A poll can be a great way to start online conversations, discover trends or get feedback from customers. ProProfs Polls offers a quick and easy option with good features.

Like most free polling services, ProProfs lets you create and share the polls online, but it includes features not found in every polling service that might make it the right one for you.

Features

Here’s an overview of ProProfs key features.

• Works with Google Maps: Visually shows where votes come from on a map.
• Add images: Grab pictures from flickr or your hard drive.
• Block repeat votes: No “American Idol” vote fraud here.
• Filter votes: View votes by country or city.
• Share poll with widget: Post your poll on your web site or social network page.
• Search other polls: Browse for ideas or see the results of other polls.

Creating a Poll

Fill out a short registration form for a free account and you’re on your way. You similarly start a new poll just by filling out a form. To add images or videos, just tap the “Media” item next to the items where you want them.

You can adjust your poll’s settings (for security, comments, etc.) as needed. Once done, you have your poll. You can immediately share it with social networks with just one click.

You can send the poll by email, but it doesn’t work well. The email the service sends is so generic and looks like spam that the recipient will likely ignore it:

You can customize the poll by choosing one of six color options and from three different sizes.

Viewing the Poll

Everything you need to check your poll’s progress appears in a well-organized interface with tabs. The tabs show the poll and information for sharing and embedding, poll results and poll analysis.

The whole process of signing up and sharing the poll takes less than 10 minutes. Other quick polling tools often only let you create the poll and see a graphic, nothing more. ProProfs Polls gives users the ability to create a fast poll with easy and helpful tools for doing analysis. Just don’t touch the email feature.

Which polling tools do you use?

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Just in case you missed any of them, here are the five most popular posts on WebWorkerDaily this week:

• 8 Ways to Avoid Overwhelming Your Followers’ Twitter Stream

Meryl explains some simple rules for making sure you don’t annoy your Twiter followers by overwhelming their streams.

• How to Eliminate Compulsive Internet Fiddling

Are you an Internet fiddler? Celine shares some strategies for avoiding compulsive web surfing.

• 10 Useful Firefox Add-ons for Almost Everybody

Meryl links ten exceedingly useful Firefox extensions.

• How Will You Survive the Holiday?

A holiday-themed post from Dawn — how did you survive the holiday?

• Must-Have iPhone Apps for Surviving Air Travel

Taking a trip? Nancy shares some iPhone apps that will make the journey smoother.

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We’d like to say thanks to this month’s WebWorkerDaily sponsors:

• Rackspace: Experience fanatical support.
• Mozy: Back up your photos, music, and files with Mozy for as low as $4.34 per month.

We’ve written widely about the rejuvenated browser wars, with lots of innovation coming from the new Firefox 3.5 and Google Chrome. There is another browser that has recently been released in a new version 5.1: Lunascape. The new version is this browser’s first release optimized for English-speaking users (it’s from a Japanese company; I covered the alpha here).

The interesting thing about this browser is that it includes the three rendering engines that are found in Internet Explorer, Firefox and Safari/Chrome. There are a few reasons why this browser may be worth adding to your arsenal, even if you don’t use it as your default.

As you can see in the screenshot above, Lunascape asks you whether you want its default rendering engine to be Trident (found in Internet Explorer), Gecko (the same version found in Firefox 3.5) or WebKit (found in Safari and Chrome). You can either manually set Lunascape to use a particular rendering engine, or you can have it select one to use on the fly for optimized performance. Lunascape officials claim that the JavaScript performance in their browser is actually faster than in Firefox 3.5. If it is, the difference is minimal, but there are a few other reasons why this browser is worth having on hand.

If you regularly use multiple browsers, as I do, you’re probably familiar with the fact that many pages render differently on different browsers. There are also certain kinds of live-streamed events, such as webcasts, that look very different depending on the rendering engine in your browser. Lunascape can level the playing field, and let you quickly get to the properly rendered version of a page at which you’re looking.

Lunascape is also used by some web developers and designers who want to rifle through the popular rendering engines on the fly as they create things, to see how they look and to monitor any errors. I suspect most readers won’t use Lunascape as their primary browser, but it’s worth having on hand when you want to switch rendering engines without jumping in and out of browsers.

Have you tried Lunascape? Let us know your thoughts on this new browser in the comments.

