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Posted on January 4th, 2011 by

Are You Struggling with Online File Sharing?

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Are you trying to share files with team members or clients? The ability to share files over the Internet should make life easier, but without a great platform to work with, it can turn into another source of stress at the office.

Control Key

Are you struggling with file sharing? Get control with an online collaboration platform.

The way you’re currently sharing files could be a large cause of frustration, especially if you are trying to collaborate with many people by emailing file attachments back and forth or using FTP servers with clients that are technology novices.

With small businesses increasingly wanting remotely-based teams to share files — both amongst team members and with clients — it’s important to find an easy, effective, and safe file sharing platform.

If you’re struggling with online file sharing, here are some possible reasons why and how to address the problem:

Email Attachment Issues. Increasingly, doing business involves sharing large files — videos, photos, 200-page PDFs. The immediate reflex is to try to email these files in an attachment. This is where the problems begin.

Firewalls, spam filters, and IT policies keep your file attachments from reaching the recipient. IT administrators often set limits on what size files can be sent or received via email. In addition, spam filters are set to high to protect people from malicious mail, but often prevent business information from getting to the recipient.

To overcome this issue, an online-based file sharing platform, makes it a snap to share big files. Online file sharing tools remove the constraints that email puts on attachments. You can upload files as large as 2GB in size and securely share them with others. Other features, built-into some file sharing platforms, allow you to comment on files and easily see previews of them before you download them.

FTP Site Difficulty and Maintenance. Using FTP servers to share files can create more than one problem. First, is the issue of set up and maintenance by an IT administrator. IT admins are often burdened by FTP servers because of the constant password set up and resets required to access them. In addition they have larger more pressing issues to work on and often don’t have time to maintain the FTP server. Next, are the problems that arise when customers or clients need to share large files with your company via the FTP site. Unfortunately, FTP was built for and meant for software developers to share information. And thus, is quite difficult for everyday computer users to figure out.

No need to fret, using an online collaboration platform where files can be posted can resolve this problem. SaaS based collaboration platforms have made it easy for business people (not just IT Managers) to invite colleagues, business partners and clients to share files and collaborate. No need to set up passwords, one can simply invite them using email addresses. Users will have an easier time uploading an downloading files with intuitive interfaces built for this type of file sharing and collaboration.

No Centralized Repository of Files. You might have found a couple ways to share files, like a one-time file transfer service or via email. But the big problems arise when you’re trying to collaborate with a group of people. Multiple versions of files are floating around on different computers and no one knows where the latest version exists.

When working in a single online workspace, you’ll have a much easier time collaborating with a group. With features like built-in version control and commenting, you won’t need to email files around or remember who has the latest version. The files will be at your finger tips in your centralized online workspace.

Building a Custom Extranet is Costly. Have you turned to your IT department and asked them to build a custom intranet or extranet? The problem is, building something from the ground up can be an extremely costly endeavor, both in man hours and dollars.

The solution, software-as-a-service collaboration platforms, which have flexible customization options that allow your company logo and provide color palettes to match your brand. They also include a variety of features to meet your exact business needs such as, shared calendars, task lists, and team discussions.

Is your team having problems with online file sharing? Leave a question or comment for the Onehub team — we can help.

Photo licensed under Creative Commons 2.0. Photo credit Fred Cintra.

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Posted on December 16th, 2010 by

Conversations with Customers: Philadelphia Chamber Music Society

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PCMS Logo

I am pleased to share with you another segment from our “Conversations with Customers” blog series. This week I had the pleasure of speaking with Jacob Smith, Development and Marketing Director for the Philadelphia Chamber Music Society. Jacob took the time to share with us why PCMS is not only using Onehub internally, but also externally to collaborate and share files with business partners.

Stephanie Chinn (Onehub): Please start by telling us a little bit about the Philadelphia Chamber Music Society and your position there.

Jacob Smith (PCMS):

Jacob Smith

At the Philadelphia Chamber Music Society we actually run two organizations,and both organizations use Onehub.  Our company is based in Philadelphia and we put on about 65 concerts a year here. We bring the world’s leading recitalists to 9 different venues throughout Philadelphia, serving about 25,000 individuals. We also co-manage the Marlbroro Music Festival in Southern Vermont, which is a summer retreat for some of the leading musicians of the world.  At PCMS I am the Development and Marketing Director.

Stephanie Chinn (Onehub): How exactly does your company use Onehub today?

