Last year, the New York Times published an article (login required) citing research finding that about 80 percent of people who make New Year’s resolutions break them by Valentine’s Day. A study from 2007 supports this, saying only twelve percent of people achieve their New Year’s goals.

Perhaps this means that before we list our goals for 2011, we should take a closer look at our own attitudes towards goal-setting. What misconceptions do we have, and what can we do to remedy them?

Myth #1: Tell everyone your goals so that you’re publicly accountable.

In theory, publicizing your goals with friends, or on your blog or Facebook profile, might force you to achieve them, so as not to be seen as someone who’s all talk and no action. But according to a 2009 study by goal-setting researcher Peter Gollwitzer (PDF), this isn’t always true. Most people state their behavioral goals in very general terms (“My goal is to eat healthier”) that gives the premature impression we’ve already done them.

Here’s what works instead: implementation intentions. Gollwitzer defines them (PDF) as a plan spelling out when, where, and how you intend to accomplish a goal. In fact, another study (PDF) shows that implementation intentions work so well that they can help you accomplish your goals despite the presence of distracting thoughts and emotions.

This doesn’t mean it’s easy after you establish a plan. You’ll need to check and update your plan often. It’s also important to start working on your goal as soon as possible. The more time your goal remains inactive after you’ve stated your intentions, the less likely you are to accomplish it.

Myth #2: Reward yourself for your progress.

Some people suggest that to keep yourself focused and motivated in your pursuit of a goal, you need to have rewards for accomplishments. For example, if you successfully stick to your schedule for a week, you’ll give yourself the license to go out with friends during the weekend. While there’s nothing wrong with rewards per se, you need to be careful about how you think of them.

Research shows that for large goals (e.g.. becoming healthier) that have many supporting subgoals (e.g.. sticking to a diet, exercising regularly), whenever you successfully achieve a subgoal, you should reward your personal commitment to the larger goal rather than to  your progress. Rewarding yourself for achieving one subgoal may lead you to ignore the other subgoals, because you’ll view them as substitutes. If you reward your commitment to the larger goal, the subgoals will seem interrelated, and you’ll be more driven to pursue each of them.

Myth #3: Focus on yearly goals.

By definition, New Year’s resolutions are goals that must be achieved within a year. While this tradition can work for some goals, it may not be effective to use such a long time-frame. First, even if we think we know ourselves well, we tend to be poor predictors of what we’ll need or feel in the future. Our perspectives, situations, and desires may differ greatly within a year. Second, most research (PDF) backs up the idea that setting short-term goals is more effective than looking at the big picture. This means that even if you have a list of yearly goals, it’s better to break them down into smaller monthly or weekly subgoals.

Given these goal-setting myths, we should be more attentive to how we set our goals, what works in practice, and what only seems effective in theory. By looking at our goal-setting behavior together with the goals themselves, we’ll be more likely to accomplish more this year.

Do you set goals during the New Year? Which tactics improve your success rate?

Photo by sxc.hu user lazydog

Related content from GigaOM Pro (sub. req.):

• Enabling the Web Work Revolution
• Social Media in the Enterprise
• Are You Empowering Your Mobile Workforce?

In a recent NPR Science Friday interview, Dr. Christopher Chabris, Assistant Professor of Psychology, Union College, offers a similar position: “It’s a fallacy that we’re able to multitask and do two or three or four or five things just as well as we could do them if we did them one at a time. The problem is that we don’t really get the sense of how badly we’re performing these multiple tasks at once, and we think we’re doing them just fine.” I know plenty of people who claim to be great multitaskers, but I wonder how much of that is perception vs. reality.

I’m a bit of a productivity nut, and I actually take a few minutes at the end of each day to jot down a few things that I accomplished. This helps me make sure that I really am getting work done and being productive, and it gives me a point of reference that I can use later for status reports or questions about my work. From this experience, I know that I get much more work done when I stay focused on the task at hand by working in chunks to complete one thing at a time. When I try to do multiple things at once, I still get everything done eventually, but the tasks aren’t completed as quickly and quality often suffers as a result.

Your Homework Experiment

• Take two periods of time (maybe four-hour or two-hour periods of time) where you plan to do similar work.
• In one time period, multitask as much as you want.
• In the other time period, turn off Twitter, email and other distractions to focus on one task at a time (working in chunks)
• After you finish each period, write down everything that you completed along with a quick quality assessment of the output.