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While I’ve noted the advanced Twitter search operators in the past, but wanted to spend some quality time looking at them in more detail. The standard AND/OR operators are useful, but aren’t all that interesting. Below is a look at the standard operators, with a focus on uses for some very interesting operators that let you filter searches based on location, attitude, posts with links, dates and more, along with some limitations and cautions for each one.

Keep in mind that most of these same search queries work equally well in Twitter search and various other applications, like TweetDeck and Monitter. Spend some time in the Twitter search refining your results using the operators discussed below, and then take advantage of those advanced queries in your other monitoring applications.

Standard Operators

Twitter search uses many of the common operators used by search engines. Use the OR operator to state that one or other (or both) of the keywords must be present, search for phrases using quotes, and exclude results using the “-” operator.

Location

Using the “near:” operator is a great way to filter tweets that mention something you’re searching for that is also a common word. For example, I might use location to find people mentioning Posies (a cafe in Portland) without finding every mention of the flower, the band or other non-relevant results:

• posies near:portland
• posies near:portland within:30mi

Searching by location can be very useful, but keep in mind that it will miss tweets from people with bogus or improperly formatted locations. The location search became almost useless recently when many users around the world started setting their Twitter location to Tehran. Despite these caveats, I find some interesting information by narrowing tweets to my location.

Dates

Right now, Twitter search only seems to go back about 10 days, so a date search is only useful if you need to filter for something fairly recent. However, filtering by date can be useful when presented with a high volume of results:

• iranelection until:2009-07-08
• “michael jackson” since:2009-07-07

Attitude

The positive and negative attitude filters simply find people using the smiling and frowning emoticons; however, it does seem to include several varieties of each emoticon. I would use it as a quick way to find positive or negative mentions, but I wouldn’t use it for any kind of measurement. For example:

• “michael jackson” :)
• “michael jackson” :(

Questions

You can also filter for posts asking questions. This can be a great way to find and answer questions about a topic, for example:

• “yahoo pipes” ?

From / To

Another interesting set of operators, from and to, allow you to search just for posts sent from a particular user or to a particular user, for example:

• twitter from:webworkerdaily
• book to:oprah

You might want to combine the “from” or “to” operators with some of the others. It’s a great way to make sure that you don’t miss any important questions sent to you. You can also use it to find questions or positive/negative attitude posts directed toward a particular user, for example:

• :) to:geekygirldawn
• ? to:geekygirldawn

Links

I saved the best for last. One of my primary reasons for using Twitter is to find interesting information, and while I do get information from individual tweets, you can only say so much in 140 characters, so the best information often comes to me as links:

• monitoring twitter filter:links

Or you can use this filter in combination with the “from” operator to find links from certain people:

• from:om filter:links

I tried to cover some of the less well known, but useful search operators. There are several additional operators that I haven’t covered here, so you should take a look at the Twitter search operators page for more details and examples.

How do you use the Twitter advanced search operators?

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I spend many of my working days (and nights) switching between Windows and Mac machines. Having my project notes available across all my machines is very important, making Evernote one of my most-used applications.

You can now use Evernote Web to collaborate on your notes using the new Shared Notebooks feature. This new feature opens up some new options for web workers who are collaborating with business partners and clients, and for employers who want a central repository for project notes and ideas that is accessible to every project member regardless of their location.

Setting Up The Sharing Notebooks Feature
If you’re using the free version of Evernote, you can only open up your notebooks for viewing by others. This is not quite a full collaboration experience but handy if you want somebody to look over an Evernote notebook. Evernote Premium users can open up their notebooks for being viewed and modified by others, which offers a full collaboration and sharing experience.

You must first click on sharing setup to configure the sharing of your selected notebook(s). The good news is the great Evernote UI you enjoy in other parts of the service also continues in this sharing process.

Sharing Evernote Notebooks

The good news is that you don’t have to be an Evernote Premium user to make modifications on a shared Evernote notebook. However, you must be an Evernote Premium user to enable notebook sharing. An important point about Evernote notebook sharing is that any notebook additions made will count against the notebook owner’s upload allowance.

Evernote also provides the tools to track your shared notebooks by adding a “Link this to my account” button on the top right of any shared notebook you are visiting.

