This got me thinking about how much my beliefs about business have changed in the ten years since I started my own company. I used to agree with the common recommendation that lines should be clearly drawn between one’s business and personal space. The advice was that you shouldn’t work from your kitchen table, and that you should have a separate space for your business.

From a balance perspective, it seemed only natural to compartmentalize, and to have clearly-defined boundaries between work and home. After all, wasn’t that how it worked with “regular jobs”? So when I created a business, I attempted to maintain clear boundaries between it and my home life.

But I began to see that my life as an entrepreneur was very different from those with “regular jobs.” For me, it was a struggle to determine where my work life stopped and my home life began. I thought that something was wrong with me for a while, but then I realized that I actually liked the blurred lines. I liked ‘living’ as much within my business as outside. Since that was true, why was it so necessary to separate the different parts of my life?

I’ve come to accept that I like having a “kitchen table business.” Like Chris Brogan, I have way more time with family and friends now than I ever did before starting a business. I have flexibility to work when I’m able: around sickness, around unpredictable bouts of insomnia, and around the even more unpredictable ebbs and flows of life. So while I used to believe that having a “kitchen table business” would set me up to become a workaholic, I now see it as a way to live my life exactly as I want.

Does my business have boundaries? Yes, but they’re more like gray areas. I’m a web worker, but I also have Internet-free days. There are days when I work eighteen hours, and other days when I work three. Sometimes I work in my pajamas from the sofa, but I can crave the structure of my office. In the end, it all evens out, and for the most part, I feel I’m able to maintain a semblance of balance.

How do you balance your life and business? Do you set clearly defined boundaries, or are you able to work successfully at the kitchen table?

Photo courtesy Flickr user Muffet

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I’ve been working on several big projects in recent months, and after the whirlwind started settling down, I realized how important it was to take time away from the demands that can wear us down.

In “The 4-Hour Work Week,” Timothy Ferris talks about spending two months on big work-related projects and then taking one month off for intense training of some sort or travel. For most of us, that can seem a bit extreme, but I do think he has the right idea. It’s so easy to just plow through the work, never taking time off to reflect on what we’ve accomplished and rest after accomplishing something. Keeping at that pace will surely lead to frustration and burnout.

The problem is, the work never seems to be done. In my case, after re-launching one of my sites, I now have to think about building it up with promotion and content, which is another big undertaking in and of itself, so where does it end? I guess the answer is, it doesn’t. There will always be something to do: A big project to complete; a new client to sign; a big promotional push to get underway. For small business owners and entrepreneurs, the reality is, the work is never done, so we just have to force ourselves to respect our own limitations and take time to recuperate and rest.

So, how can we ensure that we get enough time away from our work before burning ourselves out? Here are a few ideas that might help.

• Schedule time off first. A business owner I know schedules her time three months out, and the first thing she schedules is her time off. She decides three months ahead of time when she’s going to be off and schedules her work and availability around that. Really, I know that I can easily lose track of time and not remember the last time I took a vacation day. There are times when it seems that the only time I get off is when I’m sick, but if I would only schedule in my time off before scheduling anything else, it would be a lot easier to stay on track in the balance department.
• Keep weekends Internet-free. For most of us, our businesses and work are largely web-based, and when we spend the weekends surfing the web, hanging around social networks, or even checking email, it’s hard to feel like we get a real break. When I go completely Internet-free, it’s actually a nice relief, and it’s an easy way of making sure I don’t spend an hour or two each day of my weekend replying to work-related emails or thinking about work projects.
• Stick to a set wrap-up time. It’s easy to work “just a little longer” to the point that we work an extra ten hours a week. Julie Morgenstern has a great solution for this problem in her book “Never Check E-Mail in the Morning.” She suggests using a wrap-up alarm to remind yourself to start wrapping things up so that you leave the office at a set time each day. If you want to be out of the office by 5:30 each day, set your wrap-up alarm for 4:30 and start winding things down when it alerts you.
• Stick to a set start time. It’s just as easy to let work start creeping in too early as it is to let it keep us working late, so have a designated start time each day. Know your own weaknesses, and if you can’t resist the temptation to respond (or even check) work-related emails early in the morning, then don’t even put yourself near the temptation. Wait to check news and blog feeds until lunch instead of first thing in the morning so that you avoid being tempted to start work too early.
• Know when you’ve had enough. When you feel yourself getting too worn down, take a day off or at least limit your working time to the “must-dos” only. Wear yourself out completely, and you’ll end up sick, burned out, or frustrated with work. If you notice yourself snapping at others or becoming easily agitated, it might be time for a break.

