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?

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As enjoyable as the holiday season can be, it’s also a hectic time filled with demands that can exceed even your busiest days at work. On top of that, it can be hard to let go of work, and there’s often a little nagging voice reminding you of what will be waiting for you on your return. When the first weeks of the new year arrive, it’s easy to feel jet lagged and sleep deprived, wishing that you had time for a vacation from the vacation!

It’s a lot easier to realize the need for downtime and rest during times like these, but it’s just as important to routinely get time away from work and daily stresses well after putting away the Christmas ornaments.

A creative outlet or some form of physical activity can be just the remedy for stress-filled days, so why not take the time to plan for some fun activities away from the office?

Get a Hobby

There are so many ways to blow off steam. It can be as simple as a daily walk, but you might also enjoy:

• Joining an acting, photography or painting class at a local college.
• Baking or cooking something special each day.
• Gardening or visiting nature centers in your area.
• Dancing or taking a dance class.
• Exercising or bike-riding.
• Swimming, rowing or simply being near water.
• Reading or starting/joining a book club.
• Hiking, jogging or preparing for a marathon.
• Sewing, crocheting, pottery-making or painting.
• Spending time outdoors or with your pets.

The options are truly endless, but the important thing is making sure to reserve time for it every single day, so be sure to find something that’s accessible and convenient so that you’ll actually commit to it and make it part of your routine.

Schedule It In

The New Year is here, and it’s the perfect time to set your intentions and make room for those things that are most important to you, and taking time for yourself to unwind and take your mind off work should be at the top of your list. If you’re not taking care of yourself, you’re not operating at your best, which can actually take away from the attention you provide your life and business.

Reserve time now for yourself and activities that will rejuvenate you and help you bring the highest level of energy and clarity to your business.

How do you unwind and decompress from the stresses that can come with running a business?

Image from Flickr by lepiaf.geo

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I suspect what the world’s citizens are looking for isn’t righteousness or posturing, but leadership and pragmatism. What can we do as individuals to adjust our lifestyles? Though it’s debatable whether our energy literacy and awareness should be oriented around carbon or power usage, carbon seems to be the current consensus.

As web workers, we perhaps work under the assumption that our commute-free lifestyles are relatively low-carbon. However, it’s  sensible to actually quantify and monitor the impact that home workers really are having on the environment. Fortunately, services are beginning to emerge that help home workers to measure and track their carbon footprints.

Time Magazine recently ranked the personal carbon footprint as one of 2009′s best inventions. AMEE — a leading carbon tracking startup — just last launched a new offering that claims to make measuring and reporting on a home worker’s carbon footprint much more straightforward.

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AMEE is currently currently targeted at companies with remote workers, and is only providing its tracking and measurement engine to users of AlertMe‘s smart metering solutions. Here’s how it works:

• Workers will need to install an AlertMe Energy kit (around $114) into their home that monitors and reports their home’s energy use.
• The AlertMe kit sends data to AMEE to calculate a carbon footprint.
• Aggregated data from all remote workers is structured to fit a company’s reporting requirements, with appropriate formats and visualizations. Data can be viewed live, by location, as an aggregate and in compliance with external reporting frameworks.

Though the service is currently designed to help employers track and report their home worker’s usage there seems little reason not to offer the same solutions to independent web workers. More significantly, when smarter appliances can individually report how we use heating, cooling, computing and other equipment, web workers will have a better range of data with which to make lifestyle decisions and to play their part in managing climate change.

Are you employing personal carbon strategy or using tracking/measurement services?

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Seesmic apparently saw the wisdom in that idea, because it recently revealed a new Windows-only Twitter client that doesn’t require AIR to run. I jumped at the chance to take the software, which is currently only available as a preview edition, for a test run.

Feature-rich

Seesmic for Windows has just about every bell and whistle I could ask for in a professional Twitter client, but without a lot of the unnecessary frills that I feel get thrown in with something like TweetDeck. It seems closer to Tweetie for Mac, which is still my favorite client, independent of platform concerns.

You can use multiple accounts, and customize your columns in the main window however you like. By default, your Home feed will display tweets from all the accounts you have registered with Seesmic, which is a great thing for people who use different Twitter accounts to organize the people they follow, like groups. For those who don’t, Seesmic includes support for Twitter lists, so that you can organize those you follow that way instead.

My personal favorite feature of Seesmic is how the compose window uses your first-entered account by default. That means regardless of what post I reply to, and in what stream I find it, the reply originates from my main account. This is ideal for me because it’s my primary publishing identity, while the others are mostly for monitoring.