Jacob Smith (PCMS): We use it for collaboration within the company, but we also use it with people outside the organization. We deal with a lot of promotions, specifically artist interviews, high resolution photos, and other large files. For instance, we have a media partner that helps us with billboards and television spots, so we use it as a way to keep all those files in one spot and to be able to send them quickly to our advertisers and media partners.

We do a lot of internal promotions and internal design work. It is important to keep everyone on schedule so what we have done is set up a bunch of different workspaces to allow marketing, development, public relations, and other sectors to have their own little area where they can have contacts that are relevant to each activity. We have only about 9 or 10 people that work in this office, but we all cross over and work on different tasks. It is very handy to have the flexibility that Onehub offers so we can set up different calendars, contacts, and file sharing for each individual area.

Stephanie Chinn (Onehub): How did you manage the process of sharing files and collaborating before Onehub?

Jacob Smith (PCMS): Years ago we had a shared server situation that we used, but every summer we take about three fourths of our employees and move them up to Vermont, so that was an extremely expensive and annoying proposition to continue sharing files this way. We also have a small New York office, and some of our employees are working from home, or traveling with artists, so Onehub is how we easily manage in these circumstances. When it comes to contacts, sharing and collaborating on media files, and individual calendars that is where Onehub really helps us.

Stephanie Chinn (Onehub): Can you give us an example of how you use Onehub with a specific business partner?

Jacob Smith (PCMS): Certainly. We use them with our business partner Throwing Light. Throwing Light is a company that does photography and video, essentially they travel around the world and conduct interviews, and take pictures and videos to help non-profits document their missions. They are based in Philadelphia. We use them, for instance, if an artist is in town doing a program with underprivileged kids, they will document that. So we send them the materials needed from us to aid them in their document, and they are often sending us files back as well. We are usually dealing with big files so we use Onehub to send those files back and forth and communicate with them.

Stephanie Chinn (Onehub): So how do you use Onehub more specifically when co-managing the Marlboro Music Festival?

Jacob Smith (PCMS): So as I said earlier the actual Marlboro festival is in Southern Vermont, however we have a New York office that deals with a lot of our marketing and promotions efforts. Down here in the Philadelphia office we have a lot of archives. We have about 60 years of recorded archives in our office that we often need to share with the New York office. Previous to Onehub we were just emailing everything back and forth.  Now we have a common hub for the files. So as we pull stuff from the archives in the Philadelphia office, we can set it up so the New York office has access to it, and can send it to the New York Times or whoever is doing a feature on us. We did a lot on NPR this summer. A week-long celebration on “Performance Today”, which is a classical music focused radio program they do. We were going back and forth with the Performance Today staff a lot, with sound files, interview clips, and photos to go on their website.  So Onehub was how we chose to share all those files with the Performance Today staff.

Stephanie Chinn (Onehub): So what do you think is the primary benefit that you have found from using Onehub?

Jacob Smith (PCMS): Well a lot of places allow you to send files, but to be honest the main reason we are using Onehub and not something else is that I can segregate the different paths that we have in our company. For PCMS, I have a marketing and event hub, I have a print design and web design hub, I have an outreach and fundraising hub, and a sales and development hub, essentially I have all these different groups of activities coinciding at once. The flexibility for me to create an area that includes a calendar, files, and basic contacts, in an area that is just for that specific group’s activities is perfect. It is that ability to silo everything out that is the main reason why we continue to stay with Onehub.  The fact that it also takes care of our file sharing creates an added bonus for our company.

Stephanie Chinn (Onehub): What do your business partners and colleagues say about Onehub?

Jacob Smith (PCMS): Our business partners like that we are responsive. My colleagues use it and everything works out great. We have a pretty “techy” group of people and so we have had no problem jumping in and using the service. I think it has made a difference from last year to this year with the media group that helps us put out billboards and TV spots. Their work is all done pro bono and so what they want to see is that we are responding quickly.  It allows us to keep things at our fingertips. So if I get a request from them even late at night and I’m at home I can say “Here’s the video of Midori that you want”, and just give it to them without filling up a bunch of shared drives. It is very useful in making sure that the individuals that we are working with are receiving what they need from our company as quickly as possible.

Stephanie Chinn (Onehub): Is there anything else that you would like to share with us about your company or about your experience with Onehub?