Which time period allowed you to get the largest amount of work done?

Photo by Flickr user Ryan Ritchie used under the Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivs 2.0 Generic license.

Related content from GigaOM Pro (sub. req.):

• Enabling the Web Work Revolution
• Report: The Real-Time Enterprise
• Social Media in the Enterprise

Heroku CEO Byron Sebastian (foreground) speaking at GigaOM's Structure 2010 conference in San Francisco

The rise of smartphones is having an impact across the entire technology food chain. Not only are companies like Motorola moving more phones, app developers are seeing a quick jump in their fortunes. But far from the bright lights and attention are companies that provide vital building blocks, who are also enjoying the good times. These include chip companies like Qualcomm and cloud services provider Heroku, which offers its platform as a service and is based on Amazon’s raw infrastructure.

San Francisco-based Heroku, which has been focused on being a Ruby-on-Rails cloud platform, has seen a sudden demand for its service from mobile app developers, according to Byron Sebastian, chief executive officer of the two-year-old company, which is backed by the likes of Redpoint Venture Partners and Ignition Partners. The biggest boost for Heroku is going to come when RhoMobile, an open mobile framework company, shifts RhoHub, its hosted app development platform, to Heroku. That move alone will add 8,000 mobile developers to Heroku’s cloud service.

According to Heroku, in a survey, nearly 30 percent of its customers said they are building mobile apps, and nearly 60 percent indicated a high interest in developing mobile offerings. Heroku currently has over 83,000 apps (mobile and web) using its platform. Some of the more popular apps are doing 1,000 to 3,000 http requests per minute. Many are offering mobile-friendly HTML, but many are also using RESTful interfaces.

Mobile apps using Heroku’s infrastructure services include Spreadsong’s Freebooksapp and Intridea’s Oil Reporter. Colin Plamondon, co-founder and CEO of Spreadsong, points out that most mobile applications are essentially a pretty interface for web services content and have similar needs to any web application. That’s good news for companies like Heroku.

P.S. If you are a cloud services provider and want to discuss trends with me, drop me an email.

Related GigaOM Pro content (sub req’d): Mo’ Money: Life Is Good for Cloud Vendors

Balanced Approach to Control

First, you need to take a balanced approach to stress by focusing on the things you can control. Most people who have real issues dealing with stress let too many things that are out of their control increase their stress level. If something is out of your control, then worrying about it or dwelling on it to the point that it causes you stress just isn’t productive. Take a step back and think about the problem with an objective eye toward focusing your time and energy on those things that you can control and focusing your work in areas where you can have an impact. Learning to let the rest go and not letting those things that are out of your control increase your stress level is very difficult, but it can be mastered with practice. People who regularly read my posts will notice that this is a common theme for me; in most things, I have learned to focus on a few areas and let the rest go.

Get Out and Get Moving

Getting regular exercise and keeping your body moving is a time-honored way to reduce stress. Exercise increases your endorphin levels and gives you a boost, which is why I try to exercise during lunch when the weather isn’t too hot because it gives me a nice little break in the middle of the day and lets me hit the afternoon with a fresh burst of exercise-induced energy. This is also a perfect opportunity to get some fresh air and maybe even a little sunshine, depending on where you live. Even if you just get outside long enough to make the trip to the gym, getting out of your home office for a short break and a little fresh air can be useful. On those days where your schedule refuses to cooperate, even a 5-10 minute walk around the block can really help reduce your stress.

Socialize

Great conversation and laughter with friends is one of my favorite ways to reduce stress. When was the last time you had a nice lunch away from the computer or went to happy hour with some friends after work? Make it a point to plan a couple of activities with friends every week. This doesn’t need to be complicated or time-consuming. Take a 20-minute walk at lunch with a friend, work out or run with a partner, invite a few friends to happy hour or dinner, or even attend some local social events related to your areas of interest. Talking to real people, in person, is a great way to decompress after a long day at work and reduce our stress.

Reading and Hobbies

Turn the television off, shut the lid of the laptop and spend a few minutes doing something in the real world that doesn’t involve typing. I love to read, and I try to spend at least 30 minutes every evening with a book — the dead tree kind — to get away from the glare of the computer screen. I also like to turn on some music and cook a real dinner occasionally (you know, the kind of dinner where you recognize the ingredients as something from nature, rather than something out of a box). If you don’t have a hobby, find one, and spend some time relaxing and forgetting about the things that leave you stressed out at the end of the day.

