Matthew Lang

Great timeline animating.

When I worked for an ERP consultancy, I would frequently no sooner get my backside at my desk in the morning before the phone would start to ring. Customers looking for support, developers asking for tests to be done and the managing director looking for that new feature for the high profile client of the week. Some days I would simply keep working right from the moment I got to my desk through to home time without a thought about working on the right things. Then I would realize that the day has completely passed by and I’m not even sure if I had done what I originally set out to do that day.

It was at this point that I started giving myself 5 minutes each day of breathing space. At the start of each day I would block out some time to get my day into order. Just a chance to ask myself a couple of questions:

• Did I leave anything undone from the previous day?
• Are there any high priority issues that I need to resolve today?

Once I got into the habit of doing this I started to see where my day was going and the progress (or lack of) that I was making. Updates for customers were taking too long, support calls were being left for too long and most days I wasn’t doing the work that I wanted to do.

Once I spotted these recurring issues, I started to clear them off my backlog of work one at a time. Each day I was making this list smaller and smaller. I was starting to see some real progress.

I do this little routine every day now. It’s just a few minutes of my time, but the benefits are worth it. I’ll sit down with my notebook and review the previous day’s work and pull forward any outstanding tasks to today. I’ll then check my master list on TaskPaper and include any work that is scheduled for today or the current week.

Now that I am freelancing and working from home, it’s important that I continually measure my progress and ensure that I am always making progress on projects and products but more importantly on client work. I need to deliver good results for my clients and ensure they are getting value for money.

Having this little moment of breathing space is a great way to start the day. It’s just a few minutes of time reflecting on what you need to get done today, but it is time well spent.

Don't be.

Owen Williams covers the reasons why your opinion matters and you should write about it:

Yes, there are probably a few thousand other content creators out there airing their own opinions on whatever topic you're talking about, but if your opinion is sound, quality and unique then a community will eventually gather around you.

— Too busy consuming to create by Owen Williams

Ever since the news that Google was sunsetting it's Reader service, I've been looking at alternatives for the Google services I'm already using. I've started using Path as a replacement for Google Chat, and I'm using Apache OpenOffice instead of Google Drive. I'm not against Google as a service provider, but depending one company for a number of services is not a good move.

Two areas where I haven't found alternatives though is email and calendar. The calendar functionality I'm not too bothered about as there are plenty of options for scheduling apps and services.

The big decision I need to make is whether to move my email from Google to anything else. Gmail remains one of Google's key products that continues to work well. I'm looking at a couple of services for email, but the switch and migration of data will be a key consideration.

For the moment the cull of Google services will continue.

Spectacular paint job on this

via FGGT

Last night our oldest son gave us a bit of a scare. He started to run a very high temperature after dinner and through the night he was sick a couple of times. This morning he was shivering and still had a fever. No school for him then.

Why am I telling you this?

It sets the background for one of the key benefits to working from home. In the rare occurrence that your children are ill, it makes child care a lot easier.

Depending on your child's illness you can still look after them and get some work done. I said some work because of course your child's health comes first. Do some work while they are napping or watching a movie. You're never going to get a full days work in on these days, but being a freelancer it is great to have this option.

Work has been a little slow this week, a morning here, an afternoon there.

With the free time in between slots, I should be using that time to get my head round some of my side projects and turning them into products, maybe even start preparing for another NaNoWriMo, or even just fine tuning my programming skills by learning another programming language. Well the truth is I haven't started any of these things this week.

It was time to re-focus again and get my head cleared.

I took a look at my desk and noticed rising piles of paper appearing on the edges. Wireframes, contracts, invoices, tax documents and other stuff. All grouped together, but all of them encroaching my desk space. My work space. While this stuff sits on my desk, I get distracted. So I started clearing my desk. Filing documents away, throwing out old wireframes (in the recycle bin of course), leaving out only the absolutely necessary things that I need to action before the end of the week.

After half an hour I had my desk back, my work space. And I was ready to go again. I scheduled work for my side projects into my calendar for the rest of the day and got back to work on them.

I should clear my desk more often.

We've all been there. You're given a link to a new great product that is going to do wonders for your productivity but when you are done installing it you get a sign up screen that let's you sign up with only two different options.

1. Facebook
2. Twitter

If you're lucky (or not so lucky), you get a third option of Google+. Where's the option to use your email address though?

Opinionated sign ups like this have always been a problem for me. I don't have a Facebook account and I barely participate on Twitter these days, to the point where I am even thinking of deleting my Twitter account. So if I don't have an account for either of these social networks (and yes there are people like this) then what's left for me to do?

It's easy. Give some other product a try that will let me sign up with my email address.

The only time where I will use a product that requires such a sign up is where it allows me to participate on the social network or platform I choose to use.

I've signed up for many products over the years using Twitter, Dropbox and Google. Each time the product was tied to the preferred login that I choose in a way that required a specific login. Journalong uses Dropbox to post journal entries to your Dropbox, Feedly uses Google to sync your Google Reader across, you get the idea. These are specialist products and services that depend on a specific social network or platform.

I will not however sign up with my social network for a product whose only connection to it is to read the list of people I follow on that network and from other networks.

Where a product isn't tied to one social network but offers the choice, I'll always use my email address. If the product wants to connect to my social networks after I have signed up then fine, I'll connect them separately. It means that I can disconnect those social networks at a later date without having to completely stop using the product.

There's a time and place for opinionated sign ups like this but for generic products we should always be given the option of using email.

... Rebel Alliance or The Empire?

I struggled with developing features for Journalong over the last six months. Always at the back of my mind was that I needed Journalong to be profitable. It was this thinking the blocked all development on Journalong. Ideas were put to the side until I could get more paid subscribers using the product.

In time I realized that Journalong as a product was never going to happen. So I let go.

Over the weekend I stripped out all the paid subscriptions from Journalong and it is now a free product for everyone. As soon as I shipped the changes I felt a huge weight off my shoulders. Now with no pressure to build a customer base I can get back to developing a few more features for Journalong over the next few months.