eye as well as the mouse, or a book cover that has more than just the title and author name to offer.

Another thing that’s kept me in the web design business is my own internet addiction. I love the web, and I want everyone to be on it! I want all my favorite businesses and people to have sites where I can look up their info, so I can refer people to my dentist, do my banking online, or just help my friends find each other with just a few clicks of the mouse. A lot of small businesses think the web is out of reach, that it takes thousands of dollars that they don’t have, and I like to think one of my niches is helping small businesses find the web presence that works for them.

I enjoy the process of working to spec. I know that might sound strange, but it can be really enjoyable to have a client come to me with their fuzzy concepts, and give them back a sharp result that makes them say, “That’s just what I wanted,” — or my favorite, “That’s even better than I imagined.” When I can find a client that really clicks, the design experience becomes enjoyable, as well as profitable, for both of us.

Finally, I like the flexibility of freelancing. I like being able to plan vacations without asking my boss for the days off, to be able to wake up a little late, commute 10 feet and answer work emails before I’ve eaten breakfast. I think that the ability to work outside of a schedule — or in one, when I need to — can enhance the creative process. Not to mention giving me a chance to bake cookies in the middle of a slow Thursday afternoon, if that’s what I want to do.

So, why design? Because I like making attractive, functional things for other people. And this pays the bills better than freelance cookie baking.