Like many people, I spend a lot of time traveling.  And, I don't mind it but I'm always looking for things or ways to make traveling a bit more like home.  It's amazing how one or two little conveniences can relieve insecurities when you're in an unfamiliar place, new hotel surroundings, etc.

Interestingly enough, the topic came up at a recent conference.  What do you travel with that makes life a little more bearable so you can focus on the task at hand...which is work?  Here's what we came up with:

1.    Outlet - Maybe it's just the hotels I frequent, but they never seem to have enough outlets or they have them in the wrong places.  That's why I carry a 3 plug extension that also has 2 USB outlets.  It's small and I don't have to worry about cords all over my hotel room.  I can get work done and charge my gadgets at the same time.

2.    Book Reader - After listening to my friends rave about their electronic readers, I'm gonna have to break down and get one of these.  And now, there are many different kinds to choose from.  Besides the obvious advantage of not taking up a lot of space, there were a couple other benefits that intrigued me.  One was always having the latest and greatest sellers available; you can also pre-order books and have them delivered right to your reader.  But the biggest for me was the reader will stand up on a table.  I often travel alone and eat meals by myself...so being able to have something to read is important.  Having a reader stand up on a table is a great solution.

3.    Coffee (or tea) - There's nothing worse than waking up to terrible hotel coffee or tea.  In tiny cups.  So if you're like me and need that morning caffeine - even before I venture out to find a Starbucks - bring a couple of small disposable condiments with you.  For example, I'm a big fan of vanilla - and I've found vanilla instant coffee, vanilla creamer and even vanilla flavored sweetener.  Friends have done the same with their hazelnut fix.  And, I bring a travel size coffee mug.  I can use it for water on the plane then coffee in my room.

4.    Exercise - I'm not as good with this one as I should be but I do try to get in some exercise when I'm on the road.  And because sneakers can be bulky and hotel gyms can be expensive, I bring resistance bands.  They really work, take up virtually no space and I can exercise in my room.

5.    White Noise - Getting a good night's sleep is essential.  Otherwise you'll need to pack a lot of coffee (see #3).  One of the things that helps me sleep is having noise, similar to house noise, in my room.  I have apps on my iPhone that create white noise (or other sounds) to help me sleep.  If you don't have an iPhone, there are travel alarms that include a white noise feature.


Whether you're gone for one night or a week, being comfortable when you travel allows you to be productive and do your best work.  What comforts of home do you bring with you when traveling?

Photo Credit: ThinkPanama

Today Andrew Millard stops by from across the pond to give his input on how to retain business continuity in the face of the unexpected.  Andrew is the eCommerce Director of EMEA at Citrix Online.

This winter has seen some extreme weather conditions on both sides of the Atlantic with snowfall causing havoc for businesses and employees alike. Of course, as savvy workshifters know, it doesn't have to be like this! But the sad fact is that there are many who are just not as prepared for these unexpected conditions when they occur.

In the UK, we conducted some research during the heavy snowfall that hit in January and found that the cost of the inclement weather was £1.35bn in lost productivity for British businesses in just one week!

In addition to this, we found that despite 78% of small businesses saying they were prepared to cope with the snow chaos, over half admitted that their business suffered as a result of the winter weather.

When we look at the impact on employees, around a quarter of British workers claimed they lost more than five working hours, with as many as 124 million working hours estimated to have been lost in total.

Let this be a warning!

But now is not the time for us to breathe a sigh of relief.  More snow is predicted, and it's just one of any number of unexpected events that can prevent workers getting into the office. During the rest of the year we're likely to face a gamut of other incidents that will make life hard for employees and employers, whether its strikes on public transport, natural disasters or something totally unexpected.

So for all those businesses that were impacted by the snow, now is the time to get your business continuity plan in place, so that next time round there will be no nasty surprises and you have the right processes and technologies in place so productivity losses are avoided.