As small business owners and entrepreneurs, it can be easy to allow the work to take over, leaving little room for breaks and down time, but it’s important to stay balanced. We need time to rest and recuperate so that we come back to work recharged and with a renewed energy and enthusiasm. Know your own limitations and make sure to schedule enough time to take care of yourself. Without your health and mental well-being, it will be much harder to see your business to success.

How do you make sure to get enough time away from your work to avoid burning out?

Photo by Flickr user skippyjon, licensed under CC 2.0

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In this post, I am going to focus specifically on how to balance the personal with the professional, but you should also read Aliza’s post about revisiting her 10 golden rules of social media for more best practices.

You can actually be professional and personal at the same time in social media without too much effort. When we talk about “being personal” on social media web sites, I think that many people confuse “personal” with “private.” The reality is that you get to decide what to share and what not to share, so you can still keep most areas of your private life private. Think about this like the beginning of a conference call on Monday where you spend a few minutes talking about how you spent your weekend. You probably aren’t going to reveal anything private, inappropriate or unprofessional in a conference call with a client or coworkers, but sharing a little personal information does help you get to know each other on a level that is slightly deeper than just having strictly work conversations. This is exactly the type of personal information you can easily share on social media.

Value is an important consideration for both personal and professional social media posts. Before you post something, think about the value that you can offer along with the observation. For example, “making pizza for dinner” is going to be of little value and less interesting to people than if you get detailed about the type of pizza and include a link to the recipe. While you may be thinking it’s silly to post about food, the reality is that people really bond around food; they enjoy talking about it, and it’s way more neutral than politics or religion. In other words, it’s a relatively safe topic, but one that people are very passionate about. Now, you probably wouldn’t post something like this to a corporate account for your brand (unless you are Tony Hsieh from Zappos), but you can talk about your products in a personal way by adding a note about your experience with the product as the author of the post. Maybe you helped with the design or product definition, and you can mention your personal contribution to the product.

Variety can also play a big role in how well you balance the personal and professional. You should strive for an appropriate balance based on your situation with a nice variety in your posts. For example, if you use Facebook mostly for personal reasons, and you start posting almost exclusively professional updates, your personal friends will probably be irritated. Likewise, if you use Twitter mostly for work, and you start posting only personal updates, you’ll lose the people who are following you for your professional insights. The trick is to come up with a balance between the personal and professional that works well in your situation, without swinging too far into either direction. I make a point of looking at my Twitter stream every few days to make sure that I have an appropriate balance of personal and professional along with a few other things that I try to balance (informative vs. fun, self-promotion vs. promoting others, etc.)

Context is also important. Being personal is very important in some cases and less important in others, so you need to think about the context and what you are trying to accomplish as a brand, and make the right decisions for your company. The tricky part is that no one approach will work for everyone and no one piece of advice fits well in every situation. This means living within the norms of the various web sites or networks where you are participating, but coming up with an approach that makes sense for you and your company. No blogger, consultant or industry expert can make the decision about the right balance for you.

How do you balance personal with professional in social media?

Photo by Flickr user D. Sharon Pruitt used under Creative Commons.

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Begin With the Basics

A good way to start a review of your activities is to look at the basics. Mine consist of parenting duties, health management and business. Those alone can fill up a person’s week, once you throw in the occasional social and in-person activities like volunteering, tennis, mah jongg and a monthly book club. Now, make a list of “must-dos” for each of the basics. Those are the things you can’t address as part of the streamlining process because you can’t drop or remove them.

Don’t ignore these “must-dos,” though. Keep an open mind about finding a more efficient way to do some of them. For example, instead of exercising for 60 minutes straight, it might be better to break it up into three 20-minute sessions. Although you still exercise for the same amount of time, you may find that you can accomplish more with gaps in between the sessions.

Areas for Streamlining

At this point, you look at the rest of your activities to see what you can streamline. Here’s a list of things to consider.

