Ah, it’s Labor Day weekend. I’m keeping this short so I can unplug. and I hope you do, too.

Brain food…

• Google + tips for freelancers. A couple of tips that you might not consider.
• 5 Time-Saving Tools to Add to Your Twitter Tool Belt. Ooh, a few interesting ones.
• The Monster Collection of Moleskin Tips, Tricks and Hacks. I never could make it a habit to use something like this, but I know a lot of people who love it — so here you go.
• Best Procrastination Tip Ever. Trying this by doing it as early in the day as possible and feel proud to move on with rest of my day.
• SEO Guide to Creating Viral Linkbait and Infographics. Mega-guide with valuable information.
• Bookboon. Download free ebooks including textbooks, business books and travel guides.

And for fun because we’re allowed…

• Creative Sign-Offs. Most of the time, I use “Best.”
• 15 Funniest LOLcats Ever. Cookie cat looks like Shrek‘s Puss in Boots when he does that pitiful look.
• 10 Products Discovered by Accident. Whoa! Play-Doh was supposed to clean wallpaper?
• How to Revise Your Work (& Awesome Editing Symbols You Should Know). Ha! I like “That’s a good idea, I’m stealing that!”
• How old is your globe? Looks like the family’s black globe is from 1949. It says “Copyright” on it, but no year.

Copyright secured by Digiprove © 2011 Meryl Evans

I love schedule pickup and finding out my kids’ schedules, teachers and subjects even though I won’t know one teacher from the next. (Well, except my daughter happily got the same teacher again for math.)

I loved creating schedules like I did for high school and college. The only time it didn’t go well was during my freshman year of college. All the good courses were taken and I ended up taking a class that I wish I had never taken. I liked figuring out what courses I needed to satisfy my graduation requirements.

My daughter’s high school does it differently than mine did. She doesn’t get to pick her teachers. At my high school, seniors would go register first. Then juniors, and so on. We’d go into the cafeteria where the teachers were sitting by subject area and we’d go sign up with them. Of course, that wouldn’t work well in my daughter’s school of 2600 kids in 11th and 12th grade. Crazy.

The only thing I don’t know is who will be my youngest’ teacher. We’ll find out next week. That’s probably the most exciting one because I know many of the teachers at his elementary school. (We’ve been with this school since 2000 as the older two went through it.) He’s had a good track record in being assigned to the right teacher.

With schedule pick up comes buying school supplies, checking out spirit wear, joining PTA and going in shock in how much we’re spending in one week for all of this. And we didn’t have much spirit wear in high school. I had none in elementary or middle school. The only thing I had was a letter jacket. High school — I recall having a senior shirt, a sweatshirt for a senior girls’ group and a letter jacket. Yearbooks? That was a high school only thing.

And my parents had to shop for all of my school supplies. I’m grateful to the PTA for making that the easiest part of all this. The PTA works with school supply companies to order things in bulk. We just select the grade, write the check (of course, 3rd and 7th grade have the most expensive supplies in both schools!) and it’s done. Thank goodness, high school doesn’t have school supplies. The kids get what the teacher recommends or pickup what they need like folders, paper, writing instrument

I love back to school time. Yes, I do! It’ll be great to get back on a regular schedule. What’s your favorite thing about this time of the year?

Brain food…

• Quixey: Find apps that do what you want.
• 7 Ways for Marketers to Maximize Google+ Now. I like the tips in this one. Ironic, though. I couldn’t find the author’s social media links on his company website. Make sure yours links to your social media IDs.
• How to Write Better Using Humor. Crackers. Quixote. Cargo. Did I make you laugh? In editing an article, I noticed the author used sarcasm — in the same way I would. Except, it struck me as mean not funny. I better watch that!
• The Little Productivity Tip of a Zen Master. I love this one. I tend to do this — address things on the spot, unless it takes more time than I have. If I don’t, I fear forgetting and don’t always think to make it a task. Same concept as going through mail as soon as you get it.

For fun because we’re allowed…

• Angry Birds Superheroes: Who needs ordinary when you get the Avian Torch!
• 12 Coolest Things Inspired by Harry Potter. That dog! Too cute and funny. Those cupcakes. Yum!
• 62 Ways to Show Love. “I love you always works.” It’s nice to surprise and show in other ways.

Copyright secured by Digiprove © 2011 Meryl Evans

Almost <mumbles> years ago, I stood on the corner wearing a brand new dress suit on a hot and humid Washington, DC July day waiting for the bus to come. It had to be around 7 a.m. as I headed out to my first day of my first job after college. From that day on, I arrived at work by 7:30 a.m. until later years when I changed that to 7 a.m.