Peering Into The Future of Evernote Notebook Sharing
This is just the first phase of a raft of sharing features planned for Evernote, delivering base-level collaboration through the web interface. As I’m finding my Evernote usage growing, I look forward to seeing the same level of Evernote collaboration available to me on my Mac, Windows PC and phone.

How do you use the sharing and collaboration features of Evernote?

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When it comes to promotion, the two biggest problems for most small business owners are effective planning and maintaining a consistent marketing effort. After what seems like a lot of effort attempting to drum up new business, it’s easy to get discouraged when you aren’t seeing results. But with the right lead generation plan and some helpful tools, you’ll find your efforts will pay dividends.

Set Up Your Plan

First, you have to take the time to carefully consider your options for marketing and promoting your business, rather than just taking a scattergun approach.

There are many possible tactics for finding new clients and customers, but if you try to do everything, you’ll end up spreading yourself too thin. That said, during the evaluation phase, you should throw out every possibility, carefully weighing the pros and cons of each. Then, after you’ve evaluated them, select the tactics most likely to lead to success for your particular business, taking into account your personal strengths and weaknesses, as well as your available resources.

You need a tool to help you with the process. I like using a mind-mapping tool like Bubbl.us for this, as it allows you to examine every available option.

Laying out all the possibilities using a tool like Bubbl.us also keeps the process from getting overwhelming. You can easily add every marketing and promotional tactic, while still keeping a big-picture view of how it all works together.

Once you have all of the possibilities listed, take the time to consider each one. When you decide you want to eliminate a tactic, it’s very easy to delete the option, leaving you with a clean plan of attack.

Maintain Consistent Marketing Effort

The other half of the marketing equation is consistency. You have to do the same things over and over in order to see results. The main obstacle to consistency is the lack of systems and tools to keep you organized.

It’s easy to lose track of time and think, “I just posted to my blog the other day,” when really it was two weeks ago. With a reliable system, you can see exactly what you’ve done and when, as well as what’s left to be done.

My favorite tool for this is 37Signals’ Backpack. I break down the marketing tactics selected within Bubbl.us into action steps that I record in Backpack. For instance, if I plan to post articles to my blog three times weekly, then I have three separate action tasks.

I have a page set up for each day of the workweek, and I evenly distribute the action tasks for all of my marketing tactics throughout the week.

On a given day, I simply click on that day’s page and get to work on the tasks, which are within a handy checklist (see image above along the left).

As I complete the items, I check them off. My goal is to get through the entire list on any given day.  If I don’t get through the list for some reason, my rule is to get through all of the week’s tasks before the following Monday. This provides me with a little flexibility without letting me completely off the hook or allowing me to get too lax with my efforts (thus, adding consistency).

Each Monday, I un-check all the lists on every page, which helps me to stay accountable to my plans and goals for my business. I can clearly see what got done and what did not get done over the previous week. After un-checking the items, I’m ready to begin another week.

It’s organized, it’s simple, and it requires no thought on my part. Just open the right page and get to work. Maintaining an effective and consistent marketing plan is a lot of work, but the task is a lot easier with the right mix of tools and techniques.

How do you stay consistent with your marketing? What tools and techniques keep you on track?

Image by stock.xchng user dannystock

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Microsoft Office OneNote 2007 seems to have the best reputation out of the apps in the Microsoft Office family, due to its elegant simplicity and usability. While you might be happy with OneNote 2007 out of the box, a number of add-ons, called OneNote Power Toys, add new functionality to the program.

Here is a sampling of some of the OneNote 2007 Power Toys — made by Microsoft and third parties — that I’ve found useful during my time as a  OneNote user:

Send to OneNote: I like to use OneNote 2007 as a repository for research information. I have come to rely on this Power Toy to shuttle documents into OneNote by clicking on a file in My Documents, choosing “Send To”, and then selecting “OneNote 2007″ as the destination.

Send to OneNote from Outlook: I’ve been using this Microsoft-developed Power Toy since OneNote 2003. It’s the perfect tool for archiving emails to OneNote 2007. You can access it from Outlook 2007’s message ribbon. This Power Toy is one of my favorites because I like to save important emails in my OneNote notebooks.