• Changing direction. Streamlining isn’t limited to cutting back and dropping activities, but also to consolidating or changing up the work you do to align it with your goals.
• Replace one for one. I’ve heard expert organizers recommend getting rid of an equal number of objects whenever you bring in new clothes, shoes or toys. This avoids building up clutter. Doing the same for your work activities keeps you sharp and focused, instead of spreading yourself thin.
• Dropping energy-draining clients and projects. It scares some folks to think of dropping a client and losing the income, but think of how much more energy you’ll have working with two great replacements instead. Energy-draining clients may bring in income, but it doesn’t add up when you consider the time it takes you to do the work.
• Social networking. I’m also seeing a trend in articles discussing cutting back social-networking usage. The key is to make the most of the time you spend on social media.
• Unpaid activities. I don’t post as many entries on my blog as I have in the past. That’s because my clients’ blogs come first. My blog receives at least one update a week, enough to keep its content fresh. Sometimes I start writing a post in my blog only to find it fits my client’s blog, so off it goes to that blog. Clients’ blogs not only provide income, but also more traffic and a reputation boost.
• Professional organizations. Do you need to belong to all those professional organizations? Do you need to participate in all those events and activities?

How do you streamline your business to ensure you stay on track?

Photo credit: Kymberly Vohsen

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Many of us are web workers because we want to spend less time commuting to work and more quality time with family, doing things we enjoy year-round. But life sometimes gets in the way and we forget to enjoy the little moments.

Those little moments don’t mean the big things like making a rare trip to the museum, or catching a show. It can simply be watching your six-year-old read, going to lunch with a friend, looking at the stars on a clear night, playing a game with your family or walking your dog on a spring-like day.

I think we all agree that the older we get, the faster time flies. Remember when you were a child that time took “forever” to get out of school, to reach your next birthday and to earn your driver’s license? Now events sneak up on us. Here’s why web working rocks and gives us time to enjoy the little things in our lives.

• Flexible uniforms and workouts. Web workers can wear whatever we want. I mostly wear shorts and a t-shirt or sweatpants and a sweatshirt. This way, I’m comfortable and always ready to work out.
• Convenient workouts. We can exercise when it’s best for us rather than trying to squeeze it in during lunch, waking up extra early before work or fighting the after-work crowd. I work best in the morning, so I exercise in the early afternoon when my mind starts to lag.
• Personal appointments. When an appointment takes longer than anticipated, we don’t have to stay later in a corporate office to make up for it. We’re already where we need to be and can make up the work easily at night or some other time. If there’s a special event in town that only happens during the day, we don’t have to use a personal day to attend.
• Volunteer any time. Since moving to full-time web working, I’ve been able to volunteer more often and take non-profit board positions, which tend to have meetings during the week day. I have many memories of doing volunteer work that only occurred during the week day.
• Enjoy interests and hobbies. I joined a tennis team that only plays during the week. It doesn’t eat into my work time since drilling and playing a match takes about the same amount of time as one of my regular workouts.
• Flexible schedule. Are you a morning person? A night person? A person who needs to take frequent breaks? Unless you have family commitments, you can work a schedule that fits your innate needs. So when you wake up in the morning, take a moment and think how wonderful it is to have more control over your work schedule.
• Unexpected events. It’s easier to deal with unexpected events as a web worker. When my dad had bypass surgery while I worked for a corporation, I could only spend the afternoon with him. But when he had a stroke, I was a web worker and spent a lot of time with him in the eight months that transpired between the stroke and his passing. Had I been in a corporate job, I would have missed out on all the time I spent with him in his final year.
• Illness. When I get a cold or just plain don’t feel well, I get comfy in bed and snuggle with my laptop. I don’t have to get dressed and drag myself to the office. Or I can work just a couple of hours, enough to get the job done. Plus, you don’t catch anything from colleagues. The more relaxed web working environment can be healthier so that you don’t get sick as often.
• Pets. When I take my dog out for her mid-day break on a typical day, I look at her and around me to take in the moment. If I were still in a corporate job, I would not have her in my life. Sure, she has her accidents in the house and sneaks into the trash when I’m not looking. But nothing beats her spending her day next to me while I work.
• Children. My kids come straight home after school. They stopped going to after-school care when I joined the ranks of web workers. I spend an hour or two with them catching up on their day (when they’re willing to share), ensuring they do their homework and going outside to play. Many of us web workers can easily sit in front of the screen for hours. Thanks to my dog, kids and need to exercise, I give my eyes and body a break. I can also volunteer at their schools during the day; I love seeing them at school with their classmates and remember those days.

I live in the Dallas area in Texas, an area not known for seeing snow often. When we had a beautiful snowfall recently, I took a 30-minute break to build a snowblob. (It had started raining by the time I put on the second layer.) That was great for my spirit and feeling like a kid again. When I returned to my toasty office, I felt revived and forged ahead in my work. Web working is decadent, isn’t it? Stop for a minute and appreciate what you have.

What do you love about web working?