Rest

Yet, eight years before that first day of work, I struggled to get out of bed to make it to high school for the 8 a.m. bell. Somewhere between the first day of high school and first day of work, my body decided it liked the early bird routine. Living in Washington, DC, prime time TV ran from 8 p.m. to 11 p.m. I rarely caught the news because I fell asleep by 10:30 p.m.

Years later, I still hit the pillow between 10 and 10:30. Actually, I’ll get under the covers by 9:30 to wind down by reading or watching TV. No computer. No exercise. No energetic activities right before bedtime. This habit works so well that I could barely keep my eyes open after a family party ended at 11 p.m. despite the fun and excitement.

I get seven to eight hours of sleep every night. Occasionally, I’ll pull in a six, nine or even the dreaded ten (too long!). Anything less than seven isn’t good. When I don’t sleep well or enough, I’m a disaster the next day. I do my best to get through it, but I’m slower, hungrier, unfocused and irritable. More research shows getting enough sleep helps your mental health, memory, performance and body healing process.

Exercise

Thanks to playing a ton of sports while growing up, exercise has always been a regular part of my routine. Well, I’ve sharpened the routine since I stopped playing tennis. I’d play tennis twice a week and then randomly exercise two other days. Now, I have a structured routine on the what I do and when I do it.

Some days I don’t feel like working out. Because of habit, I get ‘er done. Maybe I don’t work out as hard or as long. Generally, I work out around the same time each day of the week (afternoons during weekdays and mornings on weekends). Sometimes I have an afternoon meeting or an early weekend event. I adapt. It’s harder, but because I stick with it — it’s done.

Habits

Notice a theme? I have a bad habit of checking email every morning because I created it long ago. But really. How many people you know stay up late sending emails? Most of the first thing emails are spam, social media notices and email newsletters that I can read later. First thing emails rarely come from a client or family member. (Well, except for my mom who can thrive on little sleep.)

I started keeping my email client closed while quickly glancing at the inbox on the BlackBerry. Most of the time, it’s nothing. It gives me comfort knowing I’m not missing anything. Remember email is my “phone.” With Gmail, I switch to “Contacts” mode to hide the mail. Also, make email filters your friend.

Habits help with work. Every Tuesday, I do work for one client. Every Friday, I post my favorite links for the week.

You probably know all this. So why post this? Sometimes we don’t realize that we need to create new habits or why we struggle to change habits. It takes time to retrain your brain’s passageways to dump or make habits.

What habits do you have? What habits do you want to change? What habits do you value?

Copyright secured by Digiprove © 2011 Meryl Evans

The 12-year-old son heads to overnight camp for a little over three weeks. First time he’s done that since third grade when he went for nine days. Not a bit worried. The break will be good for all of us. I’m especially looking forward to his living without TV and video games. Can you just see me grinning?

Photo by Cherie A. Thurby

I went to the same camp two summers in a row. It wasn’t my thing. Can’t pinpoint why. Why would I go a second time if I didn’t like it? It took a bribe. My parents were going on a trip overseas and had to ditch … er … put me somewhere. Other option was to stay with my grandparents. Love ‘em, but three weeks would’ve been too much.

My favorite summer camp was going to basketball camp at Texas A&M. It combined two of my loves: sports and A&M. At the time, my brother attended the school and I loved rooting for the Aggies in football. Even got to go to the A&M – Auburn U Cotton Bowl where Bo Jackson played before going pro. While I applied and get accepted at A&M, I opted not to go there because of its size. I needed a smaller school and smaller classes.

What was your favorite thing to do in the summer? Least favorite?

Brain food…

• How to Learn SEO as a Small Business Owner: There are too many resources out there regarding SEO. This should help cut a lot of the noise.
• How To Generate Social Content That Gets Clicked. This article delivers no so common suggestions. Nice job, Arik.
• The Real Secret to Personal Productivity. 10 tips from successful folk that do work. Creating habits is a biggie.
• 9 Tips for Setting Payment Terms for Freelance Writers. Magazines, books and more.

And for fun because we’re allowed…

• 21 Animals Riding Other Animals. Cat on chicken. Rat on frog. There’s even a monkey on a few animals’ backs. [Link: Paul Steele]
• 10 Questions to Ultimately Annoy Your Friends. Funny stuff.
• The Evolution of Smartphones. It’s a kick when I catch a show or movie from the ’90s when someone talks on a cell phone bigger than a brick.