Send to OneNote from Internet Explorer: While I admit I was one of the first to upgrade to IE 8, I only use it for testing purposes or when I have to access microsoft.com. Installing this Power Toy adds a Send to OneNote option on the Internet Explorer Tools menu. Go to a Web page, and then choose Send to OneNote from the Tools menu, and the Web page appears in the Unfiled Notes section of OneNote 2007. I’ve gotten away from clipping Web pages into OneNote after discovering delicious but still find it useful for things like saving ecommerce site receipts.

Export Outlook Notes to OneNote: Prior to the launch of OneNote, many of my project notes, article ideas, thoughts and other random synapse misfirings resided in Outlook Notes. I recommend this Power Toy if you want to make the jump from Outlook Notes to OneNote 2007 nirvana.

Clip to OneNote from Mozilla Firefox. While the Firefox extensions available for sending a Web page to OneNote aren’t Power Toys, they serve the same role as the Send to OneNote from Internet Explorer Power Toy. Unfortunately, some of the Firefox to OneNote extensions (for example, the Firefox OneNote extension) available are not yet updated for Firefox 3.5 The Firefox Add-ons site has two options for clipping Web pages and sending them to OneNote. Send/Clip to OneNote is marked for older Firefox versions and Clip to OneNote, which is marked experimental but works well. Note that you have to specify the path to OneNote for the Clip to OneNote extension to work. Here is a sampling of the extension’s output into OneNote:

Even if you are having fun with OneNote 2007 out of the box, these Power Toys can help better integrate OneNote for information intake from your most used desktop applications, making you a more productive and even happier OneNote 2007 user.

What power toys do you use to make OneNote more productive?

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Thanks to the kind folks at Virgin Mobile USA, we have a free Broadband2Go USB device, worth $149.99, to give away to one lucky reader. The device works with the Broadband2Go network, offering prepaid (no contract) nationwide 3G mobile Internet access.

To be in the running to win, send a description of the craziest thing you’ve had to do in order to get Internet access to contests@webworkerdaily.com. The most deserving story received by 4 pm PT, Friday July 10, will win. Please note that as the device only works in the U.S., this contest is only open to readers from the U.S. The deadline to get in entries closes at 4 pm PT Friday.

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In the current economy, business networking is more important than ever — we need to use lots of different techniques for finding clients. Social networks can be a great addition to our marketing toolboxes. Since I started actively using social networks (only a year and a half ago!), I’ve reconnected with old friends, and have gotten quite of bit of business that can be directly attributed to connections that were facilitated through these networks.

But social networks can also be great time-wasters, too. However, If you focus on the marketing aspects of the networks, the time spent using them can consist of, as Meryl says, “zero-guilt activities.” Here are some tips for using social networks as effective marketing tools.

Join the active networks. There are literally thousands of social networks to choose from (digFoot lists over 3,700). But most are small, not very active, or of interest only in specific fields or geographic regions. I’ve spent the last month looking at many networks, and have decided that for me, it makes sense to focus on just four.

• LinkedIn. Often described as “Facebook for business,” LinkedIn combines a very large user base, excellent tools for finding connections, and lively discussion groups. Its system for making recommendations is very well-managed. It has so many features that its menu system can be obscure at times, but it’s well worth learning to navigate through the site.
• Facebook. The growth of this network is phenomenal — it’s claiming 700,000 new users every day! Even six months ago, most of my Facebook friends were under 30. Now, even we in the older generation have discovered it: I now have almost as many Facebook friends as I do LinkedIn connections, even though I joined LinkedIn several months before Facebook. Facebook is still a much more informal place than LinkedIn, but it’s becoming a valuable business tool as Facebook Pages and Facebook Groups (see below) evolve.
• Twitter. Technically, Twitter isn’t a social network, but it can be great for business communication and networking with customers, colleagues and friends. Facebook is highlighting its status update functionality to make it more “Twitterish,” so we’ll see how the two services compete.
• Yelp. This review site is new on my radar, but so far, I’m impressed with how active it is (at least in my part of the world). Now that it has a function allowing businesses to provide details of their services, it may become a very useful marketing tool, especially since it is now integrating a way to share reviews on Facebook. It is geographically based, however, and home workers may not want to provide a public street address.

Create pages for your business on LinkedIn, Facebook and Yelp. You may also want to create a Twitter account for your business that is separate from your personal account.

Join groups within the social networks where people you know are likely to hang out. In my opinion, the reason that LinkedIn and Facebook haven’t become unmanageable as they’ve gotten bigger, is that they’ve encouraged the development of small groups where people can talk about shared interests. Increase your credibility and visibility by using your professional expertise to add to these discussions.