Jacob Smith (PCMS): I would actually like to share an additional thing that I appreciated about Onehub. Web apps are so easy to sign up for, you just sign up and see how it goes. It is all very noncommittal, but with Onehub I instantly received a nice personal outreach asking how you might help me get started and set up my service. We got a really nice vibe from the Onehub team right away. We received a call from someone asking, “How can we set this up together, let’s work on this together so that you can get the most out of our service.”  It was very useful.

We would like to again thank Jacob for taking the time to speak with us and also to thank him for choosing Onehub to communicate, collaborate and share files with his business partners.

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Posted on December 13th, 2010 by

How Online Collaboration Tools Help Cement Client Relationships

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Client Collaboration

Managing a project with a virtual team online is becoming increasingly commonplace. Online collaboration really hits the cool factor, though, when a company uses their project-management platform to collaborate online with clients.

With a strong collaboration platform, it’s easy to pass documents back and forth and work on them with the client. Here are some of the benefits for small businesses of working remotely with clients in an online collaboration space:

Look pro. A professional-looking collaboration platform makes your small business look sophisticated. Your actual office might be closet-sized, or even be in your bedroom, but online, you’ve got your act together.

Expand your reach. Small businesses may not have the budget to fly around the country for client meetings. Collaborating online can allow your small business to land clients across the country or around the world, which you might not otherwise be able to sign.

Offer frequent contact. The easy back-and-forth on a collaboration platform can give the client an ego boost. They feel like your company is on their project 24/7, even if really you’re just updating things a few times a day.

Avoid technical gaffes. It doesn’t make a good impression if you email a client a file they can’t open due to attachment size limitations. These issues are eliminated with a collaboration platform.

Create a paper trail. The running record of goals and document changes that an online collaboration tool creates can help keep clients from ruining a project with unexpected changes of direction or requests for additional work that’s not part of the project description. The paper trail helps keep it friendly and positive, where otherwise the relationship could easily disintegrate into squabbles.

What helps cement your relationships with remotely based clients? Leave a comment and let us know.

Photo via Flickr user homesbythomas

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Posted on November 30th, 2010 by

A Few Quick Tips on How to Successfully Conduct Online Meetings

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Mastering online meetings is a crucial aspect of successfully communicating with global business partners and employees. This week GigaOm’s Thursday Bram posted a great article of 5 common sense rules for online meetings. This is an excellent follow-up to our recent blog posting of 8 Tips for Connecting with Global Business Partners and Colleagues. A few of the items may be a bit of overlap but there are definitely some key ideas that we think the article touches upon that are worth sharing. Often online meetings can be a first impression or even a final seal of a business transaction so it is always important to take the time to read a few key concepts and tips before engaging in virtual communication with both co-workers and business partners. We hope the following tips can help you feel as prepared as possible when it comes to hosting your next online meeting!

1. Double-check time zones. Heck, triple check them — there are all sorts of strange situations you can encounter. Different countries start daylight savings time on different dates, certain areas don’t participate in daylight savings time (and there are inconsistencies on the country, state and county levels), and the international dateline can be tricky. The best bet is to confirm the time of the meeting with each attendee.

2. Don’t start with a brand new tool. If you haven’t used the software you’re planning to run your next meeting with, do a dry run with it before the day of the meeting. Every tool has its own quirks and the middle of a meeting isn’t the best time to figure them out. If you can run a test with a few of the people who will be attending your meeting, so much the better.

3. Plan for a back channel. In every meeting, there are people who are trading knowing looks, passing notes or planning to track someone down right after the meeting. If you build in a back channel where your meeting attendees can pass information privately, you can make sure that any problems or questions can be handled in the moment.

4. Offer a transcript or minutes. With many online meetings, there is a certain sense that taking notes isn’t quite as necessary, especially if there is a recording of the meeting available. But no-one ever sits through the recording of the meeting after the fact, so having written notes or  a summary is important to ensure that people act on any decision or plans made at the meeting.

5. Have a follow-up plan in place. With a virtual meeting, you can’t exactly count on bumping into someone in the hallway the next day. Making concrete plans for follow-up is necessary to making sure that any plans or decisions actually get carried out without having to schedule yet another meeting.

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Posted on November 24th, 2010 by

8 Tips for Connecting with Global Business Partners and Colleagues

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Working with global business partners

The current economy continues to change the way we do business, especially global business.  In more prosperous times there might have been enough budget to fly to Europe for a face-to-face meeting with a colleague or a short trip to China to meet a new business partner.  But now more than ever, small businesses have to come to rely on less expensive means to connect with coworkers, customers and partners abroad.