The real key to managing stress is to stay ahead of it by making your stress reduction techniques just another part of your daily routine. By exercising, getting fresh air, socializing with friends and making time for your hobbies, you naturally keep your stress levels down without having to take any drastic measures later.

What are your favorite ways to reduce stress?

Photo by Aaron Hockley of Hockley Photography used with permission.

Related GigaOM Pro content (sub. req.): Enabling the Web Work Revolution

OK, you get the idea. I like a more pragmatic approach. No one response or solution is going to be right for every situation, every person or every organization, and any “expert” who uses this type of absolutist thinking is probably not be someone you should rely on for advice.

Yes, I provide quite a bit of advice on blogs and for clients, but I try to show how my approach has worked for me or for my clients while giving people the flexibility to come up with a solution that works best for their needs. Many of these tips work for some people, but not for others. For example, my recent inbox zero post prompted this tweet from fellow WebWorkerDaily author, Doriano: “Inbox zero is just like the Loch Ness monster, bigfoot and honest politicians… don’t fall for it folks.” Obviously, he’s not a fan of inbox zero, but he probably has a system for managing and processing email that works just as well for him.

I like to try out a variety of approaches and see what sticks over the long term. When I switched from a PC where I used Outlook for email and tasks to a Mac, I had to find a new task management system. I probably tried a dozen different applications before finally settling on Hiveminder, which is working well for me, but I still continue to make slight tweaks to my system to become even more efficient at managing my to-do list. Plenty of friends made suggestions, and I read many online reviews of various task systems, but ultimately, I had to pick the one that was right for me and for my situation.

This is true in social media, too. No one approach will work for everyone, and people or companies shouldn’t be pressured into joining too many social web sites, especially if they aren’t prepared to spend the time required to maintain their presence. Businesses and people don’t have infinite amounts of time or money, so we need to carefully choose how we allocate our resources. The exact mix will probably be different for your business than for mine.

Don’t let consultants, experts, bloggers or friends bully you into a particular solution. Think about what you want and pick an approach that works for you.

How do you decide what works best for you?

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

• Cleantech Financing Trends: 2010 and Beyond
• Why iPad 2 Will Lead Consumers Into the Post-PC Era
• The Near-Term Evolution of Social Commerce

We have to take some risks if we want to be successful and make our mark on the world in some way. If you don’t believe me, here are a few quotes from people you might recognize:

“Taking risks takes practice, and if we keep doing the same things we already know, in the same way, our willingness to dare to be different atrophies.” — Kathy Sierra
“Life is either a daring adventure or nothing.” — Helen Keller
“Only those who risk going too far can possibly find out how far they can go.” — T.S. Eliot
“I am always doing that which I cannot do, in order that I may learn how to do it.” — Pablo Picasso

I’ve taken my share of risks. Some of those risks have turned into amazing experiences, while we’ll refer to some of the others as great opportunities for learning. Some risks that have turned out very well for me: moving to California to take a job at Intel and letting them move me again to Oregon 6 months later; organizing some large events for the Portland technology community where hundreds of people were counting on us to pull it off’ co-founding a non profit; blogging; speaking at events in front of hundreds of people; and many more. I’ve also learned a few things from some of the risks that didn’t pan out as well: not every online community can be saved; the best technological solution doesn’t always win no matter how much you wanted it to succeed; and some projects just need to killed swiftly before they die a long, slow and painful death.

The key to taking risks is to keep things in balance without swinging too far toward either extreme. Don’t jump into something that involves a serious risk without at least taking some time to do a little research and think about whether you are doing the right thing. However, you don’t want to make the mistake of swinging too far toward the other extreme of  over-analyzing every possible outcome and missing the opportunity.

If you aren’t already a natural risk taker, here are some tips to get you started.

1. Find some work that takes you outside of your comfort zone that involves both some risk and a nice reward, but that won’t leave you bankrupt or dead if it doesn’t work out. In other words, start with some small risks and work your way up.
2. Do just enough research to make a smart decision about the opportunity. Don’t just jump in and do something stupid without at least taking a quick look at what you might land in after the jump, but don’t spend forever analyzing it, either.
3. Ultimately, just do it. Try something and see if it works.
4. If you didn’t have a wild success the first time around, learn from your mistakes, go back to step one and try again.
5. If you were successful, go back to step one and try again with something a little bigger.