Post frequently, but judiciously. Meryl’s comments about Twitter overload applies to the social networks as well. I’ll also add that services allowing one to post simultaneously to multiple networks, such as Ping.fm, are great, but should be used carefully. The networks have different audience demographics, and this should be kept in mind when you’re deciding what and where to post.

Use the networks’ automated tools for finding people you know. The networks can, with your permission, review your address book and see who you know who’s already on their network. They also have a “people you may know” function that recommends possible contacts. LinkedIn’s system has worked well for me; Facebook’s seems to be less accurate. The recommendations presented to you are based on background data (schools attended, former jobs) you provide to the networks, so it’s worth the time to provide complete information in your profiles — assuming you are comfortable with their privacy policies.

Use RSS feeds to follow what the members of your network are doing. The folks who run the social networks want you to visit their web sites, of course, but I find it more convenient to follow the activity of my connections through an RSS reader.

Add your Facebook instant message account to your IM program. Facebook’s instant message system can be added to multi-protocol IM programs. On my Mac, I prefer Adium; the PC users in my company like Pidgin or Digsby.

Use privacy settings to minimize email notifications. For Facebook, the AllFacebook blog has an excellent privacy primer; note, though, that Facebook is in the process of updating its privacy settings. And check out PC World’s discussion of privacy settings for LinkedIn. You’ll want to use these settings to control how and when the social networks email you. I find that since I follow the networks’ RSS feeds, I can turn off most of their emails.

It’s exciting to watch as the social media landscape changes every day. In the near future, it’s likely that some social networks will become important business tools, while others will fade away. In the meantime, we can learn how best to use these tools to increase the success of our endeavors.

What techniques do you use to manage social networks effectively?

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When you’re working on your own, setting up appointments can take you away from more important tasks. Even if the appointment itself is something crucial — a meeting with a client to go over a new project’s specs, say — the back and forth of trying to find a time that works for both of you can delay your ability to get down to business. BookFresh provides an alternative that can let your clients choose a time to talk to you that works for both of you.

BookFresh’s online service isn’t so different from a virtual receptionist. As you set up your account, you have the opportunity to choose what kinds of appointments you’ll accept: as a web worker with clients all over, I primarily offer only phone appointments. If you’re willing to have clients come to your business, or you’re willing to go to visit them, however, you can choose those options. You can also schedule a client without having him go through setting up an appointment himself, as well as limit the hours you are available on your calendar.

As you explore BookFresh, you’ll find many features beyond simply setting appointments. The site can issue a variety of appointment reminders, including via text message to make sure you get them. You can also sync the service with your existing calendar. If you charge directly for the time you spend meeting with a client, you can also have BookFresh offer a pre-payment option to your clients; the site uses PayPal to request and accept payments. You can even embed your appointment schedule in your own web site.

If you work in a team,  the scheduler can handle multiple staff members on both the Business plan ($19.95 per month) and the Business Pro plan ($29.95). The crucial difference between the two plans is the availability of phone support. A free plan is available if you’re interested in testing out BookFresh, but it is severely limited.

In addition to the scheduling services, BookFresh offers a few additional features meant to help you find more leads. The site allows you to integrate client testimonials into your schedule, as well as create a business mini-site in order to better attract clients. It also provides advertising services to drum up local business for your company through Google, Vast and other sites. I wouldn’t necessarily consider such an advertising strategy to be useful for many web workers, considering not all of us look primarily for local business, but the feature doesn’t seem to have any additional costs associated with it.

What tools do you use for setting up client meetings?

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Having studied branding very briefly in another life, I was curious about “The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Branding Yourself,” by Sherry Beck Paprocki and Ray Paprocki. How would product and service brand theory be translated to the branding of people? And could a book set an ordinary human being on the path to being the next Steve Irwin/Oprah/Paris Hilton?

Despite that brief brush with brand theory years ago, I consider myself a personal branding novice, so I came to the book with an open mind. In terms of structure and coverage, it seemed well planned and comprehensive. It’s broken into four parts: “What is branding?”, “Launching your personal brand”, “Branding in the modern world” and “Brand extension and evolution.” So far, so good. There are 20 chapters in a total of 228 pages, so it’s obvious that they’re going to be pretty easy to get through.