Over the course of my career, I’ve been fortunate to work with people from all over the world and be a member of many global, virtual teams.  From China to Mexico, from Australia to Germany, from the United Kingdom to New Zealand — you name the country and I’ve had a colleague there.  I’ve always enjoyed this part of my job, but it can also be quite challenging. 

So the question is:  When you are thousands of miles apart, how do you truly connect and collaborate with global business partners and colleagues?

Some things I’ve learned the hard way and some things I’ve learned from managers and/or peers. Here is my list of 8 tips for working with global business partners and colleagues.

1. Learn to greet people courteously in their language and always keep their cultures’ customs in mind.  This immediately creates an atmosphere of respect and helps solidify business relationships.   Take five minutes to browse the internet to learn how to say hello and pronounce their name correctly. I often use hearnames.com to hear a native speaker pronounce the name for me.

2. Speak and write clearly. Using formal English will help non-native English speakers understand what you are saying. Avoid colloquialisms, slang and culture specific jargon whenever possible.

3. Find appropriate times to hold conference calls. Most likely you’ll be dealing with multiple time zones.  The World Clock Meeting Planner is a great tool to help you coordinate an appropriate time to schedule a meeting that works for both parties.

4. Create detailed agendas. Often your meetings will be held at times that are very late in the evening or early in the morning for one or both parties.  Detailed agendas keep the meeting on track and on time.  It also keeps the meeting from running over so your colleagues can get home to their families or in bed if that is necessary.

5. Share content and presentations at least 2 hours before the meeting. This is an absolute must.  You need to give people time to download and review the information before the meeting.  This will ensure that your meetings start on time and everyone is on the same page from the beginning.

6. Make meetings interactive with conferencing solutions. When you are trying to bridge a massive divide, give each team member the opportunity to present or speak.  If you are working with a very large number of people, use conferencing software with online polls to help people engage.

7. Make it easy to share information and collaborate at all hours. Setting up an extranet or online collaboration site can make it easier to share files, tasks and have team discussions when you can’t connect via phone.

8. Share successes. Make sure you are communicating about and finding ways to celebrate team victories in a virtual way.

Comment and share some your tips for working in a global virtual team?

image licensed under creative commons http://www.flickr.com/photos/gsfc/4392965590/

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Posted on November 22nd, 2010 by

9 Tips for Beating Information Overload

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–Getting information off the Internet is like taking a drink from a fire hydrant.–Mitchell Kapor, founder of Lotus Development Corp.

Can’t get to the first item on your to-do list? You may be suffering from information overload.

Overwhelmed

It’s the curse of the instant-information age — between email, Web surfing, instant messaging, text messaging, surfing the Web on a smart phone while walking down the street…it’s easy for the day to slip away without ever getting a chance to focus on what’s important to your business. Also, it’s easy to walk into a telephone pole.

How can you slay the savage, multi-headed information dragon? Here are nine tips:

1. Eliminate email. Unsubscribe to superfluous newsletters. Adjust your filters to send spammers directly to your deleted-mail folder. Organize the email you need to receive into folders so that those emails from your mom or your soccer club aren’t in the same folder as vital messages from your business partner. Consider using a tool such as Gmail’s Priority Inbox to help you get to important messages while shunting others aside for later.

2. Cut your own communications down. Make your emails and voicemails short and to the point, and send fewer of them. Fewer messages sent mean fewer replies cluttering your inbox. Cut down on cc-ing everyone, just as you would like them to cut down on cc-ing you on messages where your input isn’t really needed.

3. Set a timer for social media. Let’s face it, Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, and StumbleUpon are places where you can promote your business — or you can easily get lost in the infostream and fritter the day away. Set an egg timer if you have to, but put a limit on your social-media browsing time.

4. Consider the source. Look at how many sources of information you have. Cut back to only the most trustworthy and credible. Half-baked half-truths abound online, and you don’t have time for them.

5. Prevent distractions. Set your email not to “ding” every time a message comes, and only check it occasionally. Processing email in big batches is way more efficient than reading messages one at a time every 10 minutes throughout the day. If you’ve got a busy custom desktop full of RSS links you start clicking, maybe a plain one would help you concentrate, rather than encouraging you to waste that first hour looking at news stories.

6. Set priorities. It’s hard to know what to prioritize if you haven’t decided what your most important tasks are for the day. Either create priorities last thing before you leave the office at night, or first thing in the morning to keep you on track.