I try to make sure that I’m always doing something that feels at least a little uncomfortable. It is way too easy to coast along in life, but coasting is boring and not much fun. I’d rather take a chance and do something incredible (or fail miserably) and learn something new in the process.

How do you take risks?

Image by Flickr user lumaxart used under Creative Commons.

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

• Why iPad 2 Will Lead Consumers Into the Post-PC Era
• The Near-Term Evolution of Social Commerce
• Content Farms: The Players, The Benefits, The Risks

First, let’s look at how people react to boredom in the work environment. According to Susan Cramm on the Harvard Business Review blogs, there is a good chance that you are making your job boring. Here are her three questions to test whether the thing that’s making your job boring is you:

1. Are you on autopilot? When we have been doing any task for a while, we tend to go on autopilot. This makes our jobs easier, but it also reduces our interest level and leaves us bored.
2. Is your energy level down? Boredom saps our energy reserves and makes it more difficult for us to focus on our work and be successful.
3. Have you become a conformist? After you’ve made the big changes needed early in the job, it can be too easy just to let things slide rather than continuing to look for areas where you can make additional improvements.

I have a few suggestions to help you snap out of your work-related boredom.

• Exercise. Yes, this really is my answer to almost everything. Exercising increases our endorphin levels and helps us stay energized. This will help you get your energy levels back up, and you might even think of some new ideas while you exercise.
• Change the way you do routine tasks. Kick yourself off of autopilot and experiment with some new ways of doing things. Take a routine task, and do something a little differently with the goal of finding some way to improve the process. You just might find a better way to accomplish the task, but even if it isn’t an improvement, you’ll probably come out of it with a renewed interest.
• Pick up a new, challenging project. I try to take on new projects that will be a challenge or at least something a little different from my normal client work; sometimes these are fun, side projects or new client engagements. In Meryl’s plans for 2010 post, she talked about how she takes on a new, challenging project every year to stretch herself. When I was working in corporate jobs, I used to always volunteer for special projects and teach classes for employees because doing something new helped me stay energized and excited about my job.
• Set improvement goals. Pick one thing every couple of months that is important, but that you haven’t focused on in a while, and set a goal of making at least one improvement in that area. This could be a personal development project or some neglected aspect of your work. The idea is to make some kind of regular improvements to break you out of the conformity cycle.
• Find a new hobby or non-work related project. I’ve found that when I am bored outside of work, this can carry over into the work day. Find a fun new hobby that will keep you energized during your off-hours, and you just might find that it helps improve your energy during the work day as well.
• Get a full night of sleep. Yes, I know you are busy and that sleep just cuts down on the hours that you can be doing something more fun. However, being a half-asleep zombie at work will drain your energy and make you feel bored even when the work itself isn’t all that boring. Try it for a week, and see if you don’t have more energy. You might realize that you enjoy those waking hours even more when you are well rested.

These are just a few of the techniques that I have used over the years to avoid succumbing to boredom, but I’m sure that there are other great ways to get re-energized and excited about your work.

How do you break out of the boredom cycle and stay excited about your work?

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

• Why iPad 2 Will Lead Consumers Into the Post-PC Era
• The Near-Term Evolution of Social Commerce
• Content Farms: The Players, The Benefits, The Risks

Really, what is a good work ethic?

I’ve heard a lot over the years that younger generations don’t understand the value of hard work, so if we don’t understand it, how would we know what constitutes hard work these days?

In my own life and business, I’m simply searching for the right balance — not being a workaholic, but also not being lazy or afraid to get my hands dirty, break a sweat, or pay my dues. Where is the happy medium between those two extremes?

I’ve heard many times that “overnight success” takes a long time and a lot of effort to achieve. There are times when I think, “Will I ever get there?” (wherever there is), and I usually follow that question with, “Am I just expecting too much too quickly? Have I really worked long enough and hard enough to deserve success?”

There are many times when I know that I work very hard for long hours, but then the internal debate becomes, “Am I a workaholic?”

