Web Worker Daily

Regain Balance and Avoid Burnout
Measuring the Success of a Coworking Community
How Important Is a Good Name?
Don’t Forget to Goof Off Occasionally
5 Factors to Consider When Selecting Enterprise Social Tools

Posted: 28 May 2009 04:00 PM PDT

The trouble with not working a 9-to-5 office job is that often you work more, sometimes much more, than your cube-dwelling counterparts. The risk you run with an always-connected, always-working lifestyle, of course, is of getting burned out. And once that happens, not only will you end up exhausted, but both your work and your personal life will suffer.

A List Apart recently published a great article by Scott Boms, “Burnout,” that examines the stress, exhaustion and illness often associated with web work. Burnout is not just stress, he notes, but is caused by an “imbalance in an individual's personal goals, ideals, and needs as related to their job.” So how can you regain that balance? Boms outlines several steps you can take, including:

Stop (or at least slow down). When you realize you’re suffering with burnout, it’s important to start taking steps to reduce the amount of work you’re doing. Cut down on the hours that you’re working, use sick days, or take a vacation.

Set boundaries and expectations. When you’re no longer working a regular 9-to-5 schedule you need to set boundaries between your work and home lives (see my previous post “Mark the End of the Day and Finish on Time“). It’s also important to manage your clients’ expectations. As Boms notes, when you start answering client email at 10pm, it sets a precedent that is then hard to undo.

Create a daily routine. Most people have a time of day when they work most effectively. Organize your day around these times (see our previous post “Change Your Work Hours to Get More Done” for tips on how to do this).

Make time for numero uno. Sometimes it’s hard to justify making time for yourself when there are so many demands on your day from bosses or clients, but everyone needs some “me time.” Spend time with family, goof off, visit a gallery, play a game — whatever makes you happy.

Change your situation. Changing careers might be in the cards, but there are also plenty of steps you can take to improve your current one. Shake up your routine (try working from somewhere else, perhaps), offload responsibilities, or learn a new skill.

Rely on a good process. If your current process isn’t working as well as it should, try another one. GTD works for me.

There’s plenty more detail, tips and information in Boms’ article. It’s also worth checking out the discussion thread on A List Apart, too.

Are you feeling burned out? What steps are you taking to make sure you don’t get burned out?

Measuring the Success of a Coworking Community

Posted: 28 May 2009 01:00 PM PDT

Written by Imran Ali.

crossroads

As the first generation of coworking spaces, such as IndyHall, Old Broadcasting House and others, enter maturity while new locations and communities start up, it’s useful to reflect on some measures and metrics of success.

Marc Harrison at the Urban Workspaces blog — seeking to establish a local coworking space and community — recently published some thoughts on measuring the success for his proposed space. Marc’s goals are very personal, though universally applicable to anyone looking to bootstrap a coworking community for themselves.

Here are Marc’s key indicators of success:

People would rather come into the coworking space than work at home, even when they have no work to do.
Successful residents will eventually outgrow the community and need to move out.
Corporate workers will use the space to jump from being employees to entrepreneurs.
New businesses are formed based on relationships between residents.
Residents become evangelists for the space.
The space becomes a catalyst for other social groups and clubs.
There is diversity in the range of professions and disciplines practiced by residents.

Perhaps what’s most striking about Marc’s goals are the absence of solely profit-driven motives. Coworking really does seem to be driven by non-commercial imperatives — social good, deepened collaboration, a sense of belonging.

Elsewhere, the global Coworking Community Blog recently covered the state of coworking in Southern and Latin America, with a post called “How is coworking doing in Argentina.” Interestingly, a Buenos Aires coworking community had difficulty appealing to local geeks and found the bulk of its membership to be international travelers, adding an undoubted cultural value to the community. Perhaps the ability to attract out-of-towners, business travelers and international travelers is another goal worth tracking across coworking communities worldwide.

How would you measure the success of a coworking community?

How Important Is a Good Name?

