Ah, the New Year’s resolution. Have you made yours yet? I had two 2008 vows: One, to take a picture every day, which resulted in my picture-a-day blog, Picalicious (picalicious.blogspot.com). I only missed four out of 365 days. Not too shabby! And two, get a column published. It was the first year I’ve ever achieved my New Year’s resolutions, and I give all the credit to creating a social community around them and finding a way to track my progress online.

Call me obsessive, but I cannot resist the weekly urge to check the pulse of my online self. I want to know what you see when you Google any combination of Margie, Maddux and/or Newman. It’s not that I think everyone is out there Googling me, but what if they do? What if “they” is my future boss or a high school friend? I want the search results for my online self to be a good representation of my real self, and it should be the same for you.

You don’t have a lot of spare time. So if you want to be your best at work and at home, you’ve got to make room for the stuff that matters. From today forward, you must filter.
    Think about how much information is flooding in, fighting for your attention and emotion every waking moment. There’s junk mail, email, SPAM, telemarketers, newspapers, TV shows, field trip forms, homework to check, bills to pay, credit card offers, Facebook notifications, PDFs you can’t read on your Blackberry and ... (sigh). I mean, really!

According to Women’s Health, working women rank stress as their number one everyday problem. Whether the work environment is corporate, not-for-profit or stay-at-home, today’s women have a Rolodex of stress-inducing to-do’s: family to-do’s, friend to-do’s, work to-do’s, um, feminine to-do’s. You complete various tasks here and there throughout the day.