Searches can be initiated at any time using a field intuitively placed at the top right-hand corner of the Seesmic window, but I couldn’t find any way to find trending topics. While I don’t generally have cause to check the trends, not having the ability to do so does rankle a bit.

Good-looking and Functional

This is the best-looking Twitter app I’ve seen on Windows, and possibly one of the best-looking Windows apps I’ve seen, period. Especially using a dark-tinted Windows 7 glass visual theme, it just looks designed to fit its surroundings, which is more than I can say for any AIR application.

The tabbed sidebar and light-colored stream backgrounds make it a very usable interface, in addition to helping with aesthetic effect. I would appreciate an option to turn on color-coding for @ mentions or conversations between two people you follow, but with columns designed for the purpose, I guess the Seesmic team figures that isn’t necessary.

Advanced controls for each tweet can be brought up by hovering over a user’s portrait, or by right-clicking on any individual post, so you have options in terms of replying or retweeting. You can also create user lists on the fly from anyone in your stream, or add people to existing lists, which makes it very easy to create functional groups quickly. You can even drag a user’s profile pic to the group of your choice to add them to it.

If there was a feature I’m missing most with Seesmic, it’s the ability to follow/unfollow people from within the client. It’s something I use regularly with my iPhone Twitter clients, and something I enjoy being able to do at a moment’s notice without visiting the web-based interface for Twitter.com.

Client of Choice for Windows

I won’t mince words: Seesmic’s dedicated Windows app has become my go-to software for using Twitter on a PC, even though bugs are present in the preview version. It’s just that good, and it’s not Adobe AIR. In fact, it might be reason enough for me to spend a little less time in OS X, and a little more time working in Windows 7. I’ll stress the might in that last statement, though. If you want a copy, for now you have to sign up for the Seesmic newsletter at Seesmic.com, but turnaround time for a download link seems to be less than a day for most.

Have you tried Seesmic for Windows? Let us know what you think of it below.

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We might like to think we know it all, and many of us spend innumerable hours reading, researching and learning so that we do actually know a heck of a lot. But for all of us, there are times when things get hairy — times when we wrestle with technology and struggle to get even the (apparently) simplest things done. Although web workers may not like to admit it, we too experience technical challenges from time to time.

When I think about the people I know who aren’t tech-savvy, their responses to tech problems seem to encompass these options:

1. Employ strong language in questioning the piece of technology’s intentions.
2. Strike the device in use, or one of its peripherals.
3. Ask “what kind of idiot designed this thing.”
4. Call offspring or partners for advice.
5. Complain to friends.
6. Hack an improbable and unproductive workaround at best; give up at worst.

Fortunately, as web workers, we don’t have to resort to such tactics. We have access to a veritable treasure trove of possible solutions to technical problems, courtesy of the web and in-the-know contacts. So what techniques do we use to solve tech issues? Here, in no particular order, are my usual ports of call when my knowledge of technology falls short.

• Check Preferences. If I’m having trouble using a service or piece of software, my first thought is that I must have specified something incorrectly in my preferences for the service. So I check my preferences — for the service itself or for the piece of functionality that I’m trying to use — to ensure I haven’t missed some crucial checkbox that will enable the facility I need.
• Check the Help files. Yes, I do read the Help files for software, services, and so on. If I’m having trouble using a device, I’ll read its instruction manual. In my experience, much of the proprietary software products and physical devices I use offer reasonably helpful Help and instructional content, while few online services do. I use the Help search tools (which often leave much to be desired) as well as browsing the contents listings. Despite the failings of many service’s Help files, I frequently find the answers to my questions using this approach.
• Check development blogs and service updates. The developers of some services contribute to company blogs or publish service development updates to some part of the organization’s web site. These pages can be fabulous sources of to-the-minute information on functionality issues, service problems and bugs. More than once I’ve found the answers to my problems via these sources — most recently, for diagnosing issues with web hosting and RSS services.
• Search the web. If I can’t find what I need in the service’s Help files, I usually search online to see if anyone’s discussed the feature or issue I’m facing. Even if I can’t find a precise phrase match for my issue, some quick searching will usually lead me in a roundabout way to a solution to my problem — someone will have mentioned it as they’ve developed a separate service, for example, which will give me an inside hint about what I need to look for next.
• Ask a question in Help forums. Some services have active, passionate Help forums, which can be a real boon. I remember the first time I used NeoOffice/J and had a problem. I asked a support question in what were the small hours for those in the USA, and expected to wait days for a reply, if indeed one might ever come. But the reply came inside ten minutes, and it worked. Help forums can be a great way to get useful assistance from real people who understand both the service you’re using and how it feels to be stuck with a problem.
• Phone a friend. If I know someone who deals with the service I’m using, I may contact them to ask them if they’re familiar with the functionality I’m wrestling with, or have any advice to help me solve it. But, as a remote worker, I tend to use this option only as a last resort, primarily because my contacts are busy and may not be able to help me as quickly as I’ll be able to help myself.