Can you sense a “but” coming? Well, here it is.

Too General

I read the book from start to finish (though it’s definitely the kind of book you could dip into quickly to get tips on a particular area), and I found it very general. The references the authors give to readers’ potential occupations — from writer to plumber to college graduate (of any description) looking for a first job — suggest that the audience for the book was defined in terms of its target readers’ needs for basic information on personal branding. That might be fine if the authors had had more space in which to educate such a wide potential readership. Unfortunately, the broad-brush, general way in which this book addresses personal branding means that, for many readers (I suspect) little of the content will be personally relevant or particularly useful.

Here are a few examples. The guide covers all forms of promotion, from preparing a resume to buying billboard space. It takes the time to explain how the generation in which your target audience members are born will affect which media they use, and how they use them, but also includes sections entitled “What is print media?” and “What is broadcast media?”. Advice is also provided on manners, eye contact and the correct use of cutlery as embodiments of your personal brand.

Confusing Advice

It’s this lack of focus that probably lead to the inclusion of what I’d consider to be less-than-great advice. In Chapter 4, “Communicating Over the Clutter,” the authors explain the elements of visual design in a discussion of visual identity. This seemed incongruous to me (they’re trying to teach people the basics of design in two pages of a beginner’s guide to a completely different topic?), but the introduction implies the purpose of this section:

“We’re not necessarily encouraging you to pay a designer to do all of your work for you, but if you opt to design your own marketing materials, you should become acquainted with some very basic rules of design.”

Personally, I don’t consider this good advice. Firstly, if you aren’t acquainted with the very basic rules of design, it would seem to be logical  advice to avoid trying to design any brand collateral, since in a professional sphere you will undoubtedly be up against those who have employed the expertise of professional designers, and your work simply will not stack up.

Secondly, if all the other advice in the book — which promotes the importance of being true to your brand at all times — is to be followed, then surely the authors should recommend that unless they’re designers themselves, readers pay a professional to create marketing materials.

This isn’t the only instance of contradictory advice I found in the book, and it seems to me that the lack of concentration on a subsegment of the extremely broad target audience is the key problem. The many examples provided throughout the text further support this hunch: from Madonna to a cafe owner, Oprah to the author’s personal friends, it might be hard to find an example that speaks directly to you.

Lack of Practical Focus

The other problem I had with this book is that I didn’t find it as practically focused as I felt the topic requires. Branding is a fairly nebulous concept at the best of times; for the beginner it can seem overwhelming. But although the authors explain each concept — from writing a traditional press release to employing Twitter, Facebook and other services to build a personal brand online — and provide examples that show how others have used personal branding techniques, they don’t:

• show you how to choose between the many different branding vehicles covered
• show you how to put together or monitor a branding strategy
• differentiate between branding and other forms of promotion, or show how these types of promotion may fit within an overall marketing strategy, or marketing strategy for a larger entity

That last point may seem fussy — if you’re actively promoting your personal brand, perhaps that’s all the marketing you need — but put aside the big-name examples like Martha Stewart, and consider everyday examples, such as the owner of a local cafe. Should the brand of Bill’s Cafe be different from the personal brand of Bill, its proprietor? If Bill wants to run a two-for-one lunch deal at Bill’s Cafe, will that affect his personal brand? How can he ensure the two flourish side-by-side?

For a largely practical book, these omissions seem significant. I know it’s a beginner’s guide, but I think it could have been considerably improved by addressing these fairly basic expectations. Perhaps a well-researched, clearly organized “Further Reading” section would have enabled the many jumping-off points this book provides to be used as such.

I can’t recommend this book to anyone who actually wanted to create a personal brand for themselves. I can only recommend it if you don’t know what personal branding is, have no great interest in knowing about the details of it, but have $16.95 and a couple of hours free to dip into the topic.

Share personal branding book recommendations in the comments.

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I have a singletasking tip for you, and it’s an important one: Work like you’re on vacation. Before you type up the smart-aleck response, “You mean don’t work at all?” let me explain. I mean work like you’re taking a working vacation. If you’re a full-time remote worker, you probably know the kind of focused working vacation I mean. Sometimes, you can pull one off without your employer even being aware that you’ve taken a vacation at all, if you’re experienced in the art.