Posted: 28 May 2009 11:00 AM PDT

Written by Dawn Foster.

nametag I spend a significant amount of time, more than I probably realize, naming things both online and offline. We have usernames, Twitter handles, blogs, training classes, books, events, and so much more. Each one needs to have a name, and many of us probably don’t spend as much time as we should when picking a name. Personally, I hate coming up with names: the brainstorming to come up with something unique, the paralysis of choosing, the uncertainty about choosing something that won’t work as well as you thought it would, having to change the name later, and more. I prefer being poked with a sharp stick.

I started thinking more about naming this week when I went to my fitness tracking web site, Gyminee, and found myself on a new web site, DailyBurn. After poking around on the blog to find out more about the change, I found this:

So, why the name change? First, we noticed that while Gyminee was a memorable name, nobody could spell it! This is significant considering that people need to type in our web address in order to sign up. Second, while we liked Gyminee, we wanted a name that would resonate better with what we are all about; improving health one step at a time, essentially daily change. Oh yeah, we also got a little tired of hearing jokes about a cricket and hearing, "Isn't that the name of a kid's clothing store?"

As painful as it is to change names, I think they probably made a wise choice. I’ve made similar choices in the past. For example, I’ve renamed my blog three times. It started out as the “Open Source Culture” blog, but I found the topic of open source to be too narrow when my interests started spreading out into many other areas of online communities and social networking. I wanted to keep something similar, so I dropped the word “Source” and changed it to the “Open Culture” blog, which turned out to be a terrible name. It meant nothing, it wasn’t memorable, and there were many other blogs and podcasts with the same name.

I finally got fed up and decided to come with a brand-new name and a real logo for my blog. I wanted something that would evolve with me and wouldn’t be tied to a particular technology. I also wanted something that was tied to me, but was more creative than using my name. I came up with the idea to use an anagram of my name, and I cycled through several of them before I found one that I liked with an available domain name: Fast Wonder. For the logo, I went with a Southeastern Five Lined Skink, a very fast type of lizard that I would often see on my grandparents’ deck in Tennessee when I was a kid. This skink is black, orange, and vibrant blue, so I took its colors as the scheme for my blog.

Originally, I had a static web site using the fastwonder.com URL and put the blog at fastwonderblog.com. In retrospect, this was a domain naming mistake. Finding the right name to use for your URL is just as important as the name itself, and I should have spent more time thinking about the domain names and how they would work together. If I was starting from scratch, I would have put the blog somewhere on the fastwonder.com URL, but I think the SEO hit from moving it now outweighs the potential benefits of moving it, so I’ve decided to leave it on fastwonderblog.com.

Here are a few things you might want to think about the next time you need to pick a name.

Is the domain name available?
Is it unique and memorable?
Does it fit well with your business and the image you want to project?
Will the name grow with you or limit you later?
Will it be confused with other names?
Are there any obvious jokes about crickets or anything else that might get annoying?
Can people spell the name?
Is it short enough not to be annoying when typing it on an iPhone or other mobile device?

What mistakes have you made with past names? What steps did you take to fix those naming mistakes?

Image by stock.xchng user thenys

Don’t Forget to Goof Off Occasionally

Posted: 28 May 2009 09:00 AM PDT

Written by Darrell Etherington.

pspad One big difference I notice between my life before becoming a full-time web worker, and my life since, is that I actually spend far less time not working now that I work from home. Before, because my job wasn’t particularly challenging, and because the corporate climate was needlessly airless and restrictive, I spent every moment I could doing anything other than work. In fact, I probably wrote more blog posts while at work than during my downtime.

At the same time, I still managed to finish all my work, and spearhead new initiatives and innovative corporate programs. And I won’t say that I did it in spite of goofing off. Actually, I think distraction is a crucial part of productivity, especially if creativity is part of your job. Which is why I think that there’s a certain danger in the zealous work ethic that manifests with most freelance workers once they shrug off the corporate yoke.

While I don’t avoid work with the tenacity that I did when I was still wearing a suit and reporting to an office downtown everyday, I still take the time to screw around with a fair degree of frequency. Here are my usual work avoidance tactics, and why I think they actually help me work better in the long run.