These are the basic tactics I use to overcome any … ahem … “technology challenges” I may face in the course of my work. What do you do to solve the technology problems that inevitably crop up for web workers?

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FormSpring now has one more feature to recommend it, and it’s a big one for web workers: extensive third-party integrations. Using said integrations, you can now use any form you create in FormSpring with a laundry list of web apps that many readers of this blog will immediately recognize.

I want to take a look first at what FormSpring offers as a forms creation suite, and then go into a little more detail about the new third-party integration feature.

Creating a Form

Making your first form with FormSpring is not very complicated at all. You can start from scratch, use a template, copy an existing form from another web page (ethically questionable?), or upload a pre-existing HTML form. FormSpring’s template list is fairly comprehensive, without being overwhelming, and it’s broken down into categories to make it that much easier to find what you’re looking for.

Once you’ve chosen a type of form, you’re presented with the form editor. The editor’s clean layout gives you a WYSIWYG view of the form you’re building, including preset fields if you chose to start building from a template. Any field can be edited using a convenient pop-up window, where you can customize the field type, size, label and a number of other options. Fields can be dragged and rearranged, and you can add new fields, sections, and extras using a convenient sticky toolbar at the bottom of the editor.

Form Extras include options like global layout settings, form progress indicators and saving options for end users, submit button customization and CAPTCHA options. The nice thing about these options is that they exist for people who need them, but if beginner users don’t notice or take advantage of them, it really won’t detract from the quality of their final form.

Using a Form

Having a great form creation engine is great, but it’s all for nothing if you can’t get that form out to the people you want to use it in an easy and effective manner. FormSpring provides you with a number of easy-to-use options for distributing your creations, so that you can target different users in the way you deem best.

You can choose from having FormSpring generate a unique URL at which your form can be reached, embedding the form using JavaScript code or HTML, installing a widget in your TypePad-enabled blog, or using an intermediate form that gathers data from your user before forwarding them to the form you’ve created.

Providing so many options ensures that you can tailor your form distribution strategy to specific target respondents, and also allows users with varying levels of technical expertise to take advantage of what FormSpring has to offer.

Third-party Integrations

As I mentioned earlier, FormSpring recently introduced new third-party integrations that makes it easier to use forms created via the web app, and to use the data gathered with said forms in other popular online applications.

The list of new integrations includes Campaign Monitor, FreshBooks, Google Apps and Salesforce.com, among others. For Campaign Monitor, integration allows you to add subscribers from your forms directly into your email marketing software. FreshBooks integration allows you to create clients, invoices and estimates automatically using data collected with FormSpring forms. Salesforce.com integration means you can make web forms for any Salesforce object, and update existing records using web form data.

Integrations finally allow some of the promise of a web-based information management system to be fully realized. “Synergy” is an old buzzword that’s been stripped of much of its significance over time, but it truly applies here, in a good way.

Let us know your thoughts on FormSpring on the comments.

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According to the Google Wave team’s post, 6,000 developer accounts have already been rolled out, and the team will sift through 20,000 additional requests during August. You can request a developer account here.

The team has also announced that the service will open to the public on September 30th. The team is currently working on improving Wave’s speed, stability and usability. Wave APIs are also being expanded.

Because developers are already using Wave, those with a sandbox account can already find a fair number of sample Wave applications and APIs in this gallery, and in this post. I don’t yet have a sandbox account, but I’m getting a better picture of how Wave applications may look and feel just from viewing the descriptions of many of them. If you’re interested in finding out what Wave is like, Solid State Group Technical Director Ben Rometsch has published detailed first impressions of the service, gained through his developer account, here.

One of the sample Wave applications lets you embed Wave(s) in a blog post or on a web page. That seems like an interesting way to build on the basic commenting system present on most blogs; I might find ways to use that in my posts here. There are even games built around Wave.

The Google Wave team is poised to put up additional posts this week summarizing what went on at Google Wave Federation Day in Mountain View, Calif. I remain skeptical about Wave necessarily being a huge game-changer, partly because almost anything Google announces immediately gets an overwhelmingly positive reaction. Still, the more I see of the development action going on around it, and the more specifics on applications I see about it, the more interested I am to see what it’s actually capable of.

When I first digested the news of Wave, I was reminded of all the companies that have tried to deliver the “universal inbox” over the years. These were supposed to be where all your email, voice mail, instant messages and every other type of communication got aggregated, and none of them really took off in a big way. Looking at the types of applications coming for Wave, though, makes me think differently about it. Could it improve how blogs work? Could it take the idea of a wiki to the next level? It looks like we shall soon see, and it also looks like more of an application platform than it did before.

