Web Worker Daily

Posted: 23 Aug 2008 12:00 PM CDT

Ah, the age old business question: “Do I want more work?” The question, of course, is actually “Can I handle more work?” or even “How much more work can I handle?” Do you know how much more work you can handle? Are you at that tipping/breaking point yet? How much more work will get you to that point?

And when you get to that tipping/breaking point, what then? Do you:

1. Learn to say “No” with a capital “N.” Say no to all subsequent offers of work, no matter how tempting, no matter how potentially lucrative, until your time frees up.

2. Learn to delegate smaller tasks. I’m talking about the busy-work that keeps you from doing the bigger picture thinking, writing, planning and working that ultimately brings in the bigger bucks.

3. Assemble a virtual team. Build a team made up of people who are strong where you are weak to help handle the load and to structure bigger deals with clients by offering a fuller suite of services.

4. Bring on an employee. Hiring someone as a part-time or full-time employee might defeat the entire purpose of being an independent Web worker so I’m still on the fence about this one.

5. Bring on a business partner. Partner with someone who shares not just the rewards but the risk as well. Someone who can be a business rainmaker and handle the heavy lifting alongside you.

So where am I in this whole process?

I’m getting a lot of work. I’m almost to that point where I am concerned that if I bring on a few more clients, I may not be doing any of them justice. And being the perfectionist that I am, I can’t bear the thought of sub-par work even though my sub-par is probably totally acceptable.

I’m almost at that tipping/breaking point.

What have I done about it?

1. I have said no with a small “n.” For the smaller deals, I’m referring them to trusted colleagues who are happy to get the work. For the mid-sized deals, I’m picking and choosing the ones that won’t interfere with the bigger deals I’m closing. I look at them as fun filler to keep the cash flowing but not to tie me up too much or to take me away from the bigger deals that needs my attention.

2. I’ve hired a personal virtual assistant and am farming out some of the busy work. I’m no longer afraid to delegate (you know the fear - the fear that nobody else will care enough about the job to do as good a job as you can do). I’m still trying to figure out the most efficient, effective way to pull all this process and information out of my head and transferring it in a coherent form to another person.

3. I’ve been working on a virtual team as their “Internet gal,” but someone else is managing the team. I’m worried about assembling my own team because I don’t think I have the brain capacity to manage that team. Ostensibly, we’d all be able to manage ourselves, but I hesitate going into a glorified project manager role. I’d have to have a project manager in the virtual mix. So I’m still contemplating this.

4. No to hiring someone as an employee. I don’t know about you, but I’m still running screaming away from the idea of hiring employees.

5. I’ve been talking preliminarily to some trusted colleagues who are my peers in my industry sector. They get it, they do it, they’re looking for a change from the corporate world. My company of one could actually become a company of two with the right person. But how would that be structured? The business and financial side of this still scares the heck out of me. You could say I’m more than a little gun-shy about having another business partner after past experiences.

Where are you at with your Web work? Are you a company of one, two or more? Are you part of a virtual team on an ongoing or as-needed basis? Do you have enough work to stay busy, pay the rent, and then some? What are your business goals? What are your struggles?

And when is too much work no longer a good thing? Leave it to me to ask the tough questions that even I can’t answer.

[This blog post was inspired by this great post about business models.]

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Zoho Adds Sharing

Posted: 23 Aug 2008 11:00 AM CDT

We’ve covered a great many Zoho services over the years; they continue to have one of the most diverse software-as-a-service offerings. Their latest addition is Zoho Share, which brings both file storage and file sharing into play. If you’ve already got Zoho credentials from another application, you can use them to log in to Zoho Share. When you get there, you’ll find a public file-sharing site, showing you content that other people have uploaded. But you’ll also find a private “My Area” tab, which lets you upload and manage your own documents. You can choose to keep these documents private, or make them public by default.