And it doesn't have to be hard! Here are my five top tips for businesses on how to prepare for the unexpected:

1.    Communicate clearly in advance - make sure your workers know what they need to do if they can't get into the office

2.    Equip employees with the right technologies - remote access and Web conferencing tools can help them remain productive even if they can't get to their desk

3.    Talk to your customers - Phone redirects and remote access software will allow you to go about business as usual, but if clients or customers are likely to be affected let them know as early as possible and keep communication channels open

4.    Consider alternatives - Travel to the office or to client meetings may be impossible, but instead of canceling, conduct the meetings online instead

5.    Put in place a business continuity leader - if the unexpected happens, it's wise to have one person in your organization responsible for coordinating efforts and informing all staff of the potential impacts and company policies


What will do you to prepare for the unexpected?


Photo Credit: Anirudh Koul

The nice thing about being a workshifter is you only have to work half days--the question is, which 12 hours.

It's odd that so many employers worry about their remote employees goofing off, instead of just focusing on results, when, in fact, everyone I talk to has opposite problem--overworking and turning it off at the end of the day.

I read an interesting study on Saturday--yeah, Saturday, the day most people are out having fun. The study, conducted by WorldatWork and The Future of Work, was about how the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) makes it hard for managers to allow hourly wage employees to workshift. Introduced in 1939, the FSLA was enacted in an effort to, among other things, keep employers from underpaying and overworking employees. In the context of workshifting, the problem is that the Act requires managers to monitor their hourly worker's schedules. Did they take their break at 10 a.m.? Did they work overtime? What about those "after hours" Crackberry messages, emails, etc. They all count toward the workday.

So as I sat here on Sunday, yeah, Sunday--the day of rest, thinking about what to write for this blog, I wondered who's watching out for me. Certainly not my boss. She's the kind of slave driver that inspired the FLSA to begin with. She has me working 10 hour days. "Just finish one more email" she whispers to me at 8 p.m. And I don't remember any time-and-a-half in my paycheck. Heck, I don't even remember a paycheck.

I've interviewed dozens of workshifters with a similar stories. One guy told me it got so bad that he finally resorted to leaving his home office, driving around the block, and returning home to mark the end of his day.  

Any thoughts out there for how you turn it off?

Photo by: Dhaval Shah

Why do you work?
 
When I asked this question in a conference room all I got was silence.  It's actually a really hard question, and answering it in front of a group of people can be daunting.  People felt like they could be wrong. 
 
Well, there is no right answer, it's only important to know "why" so that you have purpose and direction.  It helped when I gave them some of my personal reasons for working:
 

• To create opportunity
• To solve problems
• I have obligation to earn a living
• I didn't win the lottery
• I love what I do
• I need somewhere to go in the morning
• I didn't inherit millions
• My wife would kill me if I sat around the house all day
• Be around like minded people
• Reaching milestones
• Learn from others
• Engineers are cool
  

 
The list goes on, but the point is it's very personal.  The key is not to ask yourself "why do you work at X company", but rather, "why" you work?  Some of my answers are very common and others are cliché, and that's ok.  The point is that you should take a personal inventory, decide for yourself and then ask if your career is right for you.  If it is, do more.  If it isn't, get out.  You owe it to yourself.
 
I would love to hear the truth about why you work.

Photo by: wili_hybrid
 

I don't spend my day thinking about sleep.  My mind is consumed with work, life, and everything in between.  However, I notice a material difference in my performance depending on the number of hours of sleep I get.
 
7 - 8:  Rock star
6 - 7:  Feeling good
5 - 6:  Is a cold coming on?
4 - 5:  I'm irritable and no amount of coffee can help
3 - 4:  New born sleep (for those that know what I'm talking about..it's bad)
 
I work so hard at being "on" and I need to work just as hard at being "off".  I find that if I'm active right up until I go to bed that I have a really hard time turning my brain off.  I'm in bed, and I can't fall asleep...it sucks!
 