Have you tried Google Wave? Let us know your thoughts in the comments.

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Here are five of the healthy snacks that I like to eat to help me get through the mid-afternoon slump.

Fresh fruit and berries. Apples, bananas and oranges are all tasty and bursting with carbs for energy, vitamin C and antioxidants. Why not make a small fruit salad? Berries are also great and contain even higher concentrations of antioxidants.

Seeds and nuts. Seeds and nuts are great as they are high in fiber and protein, which will make you feel full. I especially like walnuts and almonds. Walnuts are also high in omega-3 fatty acids, which help your brain to function. Beware, though — nuts are high in calories, so only take a small handful. This is the one snack I won’t leave within reach of my desk as it’s too easy just to keep grabbing handful after handful because they’re so tasty!

Plain nonfat yogurt (or soy yogurt). Yogurt is a great snack: low in fat, rich in protein that will help you feel full, with plenty of carbs for energy. Try sprinkling a little granola on top if you need something even more satisfying.

A bowl of oatmeal. Oatmeal is a good snack because it slow to digest, so you feel full for longer. Eating oatmeal can also lower blood cholesterol, reducing your risk of heart disease. If you don’t like oatmeal, a bowl of healthy breakfast cereal (perhaps with some yogurt or nonfat milk) will also provide fiber, carbs and vitamins.

Popcorn. Yes, you heard that right. Popcorn is a whole grain and high in fiber. Buy low-fat microwave popcorn, don’t add butter or salt — and stick to small servings.

What healthy snacks do you munch on to get over the mid-afternoon slump?

Image by stock.xchng user nkzs

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Sadly, most solar charging products — like the aforementioned Noon Solar and Juice Bags — unnecessarily bundle solar chargers with some other product, like a bag! Fortunately, standalone solar charging products are beginning to find their way to the marketplace. Some of the most intriguing are found in Suntrica’s range of SolarBadge and SolarStrap chargers.

Designed specifically for portable consumer electronics — like digital cameras, phones, MP3 players and GPS units — Suntrica’s chargers include adapters for common mobile charging connectors and USB devices and come in form factors ranging from flexible paperback-sized panels to wearable wrist-straps. Each charger holds an internal rechargeable battery, so that devices can be charged even when there’s little or no sunlight.

The chargers are priced between $40 and $70, with adapters priced individually at around $5 each — although, unfortunately, it seems that Suntrica’s products are currently only available in the company’s native Finnish market. Suntrica’s products are by no means the only portable solar chargers available today, but they look pretty durable, have some flexibility in the devices they support, and are competitively priced.

Alternatively, for the more adventurous, the fantastic Instructables site recently published a how-to guide to building a solar iPod/iPhone charger using some basic electronic parts, rechargeable batteries and a soldering iron! The component parts come to around $70, about the same as Suntrica’s high-end unit with an equivalent output, and although the project does look fun, it’s not quite as lovingly styled. It’s great to see that solar power is beginning to attract both venture-backed and grassroots-driven innovation.

I’m itching to try Suntrica’s products, so if you are using solar chargers regularly, let us know how they’re performing for you in the comments.

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Productivity and organization blog Zen Habits has posted a great list of 55 ways to boost your energy levels, tips that should help you to stay productive and happy throughout your workday

As well as the tips listed above, some of the other methods that I’ll be trying myself include:

• Get rid of that stuffy nose. Allergies will make you feel tired and cranky, but can be relieved with over-the-counter medicines.
• Work with your body’s clock (we’ve covered this previously).
• Have an afternoon power snack.
• Eat lots of berries, as they contain antioxidants that boost energy.
• Eat a satisfying breakfast but a light lunch, as a heavy lunch will leave you feeling drained for the whole afternoon.
• Add more cardio to your gym time, as more aerobic exercise gets your heart pumping.
• Get on your toes, as it stimulates your circulatory system.

Share your energy-boosting tips in the comments.

Image by stock.xchng user susiet.

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For many web workers, dependence on the battery-driven vagaries of cameras, phones, laptops and iPods can crimp your mobility.

So, hot on the heels of our recent item on the Myth Of All Day Computing, comes Energizer‘s announcement of four new easy-to-use chargers to complement their rechargeable battery line… a family charger, compact charger, ‘easy’ charger and intriguingly a ’15-minute’ charger.

Sadly, with the lack of standards in battery form factors, these products are only useful for those driven on AA and AAA batteries. I live for the day when I can pop 452 rechargeable AA batteries into my MacBook!

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