One of the challenges of any web worker is keeping up with the flow of information needed to do your job. Email, IM, SMS, RSS Feeds, Social Networks, and other things give you information, but it can also be a huge distraction.
While it isn’t unusual for a web worker to cut out, say, IM or Twitter–something that seems to demand more immediate attention–I took a different approach: I stopped reading my RSS Feeds on Google Reader, the popular online feed reader.
Why did I choose to cut out this activity? The amount of time it was taking me to go through Google Reader kept increasing with a decreasing amount of content I didn’t get from somewhere else–namely my social networks and email. The number of quality links was substantially higher than I was getting through RSS.
I want to be clear: RSS feeds and RSS readers are wonderful tools. I still use an RSS reader for inside-the-firewall information. I will likely return to using Google Reader at some point in the near future, but I will start with a clean slate.
What about you? Have you killed your RSS reader? Have you completely started over? How do you manage the ever-growing number of items in your RSS reader? Let me know in the comments.
Chance are, if you are a web worker, you occasionally have to travel for your job. That means taking your work on the road, possibly using different tools than usual, and very likely using different connectivity, depending on where you are.
If you’re a frequent traveler, i.e. a global nomad, you’ve likely got a set of tools–both hardware and software–that you use when you travel. If you’re relatively new to the whole travel game (you do it infrequently, or you just want an occasional change-of-pace from working at home or your office) try to practice working remotely–without the expensive plane trip.
What does it mean to “practice?” Go someplace local you don’t normally go and attempt to work as if you were hundreds or thousands of miles away. Depending on whether or not you have a mobile broadband solution, you might need to scout the area first to ensure that there are adequate connectivity options.
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There are a number of considerations that one must go through to buy a new home, particularly one you work in. Anyone who has been through a house sale while living in the house knows about something called “staging.” Space requirements in the new house aside, one issue that may come up is the fact you probably have to sell the house you currently live in while continuing to earn a living.
Part of that process involves removing the excess stuff from your home to make it appear spacious and inviting to potential buyers. This, unfortunately, includes work-related stuff. For some people, work-related material may be a laptop and some paperwork. For me, however, it’s a good portion of the contents of my office! And that’s just the start of uncertainty.
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Skype Prime has created somewhat of a stir in the blogosphere. It basically gives you the ability to charge someone for calls (either per-call or per-minute). Phil Wolff at Skype Journal points out the limitations, which are as follows:
- $0.50/min minimum all charge
- Skype takes 30% of whatever you charge
- You have to wait at least 120 days to get paid.
These usurious rates really limit the potential uses of this, particularly when you consider that most calls are peer-to-peer and they aren’t really doing anything except payment processing. If they drop their cut to, say, 3% (that’s all PayPal charges for credit card processing), drop the minimum call charge limits, and reduce the amount of time it takes to actually get paid, I could see this really taking off in some of the less affluent countries.
Assuming Skype reduces their cut of the action, pays people in a timely manner, and improves the Skype Prime service, there are a few places where Skype Prime could be used to make some money:
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As a Web Worker, you have undoubtedly used, tried, or at least heard of Skype, that wonderful peer-to-peer IM/voice tool that end users love, but security administrators detest.
Thanks to both the efforts of Skype and a series of third party application developers, there are a number of things you can do within Skype that would be insanely useful for Web Workers.
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I am not a huge fan of To-Do lists. However, I realize they are a necessary evil. The problem I’ve had with the various forms this list took is a couple of things:
- Once I’m done with the list, I tend to throw them away.
- I frequently need more information about the task than I am able to write down on a piece of paper.
- I am a web person, and I want to be able to access my to do list from anywhere.
There are certainly better tools for this. However, after thinking about it, a blog seems like a perfect tool for this:
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Network World has an article about how telecommuting might kill your career. 1,320 executives from all over the world were surveyed and 60% of them said that they felt telecommuters are less likely to advance in their careers as company executives want face time with their employees.
As someone who has telecommuted full time for almost a decade, I can say that my career has probably been “stunted” as a result of telecommuting. There are certain opportunities I missed out on or were simply not available to me as a result of not being in the office full time. I have also missed out on a lot of distractions as a result, such as office politics.
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Ironically, as my story about surviving a power outage got posted just as the Pacific Northwest was getting hammered by a fierce windstorm that knocked out power and caused widespread damage. The tips I provided in my previous article assume a relatively minor power outage. A more drastic outage like the one I just went through call for more drastic measures.
Assuming you don’t flee for a location with power and heat, your only realistic option is to get a generator. A number of companies make them and they come in a variety of shapes and sizes. They run on gas, diesel, or natural gas. Depending on how much stuff you want to run during a power outage, you could be looking at anywhere from a few hundred dollars to several thousand dollars. The more watts the generator generates, the more expensive it is. You will need to add up the wattage rating of every lightbulb, appliance, and other device you will run in order to determine the right size of generator.
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Web Work 101: How To Escape The Cubicle