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When did Noah build the ark, Gladys? Before the rain. Before the rain.
- Nathan Muir, Spy Game

In recent months, I’ve become acutely aware of how life and business can easily conflict with each other. It seems that the work involved in creating a successful business is never done, and if there’s an avalanche to come in life, it’s going to happen when there are deadlines looming and there’s a mountain of work to be done.

I’ve had a series of avalanches lately, which reminds me:

• There will never be perfect balance, peace and harmony between work life and personal life. Adjust accordingly.
• It’s important to avoid procrastinating and allowing things to pile up, whether that be work-related to-dos or the laundry and dishes. When avalanches strike, you’ll appreciate not feeling more burdened and overwhelmed by those little reminders of chaos and unrest.
• Try (at least the majority of the time) to honor a daily routine, a daily practice that keeps things humming along slowly but steadily. When things get crazy, the cushion built by that daily practice will allow for greater flexibility.
• Take regular time away from the business. Mental and physical stamina comes in handy during times of stress or when there’s more work than usual to be done.
• Remember that it’s not the big stresses, but the ongoing daily ones that cause more harm over the long term. The work will get done, eventually, so ease up where possible.
• Build (and learn to more steadily depend upon) a team of people to keep the business going, not only during challenging times but every day.
• Time flies whether you’re having fun or not, so why not have more fun?

Entrepreneurs, frelancers and small business owners have a tendency to run at a dangerously fast pace all the time, forgetting how important it is to step back and look at the big picture to make sure it resembles the vision and life they intended to create for themselves.

We can try to run at high speeds all the time, but life will inevitably throw up walls to slow us down. It’s important to intentionally steady the pace to account for those unexpected obstacles and be able to safely navigate around them. For me that means starting with a few simple steps:

• Being more selective with my work and obligations and saying no a lot sooner and a lot more frequently.
• Becoming diligent about honoring a regular stop time for work and learning to shut the office door behind me (and leaving it closed the entire time I’m off).
• Incrementally delegating routine tasks that tend to pile up and leave me strapped for time to focus on the most important things in my life and business.

It’s easy to ignore the rate at which we work and then become overwhelmed when the unexpected inevitably occurs. The easier option is to start making changes now to prepare for those times when you need more flexibility and wiggle room. While it’s impossible to plan for everything, it’s helpful to have a few safety nets in place to support you during challenging times.

How do you accommodate for the avalanches in life while still steadily building a successful business? How have you learned to prepare for rainy days while the sun is shining?

Image from Flickr by Joe Shlabotnik

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More than half of working Americans – 53 percent – have been interrupted by a work-related phone call or email while in the bathroom…. Twenty-four percent have allowed a call or email to interrupt them while in the throes of passion, and 23 percent while on a date. That may be because most working Americans – 59 percent – never turn off their mobile device.

Nokia claims that these numbers (collected from an online survey) are representative of US adults with a 4.4% margin of error. Of course, they have a technology pitch for tools that are supposed to help you maintain a better work-life balance, but it’s those raw numbers that fascinate me.

Are any of you readers really that attached to your mobile devices, and that worried about missing things? Personally, I don’t even let phone calls interrupt dinner, let alone more private moments. Am I unusual in this regard? Just over-the-hill and out of touch with whatever the current generation of workers is doing? Or is it just possible that the original survey data is flawed?

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When I have a large photo set I would like to look at in OS X the quickest and easiest way is to open them with Preview. Unfortunately, when you click on one picture that is in the same folder as the rest of the pictures, Preview doesn’t automatically recognize the photo is a part of a set and let you scroll through them all at once (you have to open each one individually).

To open photos as a set in Preview all you have to do is:

1. Highlight all of them (click the first picture in the set and while holding shift click the last photo in the set)
2. Right click on them
3. Chose “Open with” > Preview

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But instead of just reading about it, let Brian Mahony, Zv’s vice president of marketing, give you a quick demo of the Zv in action:

Because the demo PC at the show didn’t have Netflix or the plug-in to watch a streaming HD version of something like Lost installed, it’s tough to get a complete first impression. Content from Hulu looked blocky, and the remote with the trackpad built in seemed to be a little flaky, but from the looks of it, the service does what it says it will.

Having a box that can get anything off your PC and isn’t tied to specific content relationships definitely has its appeal, unlike iTunes, for instance, which doesn’t have The Office after NBC pulled it from the service. But Zv’s $499 price point still seems steep and probably won’t get me to cut my cable quite yet.

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1) Time Space Continuum Awareness.
Founders experience time and consume time differently from girlfriends. Founders feel four days pass in a flash. Eating, sleeping take back seats so calling the GF is way secondary. [I'm telling you to change that once a year & that means next week: 2-14-08. Set your alarm.]