The key to a successful working holiday? Good time management and prioritization skills. Having fun and distracting things, settings and activities all around you has a way of throwing what needs doing and what can be put off into sharp relief. The result, for me at least, is a kind of highly motivated tunnel vision that has me blowing through high-priority tasks in half the time I would normally take.

Since you’re not actually always on vacation, how do you replicate the effect in order to trigger task triage? The solution is to bring back the motivation, if not the exotic locales.

Fill Your Day With Extra-Curricular Activities

When planning out your work week, add in as many fun, after-work activities as you can manage. This might mean some personal blogging, joining a book club that meets regularly, participating in regular Twitter chat groups, or playing recreational league sports (I’ve just signed up for dodgeball, which should be interesting).

Not only will crowding weekdays with fun, social or active events and activities cut down on artificial work task exaggeration (you know that it shouldn’t take you three hours to finish that weekly status report, for instance), it’ll help you stay happy and healthy, too.

Knock Off Early

Take your usual workday end-time, and subtract two hours from that. No matter what the status of your work at that time (emergency priority stuff obviously excluded), you’re forbidden from doing anything else, professionally speaking. If all goes well, the perception of being under a time crunch will result in faster, more efficient work habits, and you’ll have no choice but to leave the less important stuff for another day.

Plan Day Trips

If an imaginary time crunch alone isn’t doing it for you, try peppering your week with mini-vacations. These could be things as simple as a shopping trip, or as complicated as a late afternoon jaunt to the zoo with the kids.

My own personal favorite mini-vacation is a trip to the Royal Ontario Museum here in Toronto, where the best time to visit is early in the morning to midday on weekdays, since you get to avoid the tourist crowd. I’m only halfway through the ancient Greek pottery exhibit, so it’s sure to motivate me to stay focused on the essential in order to give myself some extra leisure time.

Welcome (and Plan for) Personal Life Interruptions

If you have a home office, this might be something that’s unavoidable anyway, but blocking off a good chunk of floating time for unscheduled interruptions from your family and friends is not only a wise work/life balance move, but could help quiet professional distractions.

By giving domestic concerns a higher priority on your to-do list, you’ll have to create room by bumping low-priority work tasks, which will hopefully result in having less to think about during those hours when you are in dedicated work mode.

Working should never feel like a chore, even when you’re not treating it like a vacation, but these tips might help stave off the inevitable creep of bad habits, procrastination, boredom and, worst of all, unmanageable multitasking, which we sometimes fall into just for the sake of feeling busy. Filling your schedule with leisure activities gives you the benefit of feeling busy without having to generate extra work for yourself. It also helps give you an excuse to ignore low-priority distractions and keep a sharp focus on the important things. Plus, who doesn’t love a working vacation?

Share your singletasking tips in the comments.

Image by flickr user m o d e

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Blackberry Pearl Flip

Editor’s note: With this post we welcome Rachel Murray to the WebWorkerDaily team. Rachel has been building web sites for more than 10 years, and currently manages the online presence of a nonprofit in the Boston area.

I’ve only made the transition from a “regular” mobile phone to a smartphone recently. I had been able to hold off up until now, but then the trusty Razr that I had for three glorious years just gave up on me. After a heart-to-heart with the sales rep at T-Mobile, “we” agreed that perhaps I should try the BlackBerry Pearl Flip for the new contract price of $50 (as opposed to the Razr for $20). I didn’t want to be a slave to yet another device, but he showed it to me, and it actually looked like a regular phone.

The BlackBerry Pearl Flip is like a secret smartphone. I think that’s why I like it so much. Here are some other reasons the Pearl Flip makes a great transition smartphone:

1. If you’re used to flip phones, you’ll love the comfort of the flip.
2. The design makes it more comfortable to hold than the comparatively bulky iPhone.
3. It handles email brilliantly, and multiple email accounts are no problem.
4. Basic functions are a snap to use: texting, adding/editing contacts, taking photos are all pretty straightforward.
5. The keyboard and trackball are surprisingly intuitive for me as a new Blackberry user.
6. The apps are decent…not mind-blowing, but decent. The NYTimes app is excellent for news in a pinch, and Google Maps is great as well. The UI of BlackBerry AppWorld is not as satisfactory as Apple’s App Store, but it’s still good enough for me.

