A good friend of mine recently decided to start-up her own business, and asked me if there were any web sites or blogs that I recommend she read.

I’m currently subscribed to approximately 40 blogs relating to small business, blogging, marketing, etc. Although I love them all, some are more highly regarded as great resources for these particular topics.

The cream of the crop so to speak…

Now, this isn’t a definitive list, as it’s all subject to personal opinion, if you know what I mean. There are obviously a LOT more blogs than the ones listed below, and many of these actually cross-over between different categories - although I did attempt to place them in the most applicable spot…

Anyway, these are the blogs that I personally refer to the most. Whether it is to read the latest post, or search through the archives for something specific, you can often find me on these sites. They are the “must reads” on my feed reader.

I use Netvibes, by the way - check out my Netvibes Universe here… all of the blogs below are already setup for your reading pleasure!

Blogging

• ProBlogger
• Pro Blog Design
• Remarkablogger
• Skelliewag

Business

• Freelance Folder
• Freelance Switch
• Self Made Chick
• Shane & Peter, Inc.
• Sproutwire
• Wake Up Later

Marketing

• Chris Garrett
• Dosh Dosh
• IttyBiz

Productivity

• Million Dollar Leverage
• Put Things Off
• Zen Habits

Work / Life Balance

• Anywired
• eMoms at Home
• Freelance Parent
• Jarkko Lane

What’s In YOUR Feed Reader?

If you could only subscribe to 3 feeds relating to the topics above…
what would be on your list? What MUST you read no matter what?

Please leave a comment below - I’d love to hear your suggestions! I’ll eventually be setting up a Blogroll page, which will include the sites above. I’m open to suggestions for additional blogs to add to the list, so let me know your thoughts!

Good luck with your new venture, Nicole - and thanks for inspiring this post!

I read a great post on Freelance Folder today: How to Balance Freelancing with a Full Time Job Without Burning Out by Michael Martine of Remarkablogger.

This article is of particular interest to me since…. well, I am a freelancer / small business owner who also has a full time job. I have to tell you, it can be stressful at times! I’ve managed well so far but I realize that it is a very delicate juggling act to successfully manage two careers and a family, without burning out!

A Small Snippet from the Article

It is possible to effectively balance your full-time job with freelancing - without going insane or burning out. I do it, and in this post, I’ll tell you how you can, too. Many of us begin freelancing while we are still employed in full-time jobs.

Here are some requirements and tips for staying sane while working the 9-5 and freelancing on the side.

• Get help from others
• Calculate your total work and billable hours
• Become an efficiency ninja
• Take care of yourself
• Write blog posts in advance
• Keep your two jobs separated
• Take mini vacations

Juggling Act

If you’re facing a daily juggling act like I am, I highly recommend heading over to Freelance Folder to read the full article. Michael makes several good points. One in particular I know I need to focus more on is “Take care of yourself” - I know sleep is the first thing to go when I’m facing multiple deadlines, and is likely the thing that’s going to burn me out the quickest (I live for weekends when I can actually get 7 hours of sleep - 8 if I’m lucky!)

The information on calculating your work time and billable hours are very important, as of course, are the tips on efficiency. I also like the suggestions on writing blog posts in advance. This is something I’m only now finally starting to do…

Reader Suggestions

I hope you’ll head over to the original article. I made a few comments there, and am sure the post will receive many more reader comments and suggestions, as well, which I am very interested in reading about. Anything to help a girl out, right?

I’d love to hear your thoughts on the subject, whether here or over at Freelance Folder. Is there anything you feel is most important when juggling both a full-time and freelance career, and in many cases, a family too?

Last week I came across a 3 part series of posts on eMom’s blog about Organizing Your Home Office Paper. These are guest posts by Brandie Kajino of the Organize. Simplify. Transform Blog, and I am so thankful for them!

A small quote from the introductory post…

First, let’s talk about what “organized” means. Do you hate to file? Me too! So, first of all I’m going to put holes in an widely held organizing misconception: “Organized” does NOT mean perfectly labeled, color coded files, obsessively cleared desktops, or even neatness for that matter! (I’ll pause a moment so you can catch your breath.)

So, if “organized” doesn’t mean your space looks like a magazine layout, what does it mean? It simply means you can find what you need in less than 5 minutes. How cool is that? Freeing, right?

