Looking for a scheduling solution that integrates with Google Calendar? Check out ScheduleOnce (link to Web Worker Daily). While Doodle.com helps you find the best time for a meeting, ScheduleOnce lets you actually integrate it into a calendar that you’re already using. It works a lot like Outlook’s Free/Busy calendaring, and seems to be pretty solid.

Today over at Web Worker Daily, there’s an excellent post about how, when launching a project with a new client, there’s a simple set of documents you should always provide. This set of five documents serves as a sort of “kick start” to help everyone get on the same page when it comes to how you work, hour your business works, and how the job gets done in general (and how you get paid).  It’s definitely an idea worth taking to heart, and it’s a post well worth reading.

Read More…

Ever wonder how you’d make a living if you didn’t have clients to work with? What sort of business plan survives when you’re not doing something for someone else? Well, the folks at Common Craft (makers of the “In Plain English” video series) did just that - they went from doing client videos, to just doing their own videos and licensing them out.

Over ar ReadWriteWeb (http://tinyurl.com/7vsuxw)you can read all the details about their interesting take on client-less work.

Recently, I took on a new iPhone client and discovered the world of incredibly low-budget product (darn near nil-budget) promotion. With the iTunes App Store’s way of doing things, you have to become incredibly creative about how to promote an app or game, especially a game, as App Store consumers are very price-sensitive (successful games tend to hit the sweet spot at 99cents). This meant taking a long and hard look at how games are normally promoted, and throwing that all out the window. It’s been a lot of fun, and forced me to look into the dark recesses of my mind for “bigger, stronger and faster” ideas that are unconventional, and not reliant upon big, or even medium, -sized budgets. But more on all that later…

Right now, I wanted to introduce everyone to another favorite blog of mine — Shoestring Branding, which looks at how to market yourself, your company and your products when there’s not a lot of cash to go around. As it looks like this economic slump is going to continue into the new year, it’s definitely a good site to keep an eye on, especially a recent post called “Doing More with Less.” It’s certainly worth any business person’s time to give it a read.

Here’s a sampling -

Before doing anything, spending any resources, or hiring anybody, stop and ask yourself these questions:

• It this action or expense directly tied to my business mission?
• Is it consistent with my business strategy and brand positioning?
• Will it help me achieve my goals for the year?
• Have I strengthened my business systems? Have I automated everything that can be automated? Am I building a scalable business?

This weekend’s a big one for me, I’ve been cleaning out anything and everything in the home office. As I was dumping out piles and piles of CDs and DVDs containging drivers, games, videos, archived data and more, I figured I needed a better way to store all this. Rather than buy yet another binder to store them all in, I’m going a different route - archiving them all to ISO format on a big external HDD. So long as they aren’t copy protected, it’s easy enough to do -

1 - Grab a copy of LC ISO Creator (it’s free and easy). There are dozens of other freebie ISO makers, I just like this one for ease of use.

2- Get yourself a big external (or internal) HDD and create an ISO folder on it. Remember that DVD ISO’s can be up to 4GB, so prep a drive with tons of room.

3. Pop the disc into your drive, fire up ISO Creator and follow the steps (with LC, there’s only two steps!) to generate an ISO.

The ISO will be a single file that’s like a photograph of the discs contents. It contains all the data from the disc, laid out exactly like the disc was. But, to access that data later, you’ll need a program to “mount” the ISO as a virtual CD/DVD drive. I’m partial to Virtual Clone Drive from Slysoft, which is again free and easy to use. You just double click an ISO file, and your PC will treat it just like a CD/DVD drive. When you’re done, you go into My Computer, right click on the virtual drive and hit “Unmount” and you’re all set.

What do do with all those discs after you’ve copied them over? If it’s a disc I’m sure I won’t need the physical version of again (like a data backup, driver disc, etc), I just put a giant scratch on the reading surface (the opposite side the label is on) or break the disc in half, then toss it.

By creating ISO’s on a local or portable drive,  you can easily find the discs you need when you need them, rather than pore through a huge binder (or four binders, in my case) of years of CD’s.

Pity the “to do” list, we both love it, and hate it, and most of us write them up with the best intentions, then ignore them. If you’re looking for a better way to manage tasks, I Want Sandy is an awesome way to do it.

I Want Sandy (or just “Sandy” for short) is a really cool service. You just tell Sandy what you need to do, and when you need a reminder for it, and she’ll nag you via email and SMS to get it done. If you find you aren’t able to work on that big presentation at 3pm, and Sandy nags you at 3, you just reply with “snooze until x” (replacing “x” with a new time, or a set number of hours/minutes/days), and you’re all set. The really cool thing about Sandy is that if you’re a twitter junkie, you can direct message Sandy and she’ll set reminders that way.

Here’s a few examples of how I use it - oh, and I’m just using quotation marks to make this more readable, don’t actually put quotes in your messages to Sandy.

Ex. 1 - I need to be reminded that at 3pm, I have to return an email to Dave about ordering printer paper

I send an email to a custom address (when you sign up, you’ll get an address assigned) with the subject “Remind me at 3pm to email Dave about printer paper”. Nothing needs to be in the body. A few moments later, Sandy will reply letting me know she’s scheduled this.