I would’ve had more fun links to share, but they were those “Top X” lists articles. Unfortunately, you had to click through each one. They didn’t appear as a list in one page. I like it when a publisher offers both: list and pages with more info.

Copyright secured by Digiprove © 2011 Meryl Evans

19 high. 8 low. Whoa. Texas gets below freezing temps, but rarely single digit temps. Cold, yes. Affect work, just a little because the kids didn’t have school. It turns out to be a booming YES.

Image from flickr user innpictime

This week has not gone the way I expected. I knew extremely cold temps were heading toward the Dallas-Fort Worth area, but I never thought my kids would be out of school for two or three days and that we’d have rolling blackouts. Four of them came my way in six hours … so far. (Another place just one mile down the road had zero by the time I had three. Hmm …)

I’m grateful for rolling blackouts with their lasting 15 to 20 minutes max. The alternative is to go without power for hours, freeze in my house and worry about refrigerated food. A friend of my daughter’s went without power for over five hours. Yikes. Yay, rolling blackouts.

My computer connects to an uninterruptible power supply (UPS) so that sudden outages don’t hurt the computer. But I need to shut it down as soon as I can to preserve the UPS.

Since I use a wireless network, the network goes down as soon as the blackout hits. This means I can’t save any work done over the Internet. Easy workaround. The content stays on the screen after the wireless shuts down. So I just copy the content and paste it into a document that I save on my computer. Then, I safely turn it off.

The constant shutting down, booting up breaks the work flow. After the fourth blackout, I clock out the computer knowing a laptop stands by I need anything.

I started writing just before the second blackout occurred. When the power returned, I moved on to admin work doing first of the month stuff. It needs to be done and this is a good time to do it as disruptions don’t get in the way of the process.

Constant interruptions during writing produces a scattered draft that’s worse than an expected bad first draft. And when you try to get back in swing of things, the power goes out again. Nasty cycle that. Just not a good use of time.

Cell phones. Amen for them! I email my clients to let them know I’d be out of the loop. Thank you, wonderful and understanding clients.

Snow is A-OK in my book. Ice… not so much. Few of us own ice skates and sleds around these parts. Although, I did have a sled in my childhood home and my parents had a perfect small sloped driveway for sledding. AND my neighbors had an unusual driveway that went below the street (only house to do that), so I’d sled down our drive way gaining enough momentum to make it down the neighbor’s driveway.

My current driveway has a slope, but it’s not safe because it’s in the back facing an alley with fences blocking the view both ways. You can’t see who’s coming unlike the driveway in front of my parent’s house. Besides, there’s very little street space (just enough for a car and one person walking next to it), so the chances of smashing into the neighbor’s fence are very good.

What unexpected work disruptions have encountered and how did you deal with them?

Copyright secured by Digiprove © 2011 Meryl Evans

My second child and older son turned 12 this week. Wow. Last year of the tweens. It won’t be long before he’s taller than me (5.5″ to go). E Since he loves to play video games, I’m sharing this article I found on his birthday: Factoids of the day: Game not over. The article highlights how games make us better. It’s all true, but we still need to limit video game time for kids or else they’d play all hours. Gotta get ‘em movin’!

The Challenger disaster happened 25 years ago today. I was in school, but I can’t recall how I found out. The only thing I remember feeling stunned while watching the explosion in front of a clear blue sky and seeing the looks on the family’s faces that looked neither happy or sad because they didn’t know what happened yet. AP asked Facebook readers where they were on this day. It’s a chilling read.

Brain food…

• 22 Social Media Marketing Tools: Apps for managing multiple social media IDs in one spot. [Link: Alan K'necht]
• Ten Useful Hacks to Make Things Happen: Another winner from Valeria Maltoni.
• If You Think Someone Is Mentally Ill: Loughner’s Six Warning Signs: I believe it’s important we’re all aware of these signs. Unlike sinus infections and diabetes, mental illness is an unseen illness — and a very real one that needs treating infections and pneumonia.
• Five great Gmail timesavers: I didn’t even know about Smart Mute, but then I don’t fall into too many group conversations — thank goodness.
• Thsrs: The shorter thesaurus.
• Kill Your To-Do List: Some people just need to dump to dos altogether and try this one. Be sure to check out the comments for more great advice.