Blogs

Yes, part of my work involves writing blog posts on a daily basis, but that doesn’t mean I don’t still enjoy reading other people’s, too. Some of my daily routine includes browsing the blogosphere for information and article ideas, but I also read purely for pleasure. Specifically, I generally have Kotaku open in a tab pretty much throughout the day. The fact that I don’t blog about games professionally is enough to make reading about them a satisfying distraction.

Of course, at the same time, because I’m very much a stylistic sponge when it comes to writing, I’m also soaking up some valuable influence. While the Kotaku style may not be exactly appropriate for the subjects I cover, it’s never a bad idea for a writer to read as much as possible, especially from others in the same type of media.

Comics

Even in my procrastination efforts, I’m a creature of habit. One of those habits is a regular round of checking webcomics for updates. My list is much smaller than it used to be, with only two remaining that I check with any regular frequency, and others that get only the occasional catch-up visit.

The usual suspects include John Allison’s incomparable Scary-Go-Round, which is all the more addictive because it follows story arcs and devotes a lot of time to developing characters. If you’re not familiar with it, catching up via the archives is a great way to kill a few weeks’ worth of spare time. I also follow Penny Arcade, again, to scratch that gaming itch that isn’t addressed in my professional work.

Comics are uniquely positioned to help you with writing, too, and creative work of any kind, really. Graphic designers will benefit from observing layout and design, while writers get comedic timing and clever turns of phrase. Of course, you have to read the good ones to get the benefit, but there’s no shortage of quality work on the web.

Twitter

Every day, I spend an awful lot of time between writing using Twitter. Not mining it for leads, or reader feedback, or any of the other professional purposes I use it for, but instead, when I want to relax for a few moments, I use Twitter to have actual conversations with friends and acquaintances I enjoy keeping in touch with. Lately, in fact, I’ve been unfollowing people who just link-feed all day and, instead, just keeping up with folks with whom I most often have interesting dialogs.

Twitter is a great promotional tool, but if you use it for that exclusively, you’ll decrease its effectiveness immensely. Plus, chatting it up with other tweeple will help keep web worker cabin fever at bay, so it’s a win-win situation.

That’s not the only time-wasting I indulge in, but it definitely is what I spend most of my downtime during the work day doing. I also play the occasional video game (probably not surprising, given the things I’ve listed above), and catch up with the few TV shows I actually follow (“Southland”, anyone?).

What less-than-productive activities do you pepper your work day with, and what about them helps you make it through the work week?

5 Factors to Consider When Selecting Enterprise Social Tools

Posted: 28 May 2009 06:30 AM PDT

Written by Simon Mackie.

As companies have seen the massive adoption of social technologies by consumers and are looking at ways to leverage such tools in the corporate environment, many new and existing vendors are trying to establish themselves in, and capitalize on, the young and growing enterprise social software market. But with so many tools available, it can be hard to make the right choices for your business. While consumers can pick up and discard social tools at will, businesses need to be much more careful, as implementing the wrong tool could be costly.

What factors should you consider when selecting an enterprise social media tool for your business? According to the comprehensive new GigaOM Pro report, “Social Media in the Enterprise” (subscription required), you should:

Know what you want to achieve with your initiative. Social media tools can achieve a huge range of different tasks, from better internal collaboration to lead generation. What does your firm need to do?
Understand your organization's culture and leadership. Social media won’t change an organization’s culture. Understanding the culture and leadership of your organization will have a huge impact on your requirements, choice of tool and how to implement and configure it.
Listen, watch, understand and interview or survey the constituent base that will be asked to participate in your social initiative. It’s important to figure out how your new social initiative will be received and used by the people you hope will utilize it. Make sure you have involvement and buy-in at an early stage, and understand your users’ needs.
Ensure that you have an effective resource and content plan in place to manage your community. Your new social software can enable an existing community or form new ones, but in order to be successful, communities need ongoing cultivation. Make sure that you have the resources and a plan in place to cultivate your community.
Initiate conversations with your legal, HR and IT teams early on, in order to understand the limitations and risks that may be associated with your initiative. As with any new business initiative, you should make sure that you understand the risks involved with implementing social software.

There’s plenty more useful detail in the full report, including categorization of the leaders in the enterprise social software space that helps to showcase the best options in this rapidly changing marketplace.

What factors did you consider when selecting social media tools for your business?