Let’s say at 3pm, I get my reminder from Sandy, but I’m too busy to do anything. Then I just hit reply to her email, and type “Snooze until tomorrow”. That means tomorrow at 3pm, Sandy will remind me again. You can actually do just about any time combo for setting snooze you like - such as, “snooze for an hour”, “snooze until Monday at 2:15pm”, etc. If I don’t want to bother with this task at all (Because Dave’s a jerk), then I can reply with “forget” and it’s gone from my task list.

Ex. 2 - The twitter method

Once you’ve signed up with Sandy, you can twitter her much the same way you would send an email. This is handy, as you don’t have to remember the email address (so if you’re on someone else’s computer, you sign into twitter and go).  To set this up, remember to go to this page first for instructions.

Once it’s all set up, it’s really easy to send yourself reminders. Just log into twitter (as if you ever log out!) and start your message with “d s” (that’s a “d”, then a space, then an “s” - and don’t use quotation marks) and then the message. The “d” tells twitter it’s a direct message (not to show up to anyone else but Sandy) and the “s” is shorthand for “Sandy.”

Example message - “d s remind me at 3pm to fire Dave”

Hit send, and you’re done. If you go into your twitter Direct Messages menu, you should see a response from Sandy that says “I got….” where the “…” is your message text.  At 3pm, I’ll get an email and SMS from Sandy telling me that it’s time to fire Dave.

Example 3 - the SMS way

If you have twitter set up to receive messages via SMS, then here’s another great feature. Just send a text to 40404 (the SMS address for twitter) and again, do a “d s message” , replacing “message” with your reminder text. Hit send, and you’re all set.

Sandy’s a great way to rip through you inbox, quickly assigning tasks and times for them to get done as you read a message. I tend to keep a tab open with a pre-addressed email to Sandy while in another tab, I’m reading my inbox. As I see something that needs to be sent to my task list, I pop over to the Sandy message, set up the message and send it. Then I can archive the original message for reference when I get my Sandy reminder. Keeps the inbox nice and clean, and forces me to think about what really needs to get done.

What else can Sandy do ?

I Want Sandy is really handy for more than just reminders…

Use her to remember contact info -

“r Frank Fitzwilliam frank@example.com, 123 Couch Street, Portland, OR 97212″

Or she can create a to do list (kept at the site) by doing something like this -

” remember groceries @weekly

* eggs

* milk

* bread”

There’s a whole lot more info in the full Sandy Guide.

I for one, hope Sandy stays around for a long time, I’d even pay a few dollars a month to keep it around (currently, it’s a free service), as I’ve found the service is perfect for me.

Recently, I finished reading “The Four Hour Workweek,” and well, it’s done wonders for making me a fascist about my work hours, ensuring plenty more time for leisure than I ever had in the past.  While I’m certainly not getting away with a four-hour work-week, I’m certainly getting myself back under control when it comes to time management.  One trick I used to use, that had dropped off the radar when things went uber-busy about a year ago (and needed to do a ton of client travel,) was my “Four things in four hours” policy.  I fired it back up about three weeks ago, and man, I’m so much happier now, and find myself no longer glued to my PC at 7pm saying to my wife, “Just gotta finish this, then I’ll have dinner.” Now, I’m done by 1pm every day (assuming no emergencies come up with clients) and I’m much more relaxed.  Here’s how it works -

- Every morning when you get into work, pick four things you absolutely must get done that day. Write them down. Be realistic about these things, as you’re going to be jamming through the workday to get ‘em done, and picking something you KNOW would take the whole day by itself to get done is not a good idea and defeats the purpose of the exercise.

- Schedule the next four hours to get those things done.  No email checking, no phone answering, nothing. Shut the door and lock it (either at home, or in your office) - Just hunker down and do nothing but those four things. You can send email (as you’ll likely have to, in order to get some items done) but don’t start reading any non-related email. If you’re worried about missing some emergency “thing,” think about it - is there any sort of emergency that will come up and need resolved in a four-hour period? No, there isn’t, short of a major physical/medical issue.  That’s why I picked four hours, it’s just right for giving enough padding to get work done, and still have time to catch up after.

Note: we all have tasks that will sometimes take more than 4 hours, in that case, break that task down into smaller goals which can be accomplished in time allowed. This way, instead of groaning about having to finish a press kit in 4 hours, when you know it will take 12, break it down into several two-hour chunks. For example - two hours on writing the documentation, 2 hours on collecting information, two hours on getting approvals, etc etc. You can break a task down over several days if it’s a big one.

- As soon as an item is done, strike it from the list. You need that feeling of accomplishment to really keep in gear for the next items. Did I mention no multitasking? That’s right, don’t even think about jumping back and forth between the four items, just pick one, get it done, move to the next.

- After three hours, look at the list and evaluate where you are.  Did you get most of the tasks done? No? Then try to finish 1-2 more if possible, but be sure you’d done at least one for the day.  If it looks like you’ll be done all of ‘em for the day, hooray, go celebrate as soon as you’re done. Me personally, I go play a game, watch a TV show, listen to some music or something to flush work out of my brain for a bit.