7. Delegate more. If there are administrative tasks you could offload to free up more billable hours, do it. Tasks delegated mean less information you have to absorb in order to do those tasks.

8. Block out work time. If you need to tackle a project, vow to keep on it for a block of time, without checking email, Internet news or any other distractions during that timeframe.

9. Unplug. Don’t leave colleagues with the impression that you’re reachable 24/7. Turn off your phone on the bus, train, ferry, and especially in the car — that last one’s dangerous and in many states, against the law. Take time to refresh so you come back renewed and ready to climb the info-mountain again.

Photo via Flickr user Casey Serin

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Posted on November 15th, 2010 by

The New Small Business Blog from Onehub

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Today you will notice some exciting new changes to our blog. We are proud to announce the launch of the Small Business Blog, dedicated to bringing you ideas, resources and thoughts on how to better collaborate and work smarter online.

Where did the old blog go, you might ask?  It’s still around.  Caffeine from Onehub will be dedicated to all the great technical information that web developers, web designers and the Ruby on Rails community have come to love and expect from the team here at Onehub.

We decided to make this change so that we can better serve our small business customers and users and provide you with the information you need to get more done online. You’ll being seeing more stories from our customers about how they are using online tools to be more productive, online resources for small businesses, and we’ll also have the occasional guest author.

We invite you to provide us feedback by commenting and don’t forget to subscribe to the blog for up-to-date information.

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Posted on November 15th, 2010 by

18 Free Web Resources for Your Business

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There’s really never been a better time to try to bootstrap a startup business. The Internet abounds with great free and cheap tools for operating your business. Here’s a look at 18 tools that help you manage everything from accounting to Web-site creation.

  1. Ad-ology’s Local Market Research – Need to learn more about how to market your local business? Check out ad firm Ad-ology’s free marketing minutes on their Local Market Research site.
    2. Bad Customer Logo
  2. BadCustomer - Wondering if you should extend credit to a big customer? This site is collecting information on deadbeats. Tell all about your loser clients here, and check their database before you hand out credit.
  3. BillShrink for Business – Need to cut expenses? This free tool compares credit-card offers and lets you know if it finds a better deal.
  4. BoardMyBiz - Need high-powered thought leaders for your advisory board? This free site can help you find a match.
  5. eBoss123 – Need discounts on advertising, stock photos, printing, greeting cards and more? This site aggregates deals aimed at small business owners.
  6. Email on Acid – Wonder how your marketing emails look to customers? Email on Acid can show you how it appears in various email programs, free.
  7. FreshBooks – One of the most popular free programs for business with 2 million users, accounting and invoicing program Freshbooks has a free 30-day trial and a free version that will let you track several clients. For $20 a month you can track 25 clients.
  8. Geoscape – Their “freemium” version gives you a taste of their consumer-analysis service.
  9. Google Places – Want folks in your neighborhood to find your store? Get on over to Google Places and fill out  your free profile. Then you’ll appear at the top of search results for your key phrases in that cute little Google map.
  10. Jajah – Turn customers’ Twitter addresses into a phone number you can call with this handy marketing tool. Tweeting @call @twittername makes both your phones ring.
  11. Jing – Ever wonder how the hip companies get those cool screen shots they share on social sites? Maybe they’re using TechSmith’s free Jing tool…or the $15-a-month Jing Pro version.
  12. Outright – “Free yourself from accounting,” this company’s slogan states. But really, it just helps you do your accounting free. Creates nice pie charts that quickly show you where your money is going and who owes you.
  13. Shoeboxed – For those who have trouble hanging onto those important business-expense receipts, Shoeboxed lets you mail in or scan those pesky bits of paper into their handy digital-tracking system. Their DIY-scanning level is free, and there are free trials of their more sophisticated plans.
    14. Teaspiller Logo
  14. Teaspiller - Get a free 10-minute business-tax consultation from an expert here, or find an accountant.
  15. Tokbox – Free group videoconferencing, or a free trial for the more robust $13-a-month version.
  16. Yola - If you need a quick, free Web site, many entrepreneurs use Yola’s easy solution.
  17. Zumbox. If you send out statements or bills in the mail, Zumbox lets you send fully-featured, HTML emails to a special email inbox instead. Watch out USPS!
  18. Competitors are hot on Zumbox’s heels, too — another service, Doxo, debuted this month. This idea is hot — funders of these companies include Disney’s Michael Eisner (Zumbox) and Amazon’s Jeff Bezos (Doxo). So sign up now, while it’s still free.