I know I have the strength to bring seemingly huge projects to completion in short amounts of time with very concentrated effort, but what does that mean? Does it mean I have a “feast or famine” work ethic, or does it mean I’m hard-wired to work intensely for a certain length of time and then be completely off for a certain length of time to recoup? I don’t know the answer.

Maybe it’s a crazy debate, but I think it’s easy for web workers especially to become workaholics and not have a healthy mix of work, physical health and relaxation and fulfilling relationships.

What are your thoughts? What do you think constitutes a good work ethic?

Image from Flickr by Pixel Addict

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

• Why iPad 2 Will Lead Consumers Into the Post-PC Era
• The Near-Term Evolution of Social Commerce
• Content Farms: The Players, The Benefits, The Risks

During those long months, when you can’t remember what the sun looks like and are slightly surprised at its appearance in films and on television, productivity can take a major nosedive, along with mood and attitude. As a long veteran of Canadian winters, I like to think that I’m prepared for the changes that major weather upheavals can cause in a person, but I never cease to be shocked by the strength of the effects. Accordingly, I’ve put together a list of ways to either get over — or work through — the funk. 

Take a Vacation

As mentioned above, I’ve been less than active here during the past few weeks. That’s partly because my cup was temporarily running over with work elsewhere, but it’s also because I decided to step back and take a significant chunk of time off for the first time in about a year. Making a decision about stepping back from work for a while is far preferable to the alternative, which is continuing to try to maintain a regular schedule, and having the quantity and quality of your work suffer as a result.

Planned time off, with a definite ending, will help you feel focused and eager when you do eventually get back to work. If you love what you do, that is. If you still find yourself dragging your heels, you might want to take a long hard look at what it is you’re doing that isn’t satisfying any longer.

Lower Your Expectations

A big part of the problem of trying to fight the winter doldrums is that people are often their own worst critics. Getting into a blame cycle with yourself won’t help you get work done any faster. In fact, you’ll probably get a lot less done, and just give up on days where you could otherwise have gotten at least a little bit ahead.

If you are perennially cursed by a lower work ethic as the thermometer mercury dips lower, then acknowledge and prepare for that eventuality. The best way to do that is to work more during the months that you feel more productive, and generally behave like a squirrel getting ready for the lean winter months. That way, when you’re doing less than your maximum potential output, you won’t feel nearly as guilty about it, and you’re less likely to get caught in negative attribution patterns. Believe me, if I could actually hibernate, I probably would, but this is the next best thing.

Stay Fit, Active and Healthy

As at-home workers, we’re already severely at risk of falling into a sedentary lifestyle, and that risk is amplified a hundred fold when the outside environment seems intent on killing us. Go out of your way to counter the impulse to stay inside and remain immobile, and I promise that after a few days you’ll feel much, much better for having done so.

Make sure your fruit and vegetable intake stays high, at least on par with what you normally take in during the summer. My registered dietitian friend couldn’t stress this enough. She also recommended taking Vitamin D supplements to make up for the absence of sunlight that normally provides this much-needed nutrient to our systems.

Sign up for a gym near enough to your house that you won’t be discouraged from going by the weather. Failing that, invest in a good Tai Chi or yoga DVD and treat it as a necessary part of your work day, akin to filling out invoices or checking your email.

It’s Only a Season

My parting advice for those of you plagued with a long cold winter, Canadian or otherwise, is to remember that it doesn’t last forever, despite sometimes appearing to. Keep that always in mind, and strap on some skates or grab a toboggan and remember that the cruelest season does have some advantages over its gentler cousins.

How do you work through — or avoid — the winter work lull?

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

• Why iPad 2 Will Lead Consumers Into the Post-PC Era
• The Near-Term Evolution of Social Commerce
• Content Farms: The Players, The Benefits, The Risks

Compare this to the reaction to fame that professional athletes, actors, musicians and celebrity CEOs face. Some people completely change (new house, new cars, new friends, new spouse, etc.) while others continue to live in their old neighborhood with existing friends, and remain grounded despite their fame. While social media fame isn’t the same, I see similar reactions.

I was reading a Harvard Business Review blog post by John Baldoni where he was talking about egos in sports and applying the same ideas to business. He mentioned this quote: “It’s okay if other people think you’re God, but you’re in trouble if you start believing it.” This really resonated with what I’ve been seeing in the social media industry.