Zoho share includes embedded viewers for the various file types it supports: Zoho’s own files (which you can easily click through to edit in their home applications), PDFs, older Microsoft documents, ODT, CSV, and a few others. Files are limited to 3MB, and you can select from a variety of Creative Commons licenses for each file you upload (including restrictive licenses that preserve your rights on private documents). Like the other commodity Zoho services, Zoho Share is free.

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Mozilla Tips its Hat to This Year’s Top Firefox Extensions

Posted: 22 Aug 2008 06:00 PM CDT

Every year, Mozilla runs a contest called Extend Firefox, which is designed to name the best Firefox extensions created in the previous 12 months. This year’s list of winners is out, and one of the winners was previously written up here a while back: Pencil.

In his writeup, Mike noted that Pencil works by marrying Firefox’s Gecko drawing engine with the ability to display, save and load an external canvas with a palette of shapes. You end up with a capable drawing program right in your browser.

I use Pencil, and fans of visualization tools like Visio will especially get a kick out of it. Author Duong Thanh An won a grand prize from Mozilla for it.

The second Firefox extension on Mozilla’s list this year is Tagmarks, produced by Felipe Tassario Gomes. I have this on my list to try. It adds a set of icons to Firefox’s quick bookmarks, allowing you to quickly add tags to your bookmarks by clicking on each icon. You can find screenshots at the download page linked to above.

The third grand prize winner this year is also a bookmarks soup-up extension: HandyTag. This one comes from Rémi Szymkowiak It provides a set of the most relevant keywords in the bookmark's edition panel. The keywords are retrieved from many different sources.

Mozilla also provides a list of six runners-up among extensions: Webchunks, Badges on Favicons, Devo, Close ‘n Forget, Callout, and Reasy.

For many more useful Firefox extensions see OStatic’s roundup of open source educational resources here (the Firefox Superguide at the top includes a slew of good extensions).

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Keeping the Good Parts of Office Life

Posted: 22 Aug 2008 05:00 PM CDT

Every time someone asks teleworkers the things we love about online work, our faces light up and we instantly talk about the mobility, freedom, and independence. Despite these perks to teleworking, there are some things we miss about showing up at the office daily, even if we don’t necessarily want to go back to that.

The good news is, there are alternatives to the things that weren’t so bad about going to the office.

The commute. Since we no longer commute as often to go to the office, we miss out on some of the good things about commuting. After all, the commute allows us to prep ourselves for the day ahead, go around the neighborhood, and do some idle thinking. In my previous post, WWD reader Michael said that he liked the commute home, because it gave him the chance to unwind.

Of course, commuting can also be seen as a negative if you commute in a noisy, overcrowded, and polluted metropolis. But what can you do if you actually liked the commute?

Taking a walk or a bike ride before you start your workday can give you the same chance to prepare yourself for the day ahead, and go around the neighborhood as well. Or, if you absolutely love a long commute, drive a few hours, then check in and work in a different city for a couple of days.

The social interaction. If you miss the face-to-face interaction that office work provides, one of the (more obvious) alternatives you can try is co-working. That way, you’ll be able to interact with others during the day without sacrificing your professional independence.

You can also make a special effort to meet up with or talk to your friends. It doesn’t have to be anything fancy - an afternoon snacking together will do. If what you especially miss about work is the chance to meet new people, you can do other activities that will allow you to expand your social circle, such as joining a book club, special interest group, or volunteering. To make sure you don’t lose sight of your social life, schedule these activities like you would a client meeting.

Your visibility in the office. For teleworking employees, being visible in the office has its perks - you get to be part of impromptu collaborations or remind colleagues and supervisors of your contributions. You may not be in the office 8 hours each day, but you have several opportunities to be physically present. If you’re used to joining meetings via a conference call, try to go to the office more more often for these meetings. Also, don’t forget to attend or even organize company parties and get-togethers.

While you may miss some things about your life in the office, just remember that there are alternatives. Being a web worker doesn’t mean that you won’t experience these things anymore - you just have to find new ways to do so.

What things do you miss about office life? How do you try to experience them as a teleworker?

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