What free Web tools is your business using? Leave a comment and let us know.

Company logos via BadCustomer and teaspiller

Carol Tice is a freelance writer for Entrepreneur magazine, Yahoo! Hotjobs and the Seattle Times, among others. She blogs for Entrepreneur’s Daily Dose, for BNET, and on her own blog, Make A Living Writing.
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Posted on October 21st, 2010 by

Should Your Company Have a Chief Collaboration Officer?

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Onehub Sync

As companies seek to break out of department silos and collaborate on projects that could drive more sales, the question becomes: Who’s going to make that happen? Without someone in charge of guiding the collaboration process, cross-department initiatives tend to waste employees’ time and sputter out.

The challenge can be even greater when workers based in multiple locations seek to collaborate on a project. Increasingly, virtual teams are being formed across company branches, between companies and freelancers, or between companies and strategic partners. In any of these scenarios, someone needs to make sure the collaboration runs smoothly and stays on track.

In the book Collaboration – How Leaders Avoid the Traps, Create Unity and Reap Big Results, University of California-Berkeley management professor Morten Hansen describes how badly managed collaboration can be worse than no collaboration at all.

That’s why Hansen and others advocate that companies appoint a chief collaboration officer. It doesn’t have to be a new position, or another role for the CEO. But possibly the CIO, CFO, COO, head of HR, or a strategy or business-development chief could add a focus on making sure collaborations work at the organization.

The type of collaboration taking place may be a guide for who would be the most likely candidate for the chief collaboration officer role. If part of the challenge is how to best use technology to collaborate across distance, this might be the CTO’s job, for instance, or the CMO might spearhead collaboration of a cross-divisional team that’s formed to handle the company’s social-media marketing.

Besides having a leader to oversee the collaboration, another key issue is making sure employees have a vested interest in the collaboration and a clear sense of what’s in it for them, says ZDNet columnist Oliver Marks. Collaboration technology can help, but it can’t take the place of clearly understood, shared goals and genuine enthusiasm from the team for what the project could accomplish.

Do you have a chief collaboration officer? Is your company collaborating across departments, or with outside contractors or partners? Leave a comment and let us know how you manage the collaboration process.

Photo licensed under Creative Commons 2.0 via Flickr user: woodleywonderworks

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Posted on September 20th, 2010 by

Are you distracted at work? Get more done with these 5 tips.

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As you know, we are all about making you and your team more productive.  We also realize that it’s not just online collaboration technology that makes you more efficient and productive.  So this week I wanted to offer you some tips from David Lavenda, author of the Distracted Enterprise blog, on getting more focused and blocking out distractions so you can get more done at work.

5 Ways to Be More Productive

1) Prioritize – The key to focusing is setting priorities. Here is a proven method for prioritizing:

  • Create a short list of tasks on a small piece of paper. Once you see all the tasks on a page, organized by projects, deadlines, and dependencies – the priorities become apparent.
  • Each day review and update the list before you open you Inbox, before you attend meetings, and before you get sidetracked.
  • Write the day’s tasks on a sticky note and focus on those tasks for the day. Next morning, copy any leftover tasks from the previous day and then throw out the note. One piece of note paper for each day.
  • Go through your Inbox and add/subtract tasks based on incoming messages.

2) Set times of day for answering email, holding meetings, and for doing creative work. Different people are able to focus better at different hours; do what works, but stick to it.

3) Many people find it hard to sit still and focus, even without digital distractions. Exercise is a great cure for this. You don’t need to run a marathon; 30 minutes at the gym, a short walk, run, or bicycle ride can work miracles.

4) Delegate –Often a task can be completed by someone else and it may get done sooner than doing it yourself.

5) If you have creative work to do, like writing documents, creating project plans, building presentations, or writing a speech, here are some practical suggestions that work for me:

  • Find a quiet place outside the office.  Set up shop in a coffee shop (if you can work there), in a park, in the public library, or in any other place where you can focus and where you won’t be disturbed.
  • Shut off the cell phone, disconnect from the Internet, and close all applications except the ones you need to complete your task. If you need the Internet for research, shut off Twitter feeds, IM updates, and all the other distractions. You don’t need a ‘distraction blocker’ program; you just need to shut them off – plain and simple.
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Simple web apps for online collaboration.

Workspaces Logo Customizable workspaces for online collaboration
Transfers Logo The simplest way to send, receive and track large file transfers
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