2) Get Some Phone Personality.
If even for 5 minutes, microbursts of attention pay exponential returns. Don’t multi-task during her call. Environment; Get outta the cube. Smell the front desk flowers and woo
your sweetie via telecom airwaves.
2a) Set a hard stop time. Aim for frequency over quantity in optimal SGFM.
2b) No, a missed call isn’t real interaction. Giving good phone is something Romeo and Casanova would advocate if Verizon were dropping calls back in the 1600′s.

3) Calendarize to the Nth Degree.
If its on Outlook/GoogleCalendar/Sidekick, a founder will do it. Any and all a) dates, b) impromptu flowers, c) future gifts for when you’re at a conference, and d) arcane anniversaries (i.e. 1st time we ever ditched the four kids for two weeks was 4 years ago).
Calendarize your impromptu gestures of amore.
3a) Find and replace SGFM with SWM. “W” for wife which will be my program beginning in August… August 2011.

4) Drama is a part of her DNA.
Solution: Launch a proactive nuke. How??; Complain for no apparent reason. Start by saying, “I was watching YouTube/PlanetEarth and I was thinking, you NEVER TAKE ME on safari and you never bring me a zebra leg the way female lionesses do.” What gives? Bu-ha-haa!!!!

5) Porcupine the Drama Complaint After You Amplify it.
Your rant:”You’re mad about my not making Bobbys birthday?? Well, I’m furious. You got to see him turn 6. Me I got to see my server reset itself in effen Horsham/Fremont/Naperville. Lets have another b-day party NOW (at 2am). You rouse the lil bastard and ill cut the Fraiche Yogurt FroYo cake.”

To recap, the porcupine FORMULA: Anticipate it + Hear it + Loud-ify it = Faster Path to Peace. And then solve it with flair and oboxicity (sprinkle with sex if necessary).

6) Complaints that are Compliments.
When strait butt-kissing just seems too obvious, complain upwards. Examples:
* “You know I don’t like how much fun you have with your girlfriends when they come into town.” Translation: take more time off.
* “Why don’t we see that couple more?” Translation: they broke up.
* “Hey why don’t we plan more ‘us’ time this weekend?” Translation: I’m not going to call you Tuesday > Friday cuz we’re having us time Saturday.
* “So you think you work out too much cuz I read on Found|Read.com that a GF who works out more than 2x is shopping me.” Translation: No translation needed, she is jk.
* “After you nap, you look so FRESH!” Translation: Sleep more so I can code!
* “My dog Baxter <link dogster.com/Baxter/likes you more.” Translation: Play with him more so I can code.

7) Love is a Choice.
According to my relationship mentor, Susan Page, love is a choice. Buddy, you picked her so turn your choice into a part time job. Barbara DeAngelis, another mentor, said relations have emotional bank accounts so effen make a deposit and not a withdrawal. Check out Susan’s books on Why Talking is Not Enough: 8 Loving Actions That Will Transform Your Marriage, or If I’m So Wonderful, Why Am I still Single?. And Barbara’s luv letters: What Women Want Men to Know, and Are You The One for Me?: Know Who’s Right & Avoiding Who’s Wrong.

8) Enlist the help women board of advisors.
You’re too cheap to hire a pro consultant from McKill Me and Associates. Man from Mars, what are you deciphering? Answer: Venus talk. Or if you only have $15, PayPal me and
I’ll take your call.

9) Cook something.
It can be a quesadilla. Even a grill cheese. 3, 4 or 5 course meals can be a disaster. Simple food, cooked with love and care win ‘bukoo’ points.

BONUS:
10) Get her a puppy.
No I won’t sell you Baxter. Ok, I will but for $90k jk. Don’t forget the puppy needs day care, grooming, expert trainer and premium food so your net-net per year maintenance fee is apprx $14k. Your ROI is more hours you can work followed by a stay-in-execution from having kids.

BIG BONUS — may be useless, nerds, cuz this tip is way over your heads, but:
11) Pro Forma Your Emotional Bank Accounts Do this for your luv deposits and withdrawals the same way you would forecast revenue (google “emotional bank accounts”). Stephen Covey’s stuff works even though your company has zero money coming in.

Larry Chiang is the founder of Duck9, and UCMS. He is an expert at FICO scores, how to Hack Your Startup Credit Rating, revenue generation, cash flow … oh and: dating. Read more about Larry in the Oct. 15, 2007 issue of BusinessWeek.

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