And for fun because we’re allowed…

• This is the web right now: Another winner from Oatmeal.
• iPad Game for Cats: Smart doggy!
• Social Media Guru Robbed after Using Foursquare: This is actually a parody of a very serious problem. I stopped using the service months ago after reading several true horror stories. I loved the service, but it’s just not worth the dark side of it… [Link: t2]
• 36 Facebook T-Shirts to Match Your Status Update: First it was Twitter tees… now FB. LinkedIn far behind? Nahh… too serious of a social network.

The Problem: Google missed the mark (or rather the company has technical limitations that we don’t know about) on one feature in its mobile Gmail app: You can’t view your Drafts on your mobile device. Yet, if I access Gmail through my mobile’s Internet browser, I can view Drafts. But using the browser to check Gmail on a mobile phone takes more work and time.

I use Drafts as a way to take notes and keep revising or adding on to them. It can be for an article, brainstorming, grocery list, anything goes. While I could email these notes to myself in Gmail and access them on my mobile device, I can’t add on to sent emails unless I reply and that makes a mess.

By the way, I do synchronize “memos” between the Palm Desktop organizer and Gmail. Accessing these memos requires going through Gmail Contacts app, which sometimes hangs when I click “Contacts” in Gmail. That’s because Gmail collects every address and duplicates them. I could turn off this feature, but it has its advantages. Anyway, the Drafts route is more manageable than the Memos route.

Now. I could go find another app for note taking, but haven’t found one that integrates seamlessly with Gmail and Gmail for mobile. Not crazy about the idea of finding and adding another separate app to use everywhere. Maybe you use one. If so, please share the app and your experience. Maybe I’d be willing to try it!

I’ve figured out a way to work with this. It’s not pretty or as efficient as it could be if Gmail for mobile would make Gmail Drafts accessible. But it works.

The Ugly Workaround. Create a Mobile label (aka folder). When I have a draft that I’d like to access on my mobile phone, I copy and paste it into a new email and send it to myself to file it under Mobile. Anytime I need to access the info, I just jump to the Mobile label from my phone. No searching or scanning through hundreds of messages. I keep this label organized with Mobile critical info.

Next time the Draft receives enough updates, I delete the old email in the Mobile folder and replace it with the updated draft.

Like I said, involved — but takes much less work than accessing Gmail through my mobile browser. I bet one of y’all has a better way.

What tips do you have for staying organized between mobile and desktop?

Image credit: Hans Thoursie

Martin Luther King Day is an important holiday as well as a school holiday. I had planned to complete my usual work activities. Instead, I spent the entire morning working on one story and didn’t finish it. Writing the story felt clunky, awkward and pointless despite my knowing first drafts were supposed to be like that. Even though the kids weren’t loud or disruptive, the setting was different from my daily work environment.

Panicking

It’s a scary situation because I feel like “I’ve lost it. I’m not going to be able to work the next day.” No matter what I told myself about the day being different, nothing comforted me. I couldn’t check off one thing on my task list; a nightmare for me.

Tuesday came. I fell right back into my routine. My fingers flew as I threw up words on my screen to create a few new articles. I checked a few things off my work tasks for the day. I felt in the zone and full of satisfaction. It was as if Monday had never happened.

This happens on holidays and days of personal appointments. The cruel cycle repeats. Can’t work or focus. Panic. Guilt. Next day arrives. Back to normal.

Even though my mental state would not listen to me and learn from the past, one thing is clear: Schedules make a difference.

Scheduling Activities to Create New Habits

I start my day with email, Twitter and blogging. Thanks to this habit, I rarely write a new blog entry in the afternoon. I exercise after 11:00am on most days. Sometimes it’s 11:30am. Sometimes it’s 1:00pm. 1:30pm at the latest. Whatever the time, it’s still a habit because it’s the mid-day / early afternoon time. Most of the writing I do occurs before mid-day with the afternoons devoted to research, revising and other activities not related to starting from scratch.

I check in with social media a few times a day with the bulk of it occurring in the morning and evening. To make the most of my social media time without falling into the trap sticking around too long, I created a habit to check in for a few minutes and get out. I also figured out how much time I should spend in social media.

Since I do my best writing and focus in the morning, it works well. By the time the younger kids come home, I take a break, give them snacks, spend time with them and help with homework. If I had been more of a night person, I would have to work on creating a new habit. According to various discussions and books, it takes 21 days to develop a new habit.

I’ve also kept the same bedtime and wake up time for years, which ensures a good night’s sleep. I stray from the routine once in a while and it’s never for more than a couple of days in a row.