If I take some time to read a few pages of a magazine or book, it really helps.  Also, if I'm worried about something I write it down.  There is something about writing things down that makes them seem not so overwhelming.  It also serves as a reminder to deal with it in the morning.
 
If all else fails, you pop a pill, but I find that to be a very short term fix.  It only solves the symptom and not the problem.  Figure out what's keeping you up, and solve it.  Easier said than done, but with a little effort, I find that I can get the "feeling good" sleep most of the time.
 
Both WebMD and Harvard have published articles with tips on how to sleep better, and I encourage you to read them, but I'm really curious about what your healthy sleeping tips are?

Photo by: just.Luc

Ah, football season is here. After the 2nd week of College Football (how about that Matt Barkley from USC) and the first week on the NFL - millions of people all over the country are now giving themselves a new job title - Monday Morning Quarterback. I can already see the player trades, the extra copies of the local paper being picked up to check stats, circling this week's picks and projections and checking the injured roster for nice and easy trades that come from the post game Fantasy Footballers. For those that are foreign to what I am talking about, Fantasy Football as written by FOX Sports columnist Roger Rotter is

...a game that allows fans to take an active role in professional football by creating their own team and competing with teams built by others. Fans create their own roster of players by drafting talent from actual NFL teams and compete based on those players' real-life performances in NFL games.

Most major sports media players offer free leagues for people all over the world to join, play, talk trash, track stats and enter an almost Second Life type of community for 4-5 months in the fall. The greatest thing for these media companies comes in the form of longer page views and inflated impressions due to the fantasy captains hanging around waiting for something to happen.

So what's the cure for the Monday Morning Quarterback?

As much as Americans love their football it can become a major distraction throughout the week and needs to be treated like any other distraction. The first thing is to notice when it is taking away from your work. This seems obvious, but when Monday seems to go by quicker than usual (not that this is a bad thing), your to-do list builds faster than Adrian Peterson in the Red Zone.

The next step is to allow yourself time to indulge. Giving yourself an hour in the morning to check stats is no different than giving yourself an hour to read your RSS Feeds. Having this time set aside gives you something to look forward to and gives you ample time to get through your to-do list.

The last tip is to start looking at Fantasy stats in your downtime and on the go. Taking the bus, subway or in the airport? Take a look at the top sports apps in the iTunes app store. They are sure to keep you in the loop and get your fix in while you are killing time on your way to a meeting, new destination or the office.

But I Missed This Year's Draft...

Don't feel left out if you missed Fantasy Season this year, there is still plenty to be thankful for this football season. Renewed hope and belief for every market, every school and every player that is on a contract year!

I look forward to seeing the coffee cups with mascots, Football Fridays and the water cooler talk that comes with football season. I have even seen some local sports bar hook up wifi for the Monday Night working crowd. Here's to a great season and may the Dolphins look better than they did last week.

Photo by: Arnett Gill

It used to be that office = work and everywhere else = life. I listened to lots of small business owners talk about work/life balance in a focus group recently. A theme that I heard repeatedly was that there's no line between work and life now.  Workshifters have anytime access to work and the people they work with. I couldn't help but ask myself, are we losing the "life" in work/life balance? Here are two different perspectives I heard from the small biz owners group:

Work and life should be more intertwined. The most passionate business owners are those that have made work an extension of their lives. I heard from architects to book store owners about the fact that their work isn't really "work." For these people work and life happen simultaneously where one minute you're drawing blueprints for a house and the next minute you're drawing artwork for your spouse (that wasn't intended to rhyme). You really have to love what you do for this philosophy or you will burn out quickly. But for those who have this nailed down, good for you.

