There was a great article on A List Apart that compiles comments from readers about working from home. Take a look.
My favorites:
Over the last couple of days, I’ve been doing what is sure to become an annual event: the purging of the office.
First I did something that’s been languishing in my to-do list for six months: I got all of my client data out of Excel/Word and wherever else it was hiding and into one single database. That was an enormous relief. I’d been looking for a CRM that would let me add an unlimited number of fields so I could enter info about URLs, logins, passwords, software installed on the server, IP addresses, domains, etc. and had never found anything that worked the way I wanted.
A few weeks ago I finally found the one true customizable DB platform for me (Filemaker Pro) and learned how to use it. Yes, I’m a PC user and yes, I do have Access on my desktop – but I don’t like it. I’m not an Office-basher because I love Word and Excel, but Access is not for me. I got Filemaker to do what I wanted in about 1/5 the time I spent screwing around with Access.
So anyway now I have a great-looking little DB form with tabs for all of the pertinent categories and all of my client data is in one compact place. Wonderful!
Second, I went through my file cabinet and discarded anything that could be trashed. I reorganized all the tabs on the folders so I could actually see them without them overlapping each other. I consolidated a few folders and made some new ones.
Third, and I just finished this: I went through all the dogeared design and web and IT magazines stacked in various places and cut out the articles I wanted to save. I made new folders for the file cabinet for all of those articles, probably 40-50 of them. And the magazines are going out the door.
My office is in much better shape now. I feel really good when I open that file cabinet and see all those tabs neatly arranged and also that the big stack of magazines beside the printer is, for the moment, no more. It’s a ‘working-with-your-hands’ feeling and I’m pretty satisfied with the results.
I keep my to do list in Franklin Covey Plan Plus, which I really like. But I’ve noticed that my to do list has never actually gotten any smaller. Whenever I seem to get it cleaned out and down to just a couple of items (things that, typically, I’m waiting on an outside party to complete), five more things spring up. Or ten. Or…
I read an article this week about to do lists that made me think about mine. The point of a to do list, the author wrote, is not to finish, but to prioritize.
This is rather profound, especially if you’re the kind of person that keeps an unordered list of the things you think of while driving around, talking on the phone, having breakfast, reading the paper, etc. That unordered list – is it really valuable, without any focus?
My planning software has a neat function built in, in that you can code items in the to do list. The default is A, B, C and 1, 2, 3. That is, an item coded A1 would be higher in priority than A2. And you can enter as many numbers or letters as you like.
I’ve mentally categorized my system like so:
This seems to work well. But lately I’ve noticed that I’ve started throwing things into my list as just A’s, B’s or C’s, without numbers (or, with no priority).
This is a bad idea. I used to diligently number them, but it’s been so crazy busy the last few weeks I haven’t taken the time. One day this week I wound up with 11 A’s with no hint of the order I should try to work on them.
So… today I deemed my business cleanup day. I actually went through and got all my accounting in order (that is a major accomplishment for me) and started moving all my client data over into a new database. Both of those tasks have been on my list for months.
And I took a look at Plan Plus and put numbers on the A’s – all ten of them. Plan Plus is cool because it shows you the items in order, once you number them. Now I see what I need to do next, not just overwhelmingly what I have failed to finish all in a pile of A’s.
Does this mean that I’ll diligently follow through 1, 2, 3 in order? Nope. I just looked at the first item on the list and thought ‘this is Sunday, I’m not doing that for that client on a Sunday…’
Monday (after a very long day at the machine) my right hand and wrist were tingly. That’s the first time that’s happened so naturally I go looking for information on carpal tunnel symptoms. I found many, many sites and a few solutions that I’m going to try – the first one I’m trying today.
I have a really great, very adjustable keyboard tray that will fit my mouse, but my keyboard is wide, with a number pad on the right that I don’t use that often. Subsequently my mouse is way off to the right and that’s not good for wrists.
The idea I’m trying today is – mousing with the left hand. I plan to become an ambidextrous mouser. According to one site, it takes 2 days to 2 weeks to become proficient with a mouse in the off-hand. I switched the buttons so I can click with the inside finger, and yes, it’s going s-l-o-w-l-y today but I’m beginning not to think about the mouse so much after the first few hours. And it’s much more comfortable because the left side of the keyboard has no number pad (less reach to the mouse).
I plan to keep this up for two days at least, and if I have to any precision work may switch to my pen tablet for awhile.
Having to do a clean install of Windows can be a good thing – it gets rid of amazing amounts of accumulated junk on your system. But if you’re not prepared, it can be terrifying – you can lose all of your work and personal files if you’re not careful.
Just recently I installed XP Pro on a new motherboard and to prepare myself, I wrote up a checklist of things to check, save and print before getting started. I hope this helps you as much as it helped me.
Here’s an excellent guide from Paul Thurrott about clean installs of Windows XP.
Note especially the need to defragment your hard drive after getting XP up and running. It’s good advice; I checked my new hard drive before starting to reinstall software and it was 27% fragmented just from all the XP updates….
Good luck! Reinstalling your operating system is a pain in the neck because of all you have to remember, but hopefully this checklist will save you some time and worry.
I’d been using Marketleap‘s link checking tool for a while, but today began using Yahoo’s query terms because they allow the user to remove internal links from the results.
Here’s what you do:
1. To check the full number of links to a domain use this:
linkdomain:www.mysite.com
2. To do the same but without including backlinks:
linkdomain:www.mysite.com –site:mysite.com
3. To check backlinks to a specific page:
link:http://www.mysite.com/subpage.html
4. And to do the same without including those internal links:
link:http://www.mysite.com/subpage.html -site.mysite.com
Nifty to know for a quick check.
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