04 Dec 09 Are You a Freelance Writer, Do You Know How to Fight Distraction?

For a freelance writer, it is quite easy to get distracted because he works from home. For the large part of the day, people in our home keep either talking or watching television, which never fails to distract us. This is frustrating, which further sucks away our productivity.

How to avoid it?

Fortunately, there is a way out of it, which anyone of you can use to avoid distraction, regardless of your situation.

Assign yourself a place of work

This is the must-take action for any freelance writer. It is not good to carry your laptop and sit anywhere in your home to work, well occasional working-in-kitchen will not hurt but do not make it a routine. I know it sounds against the spirit of freelance writing—you can work from anywhere and anytime—but this is worth a deviation. Find a lonely corner in your house and turn it into a workplace.

Fix your work hours

I may sound like talking against the freedom of freelance writing, but my intention is not to drag you back into the 9-5 job that you left in the past, it is only to help you produce more. And as it is you can anytime pull the string and call it off.

Work, no matter what

Once you fix your work hour, you should stick to it, no matter what. Well, you can deviate from “no matter what” principle without any guilt feeling when you know you need to. Occasion deviation never hurts, at least not in our profession.

Talk to your family

At times, getting things write just need a word from us. Talk to your family and tell them that you are working around here, so not to create distraction. Well this might not work with a disgruntled spouse, but in most of the cases, this will be enough. Believe it or not, they understand the value of the work you are doing.

As you can see, fighting off distraction does not take so much of muscle power as much it takes discipline and tactics. What are your tactics to fight this monster off? Use the comment box and tell me your strategies.

Tags: Discipline, Distraction, Freedom, Freelance Work, Freelance Writer, Freelance Writing, Guilt, Intention, Job, Laptop, Lonely Corner, Monster, Muscle Power, Occasion, Principle, Productivity, Profession, Sounds, Spirit, Watching Television

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20 Oct 09 Formulating A Career Action Plan

Creating a career action plan is important for everyone. No matter the career, your planning will be better served with a CAP. This will give you a comprehensive guideline that you intend to follow. By having this path set before you, you can be better aware of your goals. Making the path allows for you to keep sight of what you want out of your career, and the ways to accomplish those goals. So it only makes sense to sit down and write one out.

The career action plan is exactly what it sounds like. A well laid plan on how to get your career from point A to point B, and beyond. You should have a well researched path that you intend to follow. One that works for your skill set, and commitment. You’ll have to take into account the workload you’re willing to accommodate, and how you intend to achieve your intended ends.

Following the typical CAP format you should start out by mapping your objectives. Write down what you hope to achieve, from pay scale, to promotions, to education. Figure out what you want to put in, as well as what you want to get out of your career.

From there, in the next section detail all of your previous experience, and the skill set that you’ve developed. Whether through work history, or education, write down what has set you up for your career.

Now you calculate your weaknesses, and honesty counts here. Nobody is going to be looking at this play besides you, so be honest. Failing to record a truthful account of your weaknesses leads to a plan that might not work for you. So figure out your shortcomings so that you may learn to work around them. That’s all part of your plan, and you’ll be better set by knowing where you may fall short, so that you can prevent that, or work around them.

Finally you plot out your goals. Take the information you have already written, and maneuver how it fits into the goals you want to achieve. In this step you can map out exactly how to go about making your goals come to fruition. Through careful planning here, you’ll have a good idea of what you need to do, and a decent time table of when you can expect to accomplish some of those goals.

Tags: Cap, Career Action Plan, Career Plan, Career Planning, Education, Honesty, Leads, Maneuver, Path, Promotions, Section Detail, Shortcomings, Skill Set, Sounds, Work History, Workload

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18 Jul 09 More Tips To Go Green At The Office

Going green in the office involves more than just conserving power while you’re at work. That’s all well and good for helping the environment, but that doesn’t help with the amount of trash you’re producing. Not to mention the amount of new products coming in that don’t comply with good recycling standards. Which is exactly why to really go green at your office, you need to keep an eye on everything that you’re doing, throwing out, and bringing in to your workplace. Sounds like a daunting task, but it’s not as difficult as you may think.

Start out by just paying better attention to the label on the products that you buy. Most stores, like Office Max or Office Depot, will offer a list of products located at the store that are considered more environmentally friendly. Try to stick to these lists for anything you purchase, as these products are usually much less harsh on the environment to produce, and tend to biodegrade faster.

For your printer, either use a reusable printer cartridge, so that you can just refill it when you run out of ink, or purchase remanufactured printer cartridges. Either option is recycling and will save a ton of extra plastic from being just wasted and dropped into the local landfill to rot.

Concerning the paper for your printer, try to stick to PCR, post-consumer recycled, paper. This way you are using paper that is almost 100% recycled content, and as long as you remain good about recycling the paper that you use, you are greatly reducing the amount of resources lost producing and then maintaining that paper.

Finally, try to cut out using paper at all. Purchase an external hard drive, or even a big flash drive, as a back up device for your important information. This way you can protect your information without burning through a lot of paper to keep your sensitive info on file.

Tags: Daunting Task, Environmentally Friendly, External Hard Drive, Flash Drive, Going Green, Helping The Environment, Important Information, Landfill, Lot, Office Depot, Office Max, Pcr, Printer Cartridge, Printer Cartridges, Recycled Paper, Recycling Paper, Sensitive Info, Sounds, Trash

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04 Dec 09 Are You a Freelance Writer, Do You Know How to Fight Distraction?

Assign yourself a place of work

Fix your work hours

Work, no matter what

Talk to your family

20 Oct 09 Formulating A Career Action Plan

18 Jul 09 More Tips To Go Green At The Office

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