- Once you’re done those four items, forget work for a few hours. Go find a way to relax for a few hours. You’ve just accomplished a heck of a lot more in four hours of focused work than you’re likely to in 10 hours of scatter-shot “little bit o’ this, little bit o’ that” work.

- After your break, come back and check email, voicemail etc and decide if anything needs done immediately, or might work in tomorrow’s list. If there’s nothing in dire need of completion, it’s time to call it a day.

Some people might think that setting yourself up to work for only four hours per day means you’re slacking for four hours after, but honestly think about it - how much do you really get done in an unfocused eight-hour day? I bet it’s a lot less than four tasks.

How does this all work (at least for me) -

First off, it forces me to prioritize and assign deadlines. As the saying goes, “A project will take up as much time as you give it.” If you don’t stick a serious deadline on something, you’re going to futz around day in and day out, picking at sub-tasks and sub-sub-tasks like scraps off a roasted chicken dinner sitting in the fridge.  Instead of just saying “I have to have this report written in an hour” you end up writing, walking away, writing some more, getting a coffee with friends, and by the end of an eight-hour day - you’re still staring at paragraph one. But, give yourself only an hour or two to do it, with the reward being that you’re going to freely enjoy the rest of the afternoon (after getting your other deadline items done), you’ll be surprised how focused you can get.

It also forces you to keep track of to do’s in some sort of written format, rather than bouncing around in your head. Now that you have to write ‘em down and sort/prioritize, you’ll be surprised at how few things fall through the cracks.

It works as a great incentive-based system. First off, you get that delicious feeling when you strike a task off your list. Secondly, your big incentive is all that free time after you do your four things. Trust me, after a week of stopping work at 1pm and going out to enjoy some time with my kids, or playing a game, or taking a nap, I’m incentivized to focus like a madman on getting things done, and done right the first time.

Work-quality significantly increases. You can bet that I don’t want to see that press release come back on my desk with edits/changes, which will force its way back onto my 4 Things list for the next day, noooo thank you.  When you get focused on getting things done on a deadline, you’ll be surprised how much higher your quality of work is, even if you think (like I often do) that your work is awesome as-is, you’ll be surprised at the quality boost you get when you focus like this.

Give “Four Things in Four Hours” a try and let me know what you think.

I’ve been working on a post about my obsessive time-management practices, but I just had to post this bit from Seth Godin’s blog (via Joel Spolsky’s excellent “Joel on Software” blog). It’s a pretty simple concept - if you’re struggling to get something done, say, a new Web site for example, treat it like it’s something that absolutely must be done now. Act as if your hair’s on fire and you gotta put it out now, now and now. Dedicate that time you’d use on other, lower priority stuff (like that obsession with checking email every five minutes) to getting this one thing done. Nothing else…just this one thing. When you’re finally done, you’ll honestly be surprised at how simple it all was, and surprised at how you put off something that you could’ve gotten done a lot earlier and quicker if you’d just focused completely on it. I do this pretty often with projects that I just don’t want to do, and I have to say, it really works. Proving once again, my argument that multitasking is a bad idea. “Do one thing, do it well, move to the next…don’t do 10 things half-heartedly, and you’ll get more done with a lot better work quality” - that’s what I say.

I am a sucker for that little blinking icon that lets me know I’ve got a new Instant Message awaiting me. Try as I may, I can never avoid answering it immediately. Maybe it’s that I was raised to be polite and respond immediately to any form of contact, or maybe I’m a connection freak who loves the instant connection feel of the ‘net. Or maybe it’s both.

Anyhow, today Web Worker Daily has a great post about how to remain productive while using IM. The most obvious tactic - don’t log in when you need to get work done. As a matter of fact, I spent the whole morning without IM, because I had a ton of proposals and reports to write. It works quite well. I can’t just “go invisible” on IM during work, because I can’t help myself if I see a buddy I really want to chat with come online. I have to keep that IM app (currently Digsby and Skype) closed completely.

So check out the tips from WWD today, they’re worth it if you’re communications ADD like me.

Of course I’m referring to the home office here, so get your mind out of the gutter. My wife and I have worked from home together for a number of years (will probably have a post about working from home with your spouse soon) and we’ve had our office in a number of areas.

Currently we have both our desk setups occupying a spare bedroom upstairs on the third floor of our house. We have a great view out the window of the river and mountains, but since it’s hard to see a computer monitor in bright daylight, the shutters often remain completely closed throughout the day. We’re in the process of actually moving our office downstairs, taking up half of our living room space. Why? Well we actually like to be close to the kitchen and living room area, plus its a more open space that is good for the mental health aspect.

I’ve seen home offices in a den, bedroom, living room, and well…some of you who probably have laptops often "work" in the bathroom! So my question to you readers is, where do you conduct your work at home? Feel free to post links to any pictures in the comments as well.

(Image courtesy of "petitshoo" via flickr - Creative Commons)