Popular online scheduling tool Doodle (as used by WWD writer Aliza Sherman) today launched a Premium Edition. This new version of the app, which costs $28 per year, lets people present a more professional image by removing advertising and allowing customization of their Doodle pages. It also allows users to request personal information from their event participants, such as postal and email addresses and phone numbers.
We have 50 free Premium Edition accounts to give away. Sign onto Doodle (or log into your existing account) and enter coupon code: 4as9zxcc. The first 50 readers to use it will get one year of access to the Premium Edition.
Let us know what you think of Doodle Premium Edition in the comments.
One of the best things about being a freelancer is that I can schedule my time in a way that works best for me; however, this flexibility can be a double-edged sword. While I have quite a bit of freedom to work on projects whenever it is most convenient, I find that in order to maintain my sanity, I need to carefully schedule my time to maximize productivity and make sure that I complete tasks on time.
We all have different ways of working based on our body clocks and personal preferences. I get my best work done between 7am and 2pm. I usually try to get up between 6am and 7am, and head right to the computer to catch up on East Coast client email and take care of any urgent items before hitting the shower and starting my day. Read the rest of this entry »
We’ve covered a lot of scheduling software here on WWD. For example, I wrote about When Is Good, a lightweight solution that offered very basic, easy-to-access scheduling for busy folks, and there are many other services available, too, as apparent from the “Calendars and Schedules” section of this post. A new service, ScheduleOnce, advertises itself with the tagline “Find a time in no time” and claims to deliver “more scheduling power for your Google Calendar.”
If I believed the hype from all of these scheduling services, I’d have to assume that we were all just careening around haphazardly, making and breaking so many appointments and meetings that we lose all sense of time and date. In practice, I think that most of the time the most scheduling software I need is my iPhone and its built-in Calendar application. That said, there are definitely times when scheduling using Google Calendar, which I already use for group-related activities, would make more sense. Read the rest of this entry »
When you’re working on your own, setting up appointments can take you away from more important tasks. Even if the appointment itself is something crucial — a meeting with a client to go over a new project’s specs, say — the back and forth of trying to find a time that works for both of you can delay your ability to get down to business. BookFresh provides an alternative that can let your clients choose a time to talk to you that works for both of you. Read the rest of this entry »
I have a singletasking tip for you, and it’s an important one: Work like you’re on vacation. Before you type up the smart-aleck response, “You mean don’t work at all?” let me explain. I mean work like you’re taking a working vacation. If you’re a full-time remote worker, you probably know the kind of focused working vacation I mean. Sometimes, you can pull one off without your employer even being aware that you’ve taken a vacation at all, if you’re experienced in the art.
The key to a successful working holiday? Good time management and prioritization skills. Having fun and distracting things, settings and activities all around you has a way of throwing what needs doing and what can be put off into sharp relief. The result, for me at least, is a kind of highly motivated tunnel vision that has me blowing through high-priority tasks in half the time I would normally take.
Since you’re not actually always on vacation, how do you replicate the effect in order to trigger task triage? The solution is to bring back the motivation, if not the exotic locales. Read the rest of this entry »
Recently, I posted about singletasking, a new trend that many are turning to after having burned out on multitasking. One key component of singletasking is setting aside blocks of time during which you check and deal with email, instead of having it interrupt your work flow continually throughout the day. Ignoring email is probably the most challenging aspect of singletasking for me, and I suspect the same is true for many web workers. Read the rest of this entry »
Editor’s note: With this post we welcome Amber Riviere to the WebWorkerDaily team. Amber is a web designer with BrownBugProject.com. She lives in Louisiana, working alongside her very old boxer, Annie, and her energetic love bird, Sebas (see-bass).
I can always tell when I’m just putting out fires (moving from one “urgent urgency” to the next).
“What? A client needs help with an über-pressing concern, and it has to be handled right now or his web site will explode? I’ll get on that right away!”
“What, Ms. Prospective Client, you have the ultimate web project, but you need a quote within the hour? No problem.”
It always starts with checking email first thing in the morning. Open, read, react, and an hour later, reply. Open, read, react, and an hour later, reply. On and on it goes, until it’s two o’clock and not one smidgen of paid work has been done, or if it has, it’s been done in a haphazard way, usually at the client’s demand instead of using my own tried-and-true schedule and system. By the end of the day, I’m zapped and feel like a heel for allowing my work to control me, instead of the other way around. There has to be a better way! Read the rest of this entry »
One of the advantages of working from home is the flexible schedule. No matter how many things you need to accomplish, or how many simultaneous projects you have, you can still control when you can perform certain tasks, as well as how long they take. While this is more true of freelancing than it is for employees, it’s this schedule flexibility that makes the prospect of teleworking more attractive.
Whether it’s a do-it-yourself renovation of your home office, a one-month trip, or participating in NaNoWriMo, there’s always the big, personal project that you’re trying to fit in your schedule. How do you make sure that it won’t have much of a negative impact on your work? Read the rest of this entry »
Web Work 101: How To Escape The Cubicle
