I thought I should do a quick reminder for the poetry contest, we’re in the final hour! So if you haven’t posted a poem… or even if you have there is a little bit of time to get in another chance to win.
You’re a poet
Now let’s show it
We’re running out of time
This isn’t a good rhyme!
The biggest problem with working for other people is flexibility – you’ll probably have none. Many authors like Malcolm Gladwell (author of Blink) and Jennifer Weiner (author of In Her Shoes) work for hours in coffee shops, restaurants, and other places away from the desk. Working in new environments is a great way to gain a new sense of motivation and ideas.
Whenever I didn’t want to study in college, I packed up my books and relocated to another place on campus. On the weekends, I’d head downtown to study. The shift toward inspiration was incredible. I was at least twice as productive despite the distractive atmosphere.
As crazy as it sounds, sometimes it’s easier to concentrate when you’re surrounded by distractions. These distractions are different than at the office or home; you can tune them out because you know that they’re distractions, and you know that they won’t influence your day or your responsibilities. At work, you start listening to peoples’ phone calls to know the latest information that you won’t otherwise gain. At home, you start thinking about what’s for dinner, what you’d rather do, what you need to clean, and how many cookies are left in the cookie jar. In random places, you also don’t get the interruptions unless it’s the waiter offering you a refill of coffee.
As the weather gets nicer, the lack of flexibility when you work for someone else becomes more obvious. A warm body with nothing to do often matters more to a boss than a happy, productive… and absent employee. But great ideas don’t usually come knocking on the office door.
Doing something well means that you like what you’re doing. Even if you’re fascinated by your line of work, though, motivation can wane. Passion can drop even faster. Unless you live to work (when you should work to live), consider the following ideas when you work for someone else or are thinking of hiring a staff:
1. Allow flexible hours. Some businesses have official open hours. As long as someone is around during those times, everyone else is free to come as he pleases. Employees tend to stay longer in places like this because they know they won’t likely find such flexibility again. The boss also knows that he can pay these people less; his flexible environment is in demand.
2. Let employees work from other places. An hour of e-mail and cell phone communication doesn’t need to be done in the office. Even a picnic table outside of the office creates a tempting environment to work.
3. Offer a get out of work early day. Most employees don’t get any time off from New Years until Memorial Day. With spring on its way, employees are going to get antsy to be outside; they won’t be as productive. Encourage them to work hard and leave a few hours early on a designated day. Does the phone really ring that much on a Friday afternoon anyway?
In the meantime, try to maintain that spring fever.
One of the cool things about firefox is just how much you can personalize it with extensions and themes. Today I am going to show you some of the extensions that I recommend. I have even found myself adding some of them in computer labs when I’m only going to be there for an hour or so.
Navigation wise I really like Gestures. There are a couple different extensions that will do this feature, and for the most part they seem to all work the same. Basically you can right click and draw a few lines in order to navigate. If you haven’t used them before, I would highly recommend it. Even with a few simple commands, life becomes so much easier. If you are only going to add one feature from my list, make it gestures.
The next tool that I like is the Gmail Manager. This will let you log into mulitple gmail accounts and keep an eye on them for you. It will show you the number of emails in the in-box, notify you of new mail, and all the things that will distract you and keep you from being productive. There is also another add-on called the Gmail Notifier, but that can only handle one account, and doesn’t show you the message clips, you have to actually log in to see your email. I recommend the gmail manager. If you don’t have a Gmail account, I recommend that too!
The Next one is called Search Status. This finds out the site’s Google Page Rank, as well as the current Alexa rank for the domain. Then it gives you tools to investigate further, and easily determine who’s site it is, and how long they have had it. From these you can help to gauge the credibility any given site. But of course, they are not the end all be all.
Sometimes when you need to upload a single small little file onto your server, opening up an ftp client is a little overkill. Well, at least when you have fireftp set up it is. With this little extension you have the connection waiting for you a tab away.
Next is Web Developer, I bet you can never guess what that is used for! If you do web design it can help you figure out where the pictures are going, where the divs end, and what you need to do. I honestly don’t use it enough, but it really has some cool features that can help you out when you need them.
Fasterfox will let you tweak your connection and help you to optimize your settings. That way you can get firefox to run a little faster, cache sites a little better, and it gives you a cool logo as well!
Of course I should mention grease monkey because of the possibilities; however I haven’t found many scripts that I really like a whole lot. There are plenty of small scripts that you can add that will change page layouts and edit things a bit. There are some useful scripts over at userscripts.org
I was chatting with Daniel who runs Daily Blog Tips and he just let me know about Colorzilla. It’s really geared for web designers and developers. It basically gives you an eyedropper tool much like in Photoshop. You select a spot an it gives you the color code in RGB and Hexadecimal. No more taking screen-shots to figure out the colors!
He also mentioned Stumbleupon. I was going to leave this one out, because there are so many interesting things that you can find with it. Adding it might provide you with a muse, but most likely it will provide you with a million things to read that are NOT included in what society likes to call ‘productive’. If you have some time to kill, then it’s certainly worth checking out. It might be a good idea to make sure all of you work is done first!
There are nine cool plugins to try out with Firefox, of course these are just some of the many useful tools out there. What are your favorite, “can’t live without” extensions?
Over the last week, I had the fantastic opportunity to visit a construction site of a $22,000,000+ hotel and restaurant. While muddy boots and long underwear weren’t exactly how I imagined my first overnight business trip in life, I discovered a secret that every successful business person needs to know’leadership.
I know you’ve heard all about leadership and probably figured that you already were a good leader. Throw yourself into the setting of a multi-million dollar construction site, and you might see what I did’I don’t know near enough about leadership.
Knowing the industry isn’t enough
A person isn’t a good leader because he’s an expert in the industry. Anyone can paint a wall or install insulation. A great leader holds other skills, too. He has to plan, and he knows how to keep others in line with his plan. This project has to be finished for a June opening, and construction is barely half done – 2/3 of the rooms don’t have drywall, 1/3 don’t have windows. The superintendent knows how to do this work, but on a tight schedule? He has to figure out which tasks are the most important, when he needs different subcontractors to arrive, and how to cope with problems in the plans and number of field guys. Next, he’s got to figure out how to keep everyone motivated on the schedule he builds and constantly changes.
Leadership isn’t about friendship
Construction guys are not buddies with each other. They slap each other on the backs and treat each other well. But the leaders don’t stand around and chat with workers. As a woman, I think about if people will like me. A leader can’t do that’he’s got to focus on results and getting the job done. No conversation is longer than it needs to be out here.
Always show confidence
If the superintendent shows a glimpse of doubt about the completion date, the doubt will spread. Presentation is the key – if the leaders act confident, the followers feel confident. Throw away insecurity and fear and replace them with enthusiasm.
Don’t be afraid of getting dirty
I’m not referring to dirty language’which flows in abundance on a construction site. I’m referring to the mud you’ll get on your boots and the blisters you’ll get on your hands. Remember the classic scene from “Gone with the Wind”? Scarlet O’Hara turns curtains into a beautiful gown to convince people she’s still wealthy. The blisters on her hands give her away, though. Well today isn’t like that! If you want to be self-made, you’re going to get blisters of some sort. A lot of people are making a lot of money on that construction site. The weather has been freezing or so muddy that my boss lost his boot in the mud as he took a step, but hey, they’re making money.
Insist on being well paid
The truth is that people make decisions based on the bottom line’you often should, too. The owners are motivated to get the hotel open on time so that they can make more money. The well-paid construction worker is more motivated to work hard, and you’ll find yourself feeling the same way.