The articles discuss such a simple method for accomplishing this! In short, separate your documents into 3 separately marked bins:

• Action
• Projects
• Reference

I did this last weekend and what a difference it has made! Seriously, LOL! Now of course, I do have a filing cabinet w/ folders, etc. And I most definitely do need (and want) to file the reference papers properly.

However, it’s so much nicer to have the 3 separate categories of paperwork… this way I know when I’m looking for something that it is in one of 3 bins. As opposed to searching through all the crap on my desk, or a big box with all of the papers jumbled together.

As the article says, I’ve been able to find all sorts of things in less than 5 minutes, which previously could have easily taken 15 minutes or more to find a particular paper.

Now, I’ve got a LONG way to go still to having a truly organized office and paperwork, etc. But this little change has made a huge impact.

Please give the articles a read - you might find how freeing it is for yourself, too!

• Organize Your Home Office Paper: A Crash Course, Part 1
• Organize Your Home Office Paper: A Crash Course, Part 2
• Organize Your Home Office Paper: A Crash Course, Part 3

Do you have any additional home office organization tips or tricks? Please do share your tips and tricks with us (I know I can use all the help I can get, LOL).

Joshua Clanton recently asked me to submit a haiku on productivity, for his blog.

I’m honored that he asked me, as I am in great company - including Naomi from IttyBiz, both Shane and Peter from the Shane and Peter Blog, Skellie from Skelliewag / Anywired, and Leo from Zen Habits (who inspired the post), as well as many more amazing bloggers!

Although I write a lot on this blog, I’m NOT a writer per-se. And poetry (in this case haiku) does not come easily for me. I’m quite indecisive, to boot, so I ended up with four little poems to submit. I was finally able to narrow it down to two, though.

My husband even made his writing debut in this post, lol. He wrote a haiku just for the heck of it, not expecting it to make the cut. He sure got a kick out of seeing his words online!

You can check out both of our submissions, as well as those of all the other amazing bloggers, on Joshua’s blog here:

• 18 Productivity Haikus - Get Things Done and Achieve Inner Peace through the Power of Poetry

Thanks Joshua!

One of my primary goals for 2008 is to create a healthy work / life balance.

Considering that I run my own web design business while also being employed full time, it often seems that all I do is work. On average, I’d say that I work on average, 60-70 hours a week. I’m sure there are many entrepreneurs, freelancers and work-at-home individuals in the same boat… especially other work-at-home-mom’s and work-at-home-dad’s.

How do I find the time to get so much work done, while still caring for my child and spending time with my spouse… an add to that attempting to maintain a (somewhat) clean household, etc.?

It can all get quite a bit overwhelming!

Below are a few articles I’ve found relating to time management, productivity, and the work / life balance.

I’ve found some very helpful information in these posts! I hope you find some helpful suggestions in these articles that you can incorporate into your daily routines, as well.

Freelance Folder
How to Unleash the Productivity Beast

IttyBiz
Time Management for Entrepreneurs: How to Avoid Burnout

IttyBiz
Time Management for Entrepreneurs: How to Get 4 More Hours In Your Day

Mom Works at Home
Be a Balanced Mom

Mom Works at Home
WAHM - How to Find Time for Your Business

Online Merchant Network
How I’ve Wrestled the Time Management Beast to the Ground

Zen Habits
3 Ways to Claim Your Life Back - How to Step Away from the Computer

One of my favorite parts of Fly Lady is Anti-Procrastination Day. They have this regularly on Wednesdays. I figure this would be a good motivational tool for myself, and hopefully for others!

Goodness knows I can procrastinate with the best of them, lol.

The idea behind Anti-Procrastination Day is that you take one item that you have been putting off - and finally just sit down and Get It Done!

There is also a variation on this… The Anti-Procrastination Day Game. This is where you get a bunch of little cards or pieces of paper and write down one item that you’ve been putting off on each one. Then store these together (in a little box, a bag, an envelope, wherever). When Anti-Procrastination Day rolls around - every Wednesday - you reach in, randomly pick out a piece of paper and do whatever you had written down. At the very least (if it is a big project) just get started on it.

I’ve got some things that I’ve been putting off that are on my weekly to do list, so I’m going to stick with that for now. But on days when I’m somewhat caught up on my list for the week, I have a stash of old business cards (with my old address) that would have gone in the trash anyway. So on the back of these I list one item that I need to finally deal with (one day… lol). When I’m caught up on regular stuff, I’ll be reaching into my Anti-Procrastination Day Game stash.