For some people, it may already be too late. Those enormous egos may have already taken over their bodies like in the episode of “Star Trek: The Next Generation” where alien entities take over the bodies of Troi, Data and O’Brien and control their every move. Are they too far gone, or can we still save them by exorcising that enormous ego and replacing it with a normal-sized one?

For those you you who can still be saved, here are a few tips for keeping that ego in check (these are Baldoni’s recommendations, modified to apply to social media):

• Remember that your Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn friends or fans are not your real friends (take Danah Boyd’s experience on stage at Web 2.0 Expo as an example of when your “friends” can become a mob). Real friends are the people that stick with you during tough times.
• Don’t take yourself too seriously. When people butter you up with praise and tell you how awesome you are, politely thank them, but don’t believe it.
• Everyone has shortcomings — I certainly have my share. Whenever your ego starts to take over, think about something that you need to improve and remember that you are an ordinary human being who makes mistakes and has weaknesses.

What are your thoughts on how social media fame gives people inflated egos?

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

• The Near-Term Evolution of Social Commerce
• A 2011 Connected Consumer Forecast
• A 2011 NewNet Forecast

In the long run, it’s probably no substitute for hard work and building smart routines without resorting to lying to yourself. But in a pinch, when your motivation might be low for other reasons not related to the jobs that you’re working on, self-deception can be a very handy little pick-me-up.

This is Due Tomorrow (It Isn’t Due Tomorrow)

Changing the due dates for projects or project elements can be very beneficial to your work ethic. The key to getting away with this particular trip is to set your revised (earlier, in case that wasn’t clear) dates well ahead of time, preferably at project outset. Don’t share these personal due dates with the client, of course, of they’ll make them official and you won’t have gained anything.

So set your dates early quietly to yourself and then repeat them over and over again. Treat them for all intents and purposes as if they are the actual client-mandated due dates. At first, this will take an effort of will, but I think you’ll be fairly surprised with how quickly you’ll find yourself buying your own hype.

I’ll Take Tomorrow Off (I Won’t Take Any Time Off)

A great trick for getting myself to produce more than I normally would during any given day is promise to take the next day off, or at least have a reduced workday. So for example, I’ll say that I’m going to work a little bit extra tonight and then take the afternoon the next day to do something fun.

The trick is that I’ll often do exactly the same thing the next day, and the day after that, and pretty soon it’s the weekend and I’ve doubled my workload for the week. It works so well that I’m actually doing it right now, as I write this post. It’s become my new favorite trick, but the potential downside is a bad case of burnout, so use it sparingly.

My Alarm Clock Displays the Correct Time (It Doesn’t Display the Correct Time)

This is an oldie, but a goodie. People have been setting their watches, alarm clocks and clock radios back a few minutes since clocks were invented in order to ensure timeliness and provide the comforting illusion that they are always ahead of time. My own method is a twist on this venerable classic, and adds an element designed to both make the deception more effective and to help you steal even more time.

The twist on the classic trick is to set your clock back a bit every time you set your alarm, probably a minute or two at most. Eventually, you can probably manage to gain an extra hour without throwing your schedule completely off whack, and (best of all) it feels like “bonus” time in a way that it wouldn’t if you just set your alarm an hour earlier.

Stealing Time

When you work from home, the clock is your constant companion, and yet, it can be incredibly easy to lose track of time and find that you’ve done far less than you set out to do. I’ve found that over time, I gradually lose more and more of my day to distractions and less-than-important things, like Facebook and Twitter.

Part of my strategy for combating these time thieves includes reevaluating and restructuring my work practices every once in a while, but that doesn’t always get the job done in the short term. For a quick fix, tricking yourself is a great way to steal some of that time back.

What tricks do you play on yourself to gain a little added productivity?

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

• Why iPad 2 Will Lead Consumers Into the Post-PC Era
• The Near-Term Evolution of Social Commerce
• Content Farms: The Players, The Benefits, The Risks

Most of us also try to take a few days off around the holidays, which can create additional time and budget constraints. For freelancers, no one actually pays you for those days off, and you still need to meet client expectations. Telecommuters and other workers still have about the same amount of work to complete with fewer days to accomplish it. Regardless of your work situation, this still means more stress during the holidays. I have a few suggestions to help you manage your stress and come out of the holidays at least as healthy and happy as you were before the holiday season.