Habits Help Focus

Because I had the habit of working in a quiet home office with no TV, people noises and other disruptions, I could not focus when the kids had a day off from school.

Bet you’re wondering how I handle this in the summer when the kids have a long break from school. Habit. Summer has longer days, so it’s easier to work in the evenings after my husband comes home. I also schedule a few activities for the kids including visits with Grandma.

Christina Katz shares how she refocused. I did a review of my work and didn’t need to consolidate, streamline or refocus. For some, just the act of writing and brainstorming on pen and paper helps focus. Sometimes this works for me, too. But the best medicine for focus for me is schedule.

How do you focus?

Yesterday was my husband’s birthday. I wish I could come up with some other way to say this, but it’s true though cliché. I’m lucky to have him in my life and that we grow together as we encounter new phases in our lives. We enjoy spending time together in simple ways such as our recent discovery of Gilmore Girls. What more can a gal ask for? Oh, and he remembers our special dates, too.

Please vote for your top 25 books on writing.

Brain food…

• The 20 Best Productivity and Personal Development Blogs: Glad to see Web Worker Daily on there.
• 7 Ways to Integrate Facebook into Your Online Platform
• Five Ways to Comply with the New FTC Guidelines for Bloggers [Link: Christina Katz]
• 52 Tips for Writers, from Writers [Link: Debbi Ohi]
• What Does Future Hold for Writers? Predictions for 2010 – 2020
• How I Sold 10,000 Copies of my Self-Published Book
• How to Make the Most of Your Social Media Time: By me.

And for fun because we’re allowed…

• Bizarre Japanese Candy: No, thanks. I’ll pass.
• The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog: Really.
• First-Person Tetris: The rotate feature drives my eyes crazy, but it’s a unique take on the oft-copied game.
• When Gamers Marry: The cakes you might expect.
• Forbidden Words à la Matt Groening: The Simpsons and Life in Hell creator’s view of tired words.
• Support Details: Anger management resource for tech support.
• Found him! OK, so White Snark and Reddit helped.
• 10 of the Dumbest Gadgets Ever Made: We’ve always dreamed of being able to carry remote controls on a headband… I don’t think so.

Streamlining has emerged as a theme with a few writers. Christina Katz said good-bye to several newsletters and her fun Back-to-School Giveaway that I participated in for all three years. Kristine Meldrum Denholm, Mary Jo Campbell and Pamela Wilson also write about streamlining and finding your direction and clarity. Freelance Switch shows how to start of your new year with an ideal project profile that can send you on your way.

I’ve shared my struggle to plan for the new year, but these posts help me realize something. Part of the struggle could be a result from my *staying* streamlined. I’ve always known that I am not a high energy person even though I played lots of sports as a kid and continue to make exercise a regular part of my lifestyle.

What can you streamline? Originally, I began to answer that here. Only to find out this post fit a client’s blog, and client comes first. So here’s the streamlining work post. Here are the bullet points from the post along with how they apply to a writing business:

• Changing direction. This can be changing your topic, industry, type of writing (articles, white papers, case studies, greeting cards, etc.) and client types (ad agency, publisher, web site, etc.).
• Replacing one for one. You can drop a publication because it no longer interests you and replace it with one that does. You take on a web content project and drop one that’s focused on doing articles for a publication.
• Dropping energy draining clients and projects. Maybe you’re tired of your beat with one publication. If you aren’t comfortable with dropping the beat without lining up another, wait until you find a new beat that energizes you.
• Social networking. How you spend your time on social networking depends on how you use it. For me, it’s my major marketing tool.
• Unpaid activities. Social networking and writing blog posts in your own blog are unpaid activities (unless you have blog sponsors). Review these unpaid activities and determine how much time you should devote to them.
• Organizations. Being active in a professional writers’ organization can be beneficial in a lot of ways and time consuming. You can change up how to stay involved. Instead of being a board member, be a volunteer on an as-needed basis.

Christina Katz left a great comment. “If you could do anything you wanted to do all day without having to worry about money or anything else at all, how would you spend your day?” I’ve been thinking about that since she left the comment, and I haven’t arrived at an answer yet. What about you? What’s your answer?

While I haven’t answered that question, I can honestly say I’m happy with all of my current clients and projects. (I weaned out the not so enjoyable work a while ago.) So I will continue that route with the occasional acceptance of new projects or applying for them. I’m lucky that my work is diverse. Maybe that’s why I can’t answer Christina’s question.

How are you streamlining your writing business so you can focus on what you love to do?