Viewing category ‘office life’

Full Time, All the Time

with Britt Reints

Forget the 9 to 5; Full Time, All the Time is a blog about the mobile working life - when you have the freedom to work from anywhere and the responsibility of always having your smartphone turned on. Britt Reints works as a freelance writer while traveling fulltime in an RV with her husband and two kids. She explores balancing real-life bills with an unconventional work life, and finding time to maintain relationships with family and friends.

You can also find Britt at InPursuitOfHappiness.net.

Evernote Hello app makes collecting business cards smarter

Categories: office life, the new office, working mobile

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I’m not the world’s greatest networker. I love hearing people’s stories and asking about their work, but I habitually forget to carry business cards and I’m not very good at explaining what I do. I do, however, accept business cards when they’re given to me. In the past, I’ve wondered if that was a futile activity, but I’ve discovered an app that promises to make collecting cards more useful.
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4 Mid-day pick me ups to survive the work day

Categories: office life, working mom

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(341/365) Yawn, I shouldn't be left alone in the officeFatigue is my nemesis. It’s the the most prominent side effect of my depression and my body’s go-to coping response for stress, illness, and just about everything else - including a long day at work. But I have big plans for myself and a lot of work to make those plans happen. So, I have to find a way to battle through the mid-day slumps, recharge, and get back to it. (And because I’m a weenie and would never sleep at night, another cup of coffee isn’t an option.)

These are a few tricks I’ve found to get over the natural lulls in my workday, downswings which I’m learning are actually important signs.
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How to Restart a No Good, Very Bad Day

Categories: office life

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I’m not sure if this is a phenomenon that is unique to women, or just me, but my mood definitely affects my work . If I’m sad or angry, I have a really hard time concentrating and creating at a top level. Of course, most of us don’t have the luxury of blowing deadlines or skipping work just because we’re in a bad mood. How can we suck it up – or improve our mood – long enough to get stuff done?
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I don’t have co-workers; I have a community

Categories: office life, relationships

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From My Back YardIn the last month, I’ve worked in a hospital room, at my mother’s kitchen table, from a balcony overlooking a Mexican beach, and in my own living room. My work is location independent, which means I’m free of the confines of a cubicle. It also means I don’t have co-workers in the traditional sense. Sometimes this blows. But as I’ve learned in the face of heartache and disaster over the last few weeks, I am not alone. Far from it, in fact.
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Workflowy: Yet another list management tool

Categories: office life, the new office

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the list I have written a lot about my favorite organization tools . I have also vowed to give up on getting organized all together. Anyone who has seen the home screen on my smart phone could have guessed that last one wasn’t going to stick.

I love tools almost as much as I love lists, so it is with much excitement that I introduce to you yet another tool for making lists. (I know!! It’s almost too much awesomeness to handle!!)

My fellow working mamas, I present to you: Workflowy .
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Why we don’t have nice things

Categories: Uncategorized, economy, office life, relationships, the juggle

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Day 21 Occupy Wall Street October 6 2011 Shankbone 16It’s not uncommon to blame children for a couple’s inability to have nice things. My husband and I, however, have no one but ourselves to blame.

A year ago, my husband and I sold just about everything we owned - including our beautiful home and my beloved shoe collection - so that we could move into an RV and travel for a year with our kids. That year of travel has come to an end and we now have room to put stuff again, but we’re not running out to replace all of our stuff. Why? Because we don’t want to go back to real jobs.


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Yes, I Always Need the Internet

Categories: office life, the new office, working mobile, working mom

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We pulled into the Grand Canyon Thursday night. We were going to be camping for three nights, giving us two days to take our time exploring one of Earth’s most famous wonders. I’d worked extra hours earlier in the week so that I could unplug and enjoy four total days of driving and playing tourist.

About five minutes after checking into our campground, I got an email on my iPhone announcing a bit of a work emergency, something that demanded my attention within the next 12 hours.

My cell phone service promptly vanished as soon as I finished reading the email.

We unhooked the travel trailer from the back of our SUV, made sure no dishes had been broken in the transfer, and put the TV back in its place. Then I went hunting for wifi.
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Staying connected without an office

Categories: office life, the new office, working mobile

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I’m reading about Secret Santa drawings and office holiday parties, and I admit to being a little jealous. Yes, I get to roll out of bed at 9:30 in the morning. No, my lunch isn’t going to mysteriously disappear from the fridge. But working outside of the typical office environments also means I don’t have face to face interactions with co-workers. Ever.

I am by nature an autonomous worker, a trait that makes the mobile lifestyle a good fit for me, but occasionally I miss lunches with colleagues. I don’t miss meetings, necessarily, but I do miss having someone in my field readily available for brainstorming and feedback. My husband and children don’t make the best sounding boards for questions on marketing or target demographics.
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How to make anywhere feel like an office

Categories: office life, the new office

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Living and working on the road full time means I have the freedom to work anywhere. It also means that I could find myself working anywhere, a flexibility that can be difficult to adjust to. As humans we crave the familiar, and a constantly changing workspace can easily interfere with productivity. However, I have found a few tricks to help make any space feel like my own.

Use my own computer.

I can’t imagine work on a shared computer. If you have to share your laptop with other members of your family, set up individual profiles so all of your settings can be personalized. Knowing exactly where everything is allows me to work faster and adds a level of consistency to an ever-changing work environment.
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The downside of going digital

Categories: office life

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I’ve been working in a virtual environment for a couple of years now, even before I began working from a traveling trailer. I logged into an online client database instead of flipping through a Rolodex or company network. I stored projects and files in “the cloud” instead of in metal filing cabinets. For the last two years, even my office phone has been run on a voice-over-IP network instead of a traditional land line. I’m a digital girl living in a digital world, but there are some aspects of the old school ways that I miss.

Like office supplies.

Now that my “office” is a backpack, I’m not surrounded by paperclips, staplers, and countless memo pads. While the reduced clutter is an improvement and I don’t miss the perpetual “clean desk” on my to-do list, I do miss the tactile convenience of being able to reach out and grab what I need in an instant.

In a paper world, you use a pen and scrap of paper to jot down your ideas and phone numbers. In a digital world, you open an app or find the Excel sheet that’s stored in a folder somewhere on your computer. In the real world, you have the satisfaction of physically crossing off your daily accomplishments from a list, a process that is much more fulfilling then clicking “completed” in a web browser.

And heaven forbid you lose something in a digital world.

There’s no shuffling through piles or scanning the desktop. There’s no digging through trash cans or asking everyone to drop what they’re doing and help. While the absence of these frantic searches might sound like a good thing, the problem is that things can still get misplaced on the hard drive and in the cloud - and then what? Then you’re left with a text based file search and trying to remember what in the heck you were thinking when you saved that file that didn’t exactly make sense in any folder.

All in all, working and storing my work (and personal life, really) digitally is far more efficient than my old paper ways. But man, I sure do miss those little post-it notes stuck all over the place.

Do you prefer digital or paper systems?

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