Get Ahead

When I get stressed, my natural instinct is to procrastinate, but that will only make the situation worse. I force myself to do what I can to get ahead on any tasks that can be accomplished early to avoid a mad rush during the holidays.

For one client, I knew that holiday schedules would derail the normal approval process for my weekly writing tasks, so instead of doing a week’s worth of writing, I did a week and a half. This gets me through the first half of the week after the Thanksgiving holiday, and I can pick back up on the writing after everyone gets back from vacation.

I also finished about 90 percent of my Christmas shopping before Thanksgiving. My family lives in Ohio, so I took advantage of online shopping to buy almost everything and have it shipped directly to my Mom’s house. This saves me the hassles of last-minute shopping and store crowds, and it also makes travel less stressful, since it reduces the amount of luggage required for the trip home.

Exercise

When we have the least amount of time available, it is too easy to cut out exercise and use the time to do more work, run errands, or complete other tasks. Do not be tempted to skip your workouts during the holiday season. Exercise naturally reduces stress and will help you avoid the increased stress associated with the weight gain that comes out of eating too many holiday cookies.

If you can’t find the time for your regular workouts, make sure you do something physical every day. Here are a couple of suggestions:

• Knead the bread by hand instead of using the bread maker.
• Dance in the kitchen to your favorite holiday tunes while you cook.
• Park in the last row of the shopping mall and walk, or for urban dwellers like me, do your shopping in a neighborhood where you can walk to every store.
• Take a walk with a family member and use the time to talk (also a good way to relieve stress).

Take Time Off

Take advantage of the times when your clients are on vacation to take a few days off yourself. Seriously. Take some actual time off with no client work. This works best in conjunction with the suggestion about getting ahead. I’ve been working like a mad woman for the past few days, and I plan to take Wednesday through Sunday off. OK, I’m lying a little bit. I plan to take Wednesday, Thursday and Friday completely off, but I’m secretly hoping to have time to work on some neglected non-client personal projects for at least a few hours over the weekend. These are those fun projects that I never quite have time to do, so it won’t feel like work.

Sleep

Make sure that you get plenty of sleep. While sleeping a few less hours every night might seem like a great way to get a few extra hours to finish the activities that are leaving you stressed, it will only make the problem worse. When I’m not getting enough sleep, I’m grouchy and less productive, which only increases my stress levels. Get the sleep that you need to increase the chances that you’ll be productive and accomplish more work in less time.

These are my top four tips for reducing stress during the holidays. How do you reduce holiday stress?

Image by Rick Turoczy used under Creative Commons.

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

• Why iPad 2 Will Lead Consumers Into the Post-PC Era
• The Near-Term Evolution of Social Commerce
• Content Farms: The Players, The Benefits, The Risks

It’s definitely true that it can be difficult to be heard among the clamor of communication online. The volume of information, insights and self-expression can be overwhelming, but those who work remotely also face the added challenge of physical isolation. Sometimes, it can be difficult to believe that you can have much of an impact when you operate remotely. Within this context, those who thrive in a remote web work environment have a strong sense of self, of perspective and of contribution.

The Opposite of Isolation

The antidote to isolation is participation. Participating provides an opportunity to develop self-awareness and respect, perspective, and of course, a sense of contribution. It’s also fun. But it seems that many of us forget the importance of participation from a personal standpoint. With deadlines, busy lives, exciting goals and work or family commitments, we can unconsciously replace willing participation with obligation. And that’s often a lot less fun.

Whether you choose to participate online — in a social network, work-related committee or team, community, interest or activist group — or offline through a club, charity, class or community group, you’re making a willing choice, which for some of us is a bit of a luxury. And the benefits of that participation can be considerable.

When I first moved to a new country town, and was working remotely, I felt pretty isolated. My colleagues were 100km away, and when I looked out the window, it was at a foreign landscape, apparently devoid of human life. So I became a volunteer for the local firefighting group. Bingo! I met a load of new people, made one or two close, lasting friendships, developed skills I never knew I’d have, and felt a whole lot more involved and less isolated.

Participation is Not a Life Sentence

Not all participation takes great commitment, so you can suit your level of involvement to your changing interests, time commitments, and desires. Joining your work social committee, organizational sustainability team, or taking part in corporate sports are just a few ideas for participating more within your work sphere. The key is to give something a try. No single friendship, workplace, or hobby club could hope to meet the needs of one individual, so diversify, and experiment with your interests in a range of different arenas.