Set expectations and turn off. The other school of thought is that we need to keep work and life separate thus developing a balance. I fall into this group more than the other. I heard from one woman who tells her clients that she's not available on Monday or Tuesday after noon and Sunday altogether. If the client needs something they'll just have to wait. If this is your philosophy then you need to be able to turn off and hold strong. Your customers build expectations based on what you do, not what you say. If you say you don't work on Sundays then you better not answer work email on Sunday.

What do you think? What is work/life balance to you? Do you fit into either of these groups or do you have a different perspective?

Photo by: Kaitlin Shiner

You can always feel it coming.  You sit in front of your computer and stare at it blankly.  Watching Top Gun for the 15th time somehow makes sense.  Polishing your silverware sounds fun.  You even shut down IM, Facebook and Twitter.  What's going on?  You, my friend, have hit the wall.  You have hit a wall where you are totally unproductive.  So, what do you do?  Do you accept your fate and take some time off?  Or do you decide to fight through it and see if you can get back onto the fast track of productivity?

Sometimes it can be that your morning just got started off on the wrong foot.  That's easy to correct.  At the far extreme, it can mean that you've hit burnout.  Just a bit of advice: try to avoid the burnout side of the spectrum.  Other times, it's that you fall in between those two ends and just have an all around unproductive day.  You can't exactly put your finger on why but all you know is that you're just being unproductive.  Suddenly it's night time and you can't really account for what really got done during the previous 12 hours.

Let's face it.  As much as some of us don't want to admit it, we all need to take a break occasionally.  If your family doesn't force you to, eventually your body and/or mind will.  It's natural especially if you keep laser focus and pride yourself on the lack of sleep you get.  Sometimes you have to just accept your fate and enjoy a day off of the grid and away from the normal grind.  But, other times you have to have a few sure-fire ways to give your day that shock needed to get back on track.  Here are the 9 ways that I help get my day back from careening out of control:

1. Turn on or switch up the music.  Music is a major part of my life.  It always has been.  So, I have to have music on whenever I want to get a lot done.  Sometimes though, just turning on music isn't enough.  That's when I have to smash the emergency glass and pull of the musical first-aid kit.  This entails precisely of my Bose ear-in headphones, Pandora ONE and/or iTunes.  The music has to be something with a great beat and hard hitting bass.  For me, Jay-Z is usually my go-to artist of choice.

2. Try for a couple small wins.  Try to accomplish some of the smaller, easier tasks on your list.  Maybe that's paying a bill or two.  Send out that rebate.  Make those 3 phone calls you've been meaning to make.  I find that being able to cross a few of those off the list will usually be the injection of productivity needed to switch focus to the bigger projects.

3. Break the big projects down to small tasks.  In my opinion, this is what you should be doing all the time.  But, we all forget and instead add "Take on the world" to our task list.  It's no wonder that it keeps getting pushed off.  We find it to be daunting so we skip past it and move on to a bunch of smaller wins.  Instead of pushing it down the list, use your GTD ninja skills and break it into all of the smaller tasks needed to make the big win.  If you've forgotten about GTD, you can give yourself a refresher by watching David Allen present at Google.  I'll sometimes make these tasks as micro as "Photocopy contract", "Email contract", "Send internal status update on contract".  Again, it's those small wins that will help you get back on track.

4. Switch locations. Sometimes it's not you but your environment that's making you unproductive.  Try workshifting from a different location.  If it's a nice day, grab your laptop and go outside.  Head to a coffee shop or a restaurant.  Find those go-to locations for yourself and head straight there.  Do not pass go.  Do not collect $200.

5. Drop the internet and put your hands up.  Even if you don't think it is, the internet can suck up time.  Those little minute distractions of TweetDeck's little black status box popping up or your email yelling at you that you have 10 unanswered emails can really prevent you from focusing.  So, when you really need to crack the whip, start by shutting down EVERYTHING that can interrupt you.  Yes, that means, email, IM, Facebook, Twitter, cell phone, anything and everything.   I like to switch up locations and go somewhere that I know I won't have internet.  It helps me to focus and allows me to be creative.

