freelance tips

“Work-life balance, says Nigel Marsh, is too important to be left in the hands of your employer. At TEDxSydney, Marsh lays out an ideal day balanced between family time, personal time and productivity — and offers some stirring encouragement to make it happen.”

Nigel Marsh is a renowned performance coach who has worked with a great variety of businesses during his career, including some of the world’s top companies. In this TED talk, Nigel speaks from direct personal experience, giving his views on how to get the best out of business, life and those around you.

Enjoy

You have one minute to explain yourself, your business, your goals, and your passions. Your audience knows none of these. Are you prepared? Can you present your vision smoothly, enticing them to want to know more?

An elevator pitch is a short summary used to quickly and simply define an idea, a product, service, or organization and its value proposition. The name “elevator pitch” reflects the idea that it should be possible to deliver the summary in the time span of an elevator ride, or approximately thirty seconds to two minutes.

Start crafting yours @ the Harvard Business School Elevator Pitch Builder

About this talk: “In a world of too many options and too little time, our obvious choice is to just ignore the ordinary stuff. Marketing guru Seth Godin spells out why, when it comes to getting our attention, bad or bizarre ideas are more successful than boring ones.”

Dropbox is a Web-based file hosting service operated by Dropbox, Inc. that uses cloud computing to enable users to store and share files and folders online using file synchronization. The tool has great potential: No more fumbling for lost or damaged storage devices and always up to date with the latest file versions. Alternatives: Zumo or SugarSync.

“…your files follow you to whichever device you happen to be working on.”

Portfolios trump resumes, more workers telecommute, social media continues its spread, and mobile marches over desktop: Online magazine CIO provides technology and business leaders with insight and analysis on information technology developments and gives an interesting forecast of some of the key trends for the next year.

According to CIO, the workplace has evolved in new and exciting ways and has become even more centered on the Web. In 2010, mobile applications gained on desktop apps as many companies focused on facilitating smartphones and tablet PCs. Traditional marketing techniques were edged out by web-based marketing via search engines and social media. However, one of the most important trends is the continuous growth of online work. According to the CEO of one of the leading marketplaces for online talent: “It’s a digital world, and the smart companies will hire more flexibly and get more work done online in 2011″. Read the full post on CIO.com.

Technology-centered work trends for 2011:

• Digital portfolios replacing resumes
• Mobile is the new desktop
• Online work: Hiring in the could
• The HTML5/Flash War: Programmers needed
• Businesses will get even more social
• The decline of traditional marketing

The austrian motivation-trainer Peter F. Kinauer found out how to make your professional life more relaxed. He wrote a whole book about it: “So macht Arbeit Spass! 60 Impulse für mehr Motivation im Job”. We put together 9 steps he figured out to ease your working life.

Our life’s get more stressful and a whole lot of general problems stress everybody out. Political problems, climate change and financial crisis all over the world put mental pressure on every person who reads the news. It makes especially the working life easier to remember the positive things in life. This kind of motivation is free and nearly everybody is able to realise it.

Step one: Make yourself smile! You can arrange your office new, e.g. with new decoration.

Human resources usually describes the individuals who comprise the workforce of an organization; often its most valuable asset. Therefore, the strategies and policies relating to the management of individuals are very important factors for most businesses.

Apparently, human resource professionals are still hesitant and critical when it comes to anything technology related, including applicant recruitment and employee selection through social media. However, social medias’ popularity and possibilities have forced H&R professionals to give the medium a second thought.

This post on mashable discusses the issue and looks at how social media is affecting the human resources field.

What are your experiences?

Nowadays, the term “workspace” does not merely relate to a physical location but has to be stretched to include virtual workspaces as well. Thanks to many online collaboration solutions, finding the right workspace for your business has become a challenging task. Provided an internet connection and a tiny budget, online collaborations can be just as productive as working together in traditional office settings.

This great post by mashable discusses different office strategies and provides some advice on choosing the right workspace…

as we all know, many jobs are found through networking. therefore, many businesspeople are on the lookout for tools to improve their networking skills. the number of business apps is increasing day by day and smartphones are becoming a portable toolkit for business professionals everywhere.

5 useful iphone apps:

• meet people with happening
• exchange information using linkedin
• meet in the middle using meetme
• organize business cards with worldcardmobile
• manage relationships with contactsjournal

Batching all the similar tasks you have to handle in a certain period can be a very useful support to get work done more easily.

In other words you can work smarter if you do tasks that aim in the same direction at a specific time of the day respectively of the week. This means for example that you do your customer support at a certain block of time and then go on to the next. This keeps you into the subject and you don’t have to switch between them during the day again. Some more points are elaborated here.