I am just starting my own work from home, and the first thing that I noticed, even after everyone and all I read to watch for it, was what I was always on.  With my first big client being 4.5hrs behind me doesn’t help.  I was working from 8am till 9pm just because they were still calling and I felt the need to be close to my computer.

So I found this article from Fast Company, Can’t Leave At 5:30? Three Alternative Ways To Set Healthy Work Boundaries.

The big tip that I am going to take from here is to take small breaks throughout the day.

 While this late-night schedule might make some workers cringe, I think it’s fair to say that this is the norm for a lot business professionals–and especially entrepreneurs–today. Throughout the day take mini-breaks to get up and away from your computer, take a walk or grab a healthy snack; if you can find time to work out, even better.

What are your tips for keeping you and your family sane while keeping your boss or clients happy?

Any suggestions out there?

Cryptic on purpose, but updates will come as time allows.

Back when phones were mostly signal and little noise

So my first attempt at the reading list was not much of a success, but I will be trying again. It may not be every week, but I will keep a post open so that I can point you to the articles that I have sifted through and think are worth a read.

There is so much noise, I am hoping to make these posts all about the signal.

Dealing with difficult people: I looked at the title of this post and thought, “awesome, I need this right now”, thinking it would give me a list of things that I can do to deal.  All it talks about is that you can’t change people, and you have to be the maker of change.  So if there are difficult people in your life you either have to change something about your self or get out of the situation.

How to Destroy your Blog: Expect to see more and more links to this site.  I only found them a few months ago, and a good 60% of the posts have been awesome.  That doesn’t mean that the other 40% is shit, just that are not interesting to me at this point in time.  They have been added to the list of sites that I go to directly on a frequent basis.

Finding Ideas: I have struggled with this at times, but like CopyBlogger says, get writing and reading.  The ideas are all out there for you to steal.

Degaussing Warships: Nothing to do with webmastering, simply my engineering geek coming through.

Because cute doesn't replace content

The content makes the site. Its something that I take to heart.  Maybe not especially with this site, as it has turned into a dumping ground for everything that pops into my head that deals with travel, webmaster-ing, domain buying, food, urinals, etc etc

Its the content stupid!

On my other properties I have started the practice of re-visiting the old posts often to clean up the writing.  Great writing converts often, good writing converts sometimes and shitty writing will only convert if someone has found exactly what they were looking for.

Your blog should be a place to convince people that you have something that they didn’t even realize they needed.  If you are consultant selling services, a job hunter selling your skills or a pizza shop selling pies.  A blog is a place to show the world what you have to offer and sell them without being in their face about.

When you are writing a post or article use it as an opportunity to showcase what you know, and don’t always try to sell what you have.  The sale will come when you are the expert in what you know in the niche you are marketing too.

As my latest foray into the Making Money Online space is a marathon rather than a sprint I have been focusing on a couple of sites that fit my daytime (and night time lately) career to a tea.  Part of this is writing an Ebook for managers in this techincal space make heads and tails out of what the engineers are saying.

While have about 50% of the draft finished I started to think about how I am going to launch this book, its coming in Q1 2012, successfully, and came across these 5 Tips for Launching a Ebook, and what struck me initially was the fact that her site was clean and the post well written.  That is more than enough to make me listen, you see too much noise these days.

My favorite tip is #3:

Hire someone to help you. I never thought I’d do this; I like everything to be just so, so I prefer to do everything myself.

This is going to be a hard one for me because that even though I know that it makes more sense to hire someone to do something that I am not good at, I am a consultant by trade after all, but I still would rather learn the trade than hand the reins to someone else.
I think this is one of the traits that makes a successful consultant, but a disastrous publisher.

What do you think of her tips?  Have any of your own?  I will let you know how our launch goes this Winter.

Cheers,

Jeff M

I went to the Verizon store and picked up the Bold 2. At first glance and for using it for less than 24hrs it appears to be a good phone. I would have said great except it would not connect to the wireless this morning without a restart. That was not the way I wanted to start this trip.

I will give it a more through review after I have more time to play with it.

Members who have not yet voted are urged to cast their ballot and participate in guiding the affairs of the Association. So far 14.97% of eligible members have voted in this year’s Council Election and Bylaw vote. Voting is a duty that we owe to the professions, to each other as colleagues, and to the people of British Columbia. Have your say on who will lead the professions in the future.

The website link below will connect you to the 2011/12 council election statements, background documentation for the two bylaws you are being asked to ratify, and the on-line voting module. To ensure your anonymity is protected, your vote will be processed by a secure third-party system.

We urge you to exercise this duty of care to your profession by taking the time to review the election and bylaw amendment information and to make your voice heard by marking your on-line ballot by noon PST, Friday, September 30, 2011.

Yours truly,

Frank Denton, PEng, FEC
President, APEGBC

Please vote, with online voting it takes all of 5mins of your time.  If you haven’t reviewed the members who are running it may take a little longer.  I took 30mins a few weeks ago and read up on everyone running and picked who I thought would represent my interests the best.  On the By-Laws, the council has put together a very easy to use page that you can find here.

I wonder how many people are using the exact same password as me? I know of 2 people that came up with the exact same method, and I bet there are at least a dozen others who have also.

Can you guess my password?

When is XKCD wrong?