6. Get up and stretch.  I find that stretching revitalizes me.  It helps to unkink the muscles that have just sat there for hours on end.  A few cracks here, a few stretches there and I feel like I can conquer the world again.  If this doesn't work, try going for a workout or take a quick shower. These little refreshers will help to make you feel better and gives you a few minutes to clear your mind before diving back in.

7. Take on something else.  If it's work-related tasks that you're not able to crush, try knocking off something else.  I recently had an entire weekend where anything and everything work-related seemed like a foreign language to me.  Instead of just wasting the day away, I did a bunch of tasks around the house and ran a few errands.  This made me feel like I was accomplishing something and also helped me for the week to come.  

8. Try calling a friend.  Some of my best work is done when I can co-work with someone.  Invite a friend over, meet at a bookstore or try a co-working space and knock out some work together.  The tools that many of us are equipped with such as laptops, broadband cards, phones and the like allow us to be digital nomads.  Take advantage of it.

9. Power nap.  Close everything up and take a 20 minute nap.  Power naps have been proven to increase productivity.  Some companies, like Google, even provide nap rooms for their employees.  So, close the laptop, grab your stuffed animal (er, um, I mean, pillow), set an alarm for 20-30 minutes and pass out.  If you can't fall asleep, run head first into a brick wall.  It might knock you out for a little longer than 20 minutes but you'll probably wake up feeling refreshed.  You might even hit your head hard enough to forget about some of your worries :)

These are just a few of a number of different tools I keep at-the-ready to help beat a feeling of being unproductive.  Even if I'm feeling totally productive, I will use some of these tips to help keep me pointed in the right direction.  Other times, just stop.  Take some time off and relax.  Your work isn't going anywhere, that's for sure.

Do you find these tips useful to you?  What do YOU do when you're feeling unproductive?

Photo by: u2slane

Does the ability to connect with work anywhere and anytime actually improve our work-life balance? That's the question Kelly Services posed in a recent international workplace survey of 100,000 people in 34 countries in North America, Europe, and Asia Pacific. The study concluded that:

• 75% of respondents appreciate the opportunity provided by technology to stay in constant contact with work.
  
  
• This is despite the fact that 35% say that technology contributes to longer working hours.
  
  
• 85% say the ability to work anywhere, and at any time, is a motivating force and a better balance between work and personal life.
  

I am not overly surprised with these results. As Workshifters, we are able to take advantage of many benefits - the most obvious of which is the luxury of being able to use our laptops and smartphones to work (for the most part) wherever we want.

But despite this - or perhaps because of this - employers expect us to be available at all times, possibly even more so than our office warrior counterparts. As a result, there are very few of us who are ever more than an arm's length away from our Blackberries or iPhones.

In spite of this constant connectivity, my first year of workshifting hasn't result in a skewed work/life balance. While I haven't necessarily worked more hours than I did when I worked in an office setting, I have undoubtedly worked harder and A LOT more efficiently than I have ever done so before. There's just something about cutting out all the water cooler gossip and office shenanigans that makes the items on your to-do list get crossed off a lot quicker.
 
So, as personal communications technologies continue to evolve, how will this impact our work/life balance in the future? In his book Elsewhere, USA, sociologist Dalton Conley predicts the rise of the "intravidual." Here's how he explains it:

"Changes in three areas - the economy, the family and technology - have combined to alter the social world and give birth to this new type of American professional. This new breed - the intravidual - has multiple selves competing for attention within his/her own mind, just as, externally, she or he is bombarded by multiple stimuli simultaneously..."

Sound familiar? As professionals, our lives are dictated by multiple data streams and screens - our laptop screen, our TV screen, our smart phone screen, etc. To maintain our work/life balance, it's up to us to make sure that our "real" world doesn't get left behind.
 
What do you think? How has the evolution of personal communications technologies impacted your work/life balance?

Photo by: EngineeringDaily.net