A writer friend of mine who was unable to work had a growing interest in literature and books. He took a course in literature, had some of his work published on a few sites, and was then offered the position of managing editor on one of these. He grew the site, then decided to use social networks and online community tools to create a dialogue around the site, which would enable authors and readers to communicate with each other. By pursuing his interest, he’s made a lot of new friends, valuable contacts and deepened his passion and sense of contribution.

Perhaps over time you’ll find, as my friend did, that you prefer online participation. Alternatively, perhaps you’ll get so involved with your local sports club that you decide to stand for a position on the club committee. You never know where your involvement in a group or community may lead — and if you’re not happy with where it’s going, you can always take a break to try something new.

Have you ever felt isolated as a remote worker? What have you done to change things?

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

• The Future of Work Platforms: An Overview
• Why iPad 2 Will Lead Consumers Into the Post-PC Era
• The Near-Term Evolution of Social Commerce

1. Be goal-oriented, accountable and disciplined. Knowing where you’re going is the first step to achieving your dreams, and a clear vision and plan will help you reach them. Even as conditions change in and around your business, always have a target that directs your daily actions and take consistent and regular steps toward actually reaching it. Have people and tools in place to keep you on track, whether that’s regular check-ins with an accountability partner or weekly reviews to see where you stand, and remember that, at the end of the day, the buck stops with you. No matter what your schedule or approach, you must be disciplined and steadily move in the direction of your goals.
2. Be adaptable, resilient and determined. Change is inevitable, and there will be plenty of times when you’ll need to correct course and modify your plans so that your business isn’t left behind. Be ready and willing to accommodate changes in the marketplace and be careful not be so rigid that you miss opportunities for growth and improvement. In addition to being adaptable, it’s important to be OK with failure. “Fall seven times, get up eight,” as the proverb goes. Mistakes and failure come with the territory of being a successful entrepreneur, and if you’re not making mistakes, you’re not putting yourself out there enough. Being in business for yourself will push you to the breaking point sometimes, so you’ll have to be determined and remind yourself how far you’ve come. Find support through other entrepreneurs and small business owners who can help you through difficult times and challenges. It takes a great deal of commitment and dedication to see a business to success, but if you stick with it, you will eventually get there.
3. Be creative and open-minded. Solving problems, promoting your businesses, and expanding into new markets will require a good dose of creativity and imagination. Without it, every setback and obstacle will seem insurmountable. Look for possibility everywhere. Think of how other industries deal with issues you are facing and find ways to adapt those solutions to work for your business. Stay flexible, make room for a variety of possibilities, and believe that there’s always a way.
4. Be confident and optimistic. You’ll come across plenty of naysayers along your way to success, so it’s important to become very selective with your hearing and about whose advice you seek. Find mentors and other big thinkers who you can call on for inspiration and advice, and most importantly, believe in yourself and your abilities.
5. Be persistent. There will be plenty of times when you just have to stick with an idea long enough for it to take hold. It takes patience and a whole lot of the same thing over and over to finally make progress.
6. Be an avid learner. So much can be learned from the experience of others, and fortunately, there are thousands of books out there from entrepreneurs who have achieved success, many available for free at your local library or inexpensively through book-trading sites like PaperBackSwap. One new book every two weeks is over two dozen by the end of a year!
7. Be ambitious and driven. Without motivation, it will take a lot to justify the hard work and time required to get a business off the ground. No one should care more about your success than you, and if you’re not driven to achieve your goals, every obstacle will provide the perfect opportunity to quit.
8. Be a self-starter. Neither your mom, your teacher, nor your boss will be there to make sure you show up and do the work for your business, so you have to be self-starting, making sure that you have regular, dedicated time to move the big rocks each day.
9. Be passionate. Above all, you should be passionate about your work. It’s a choice to go into business, so why not choose something you love to do? There’s no reason to dread starting a new day, so find something you’re passionate about and build your business and life around it.

What other qualities do you think successful entrepreneurs must possess in order to build a thriving business? How are you learning to encompass those traits?

Image from Flickr by Hamed Saber

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

• Why iPad 2 Will Lead Consumers Into the Post-PC Era
• The Near-Term Evolution of Social Commerce
• Content Farms: The Players, The Benefits, The Risks