But for today…

I WILL make a final decision on my personal web site design. I have the design finished and even developed into all of the pages (with “coming soon” for the content). There are a few minor tweaks that I’ve been flip-flopping on, though - design items that are updated via CSS, not the pages themselves (I love how that works, lol).

You know, I have no problem deciding on things for clients, but when it comes to designing for myself, I can be so insanely indecisive at times. I’m going to nip that in the bud today… at least for this particular design.

And for extra credit, I’m going to try to crank out a majority of the content today, too.

So, what have you been procrastinating on? Will you get it accomplished today?

I recently came across the Work It Mom! web site. It’s a great resource for business moms - a networking site where you can ask and answer questions, post in forums, read blogs, etc.

They also allow you to submit articles to be posted on their site. This can be a brand new article, or one you’ve previously written.

Well, I submitted my Time Management: Setting Deadlines post - and within a matter of minutes, it was published here.

Can I tell you that made my Monday! I’ve found a ton of great information on this site, and hopefully a little bit of traffic too. Definitely give this site a look if you have a chance. My favorite feature is their question / answer area.

Oh, and if you happen to already be a member, or if you join up… can you rate my article?

Pwwweeeeaaaasssseeeeee? (as my daughter would say)

Thanks in advance!

The number one bit of advice I can offer? Be REALISTIC!

I cannot stress enough how important it is to be realistic when setting deadlines for yourself and especially for clients. I have a new prospect and had to fight hard to resist the urge to tell them that I’ll have a proposal for them prepared within a few days. That’s normally what I would have done - then I’d end up spending the next two days up all night working on it - stressing over it - just to meet this short deadline that I gave myself. But why? What’s the point in the added headache and stress?

Don’t Sell Yourself Short

Build in enough time so that you can get the work done comfortably. Now, don’t tell them it’ll take two weeks to do something that would only take four days, for example. But if you know it will be tight to get something ready by the end of this week, for example, give yourself a couple extra days over the weekend, and say you’ll have it first thing Monday morning.

I was just drafting my response to this potential client, and I can’t tell you what a HUGE drop in stress I literally felt when I changed the line from “I can have the proposal ready for you on Friday” to “I can have the proposal ready for you by Monday.”

In the working world, that’s only one business day later. In real life, that gives me the entire weekend to work on it to get it just the way I want - to hopefully turn this prospect into a client. I’m sure that if you took my blood pressure, there must have been a big reduction in a matter of seconds as I changed that line above. Just thinking of everything I need to accomplish this week PLUS a completed proposal…. now, I’ve bought myself a few extra days, which is great!

Extended Deadline Does NOT = Time to Procrastinate!

Now, of course, don’t set an extended deadline just so you can procrastinate, lol. I admit I’ve done this several times in the past. That was (hopefully) the “old” me. The “new” me knows the value of time - and as we all know, “time is money.” So I will still work hard on the proposal this week by reviewing the information the potential client gave me, researching related web sites to come up with several options that might work for them, etc.

But, just knowing that I don’t HAVE to get it fully completed this week makes all the difference in the world to my frame of mind. And hey, if I get it completed before Monday - even better! I’ll email it to them as soon as it is ready.

I think your client or potential client would be much happier to have you meet the deadline that you set for the particular project or milestone rather than be late. It certainly does not make a good impression to have that day come and go, and you ending up having to tell them “I’m sorry, this won’t be ready as planned…”

More likely than not, you will look that much better in their eyes if you are able to come in ahead of the deadline, as well. To make sure that you can do this, setting realistic timelines for yourself is important.

I just came across another great article about emails - specifically productivity as far as writing and sending emails.

Wired How To’s: Write a Perfect Email.

I’m personally guilty of writing more than a few book-length emails - one of the big tips in this post is to keep it short! I will definitely be incorporating some of these suggestions into my regular email writing habits.

On the other end of the spectrum, I have also received too many emails to count that violate some of these suggestions as well. I’m sure everyone could benefit from using a few of these techniques. Myself included, of course!

Do you have any other recommendations for writing emails? Please share your tips and tricks here!

I’ve just come across a few articles on productivity and managing your to do list, etc. I especially like Geek To Live’s article about not using your email client as your to do list… guilty as charged! LOL

Anyway, here they are, in no particular order…

Freelance Switch

10 Easy Ways to Get the Most Out of Your Day

The Freelancers Guide to Getting Into Flow

GTD for Freelancers

Geek To Live

Separate Your Email from Your To-Do’s

Empty Your Inbox with the Trusted Trio