As a new BlackBerry user, I have to admit it’s not all sunshine and roses. There are still so many things to learn about it yet, but I’m fine with that. When I’m ready to make the step up as a power user, I’m sure the Flip will help me get there.

Have you tried the BlackBerry Pearl Flip?

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People have been talking about a Google OS for years; I even wrote a post for GigaOM Pro recently speculating on a Google “Web OS” (subscription required). Well, late yesterday Google announced that it’s working on a brand new operating system, Chrome OS. According to the announcement, Chrome OS will be a natural extension of the the excellent Chrome browser. This will be a new, lightweight operating system, designed from the ground up — not based on Android — and originally targeted at netbooks.

The announcement rightly points out that the major operating systems available today were designed before the web existed. With most people’s computing activity centered on the web today, a new OS that makes the web the platform makes a lot of sense. As James Kendrick over at our sister blog jkOnTheRun notes, Chrome OS is a “web, or cloud, OS that puts the bulk of all user activity firmly up in the web.” For people primarily using web apps, a lightweight operating system designed for working on the web with instant access to all of your applications and most of the heavy lifting done by the cloud could be perfect. But let’s not get too excited just yet — Chrome OS isn’t expected to be available until the second half of 2010.

What are your thoughts on Google Chrome OS?

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I have definite workaholic tendencies that are starting to induce productivity-draining burnout. In addition to my freelance consulting practice, I am usually balancing a number of side projects, working on the board of a non-profit that I helped co-found, and attending various events around Portland to keep in touch with my freelancer peers and learn about new technologies. This isn’t the first time, I’ve had to deal with burnout. It usually creeps in slowly, and before I realize it, my work and technology hobbies have pushed everything else to the back burner. The feeling of burnout leaves me tired, stressed and less productive, so it’s time again for me to re-prioritize and take control to get my productivity back.

I recently read a Harvard Business blog post by John Baldoni about staying creative under pressure, and he has several good suggestions: set standards, get a buddy and mandate time for fresh air. While he’s talking about working under pressure, I use similar strategies to address burnout. (As an aside, if you don’t already read the Harvard Business blogs, you really should. They are a great change of pace from most of the technology blogs that I read. They are very well written and cover interesting topics from different points of view.)

Here’s my take on Baldoni’s three suggestions, plus an additional tip of my own to help reduce burnout and get your productivity back:

Set standards. Take a hard look at how you spend your time and figure out which of those activities — business and personal — are the most important and worthwhile. Re-prioritize your activities and adopt some system for making sure that you focus your time on the important activities, and be brutal about cutting any activities that take too much time while not providing enough value. Make sure that you find time for a few fun activities to balance out all of the work.

Get a buddy. For freelancers, this can take a couple of different forms, and I would think of this as your support system. If you are overloaded and have too much work, find someone who can help out with some of the activities or that you can refer potential clients to when your schedule is full. This could also be someone to pick up some work if you need a vacation. On the other hand, maybe you need moral support or a mentor to coach you through some issues, so this might mean having a regular coffee or lunch meeting with someone who can help. In my case, I rely on the many events that I attend to chat with other freelancer friends to share ideas, talk about issues, brainstorm about technologies or get moral support.

Mandate fresh air time. This is important, and for many of us, it seems to be one of the first things to fall out of our schedules. We spend way too much time sitting on our rear ends and not enough time getting the blood pumping. A good fitness program can have a huge impact on your productivity. This doesn’t mean that you need to run a marathon, but you should find a comfortable way to work regular exercise into your day. It could be a few short walks spread throughout the day, taking the stairs instead of the elevator, walking or biking instead of driving, or something more strenuous. I vary my workouts depending on my mood and the season. We have gorgeous weather in Portland this time of the year, so I try to take advantage of the hiking trails in many of our local parks, but during the rainy season, I’ll spend more time in the gym.

Read for fun. Reading can be very relaxing, and I usually have at least one non-fiction book to expand my horizons while also reading a fiction book just for fun. Lately, I have been reading George R. R. Martin’s “A Song of Ice and Fire” series for fun while also reading some books about online communities and technology. Take a few minutes every evening to read something you enjoy. The key to making this work is to read something you enjoy so that it feels like a reward, not a punishment.

How do you stay productive without burning out?

Photo by Rick Turoczy, used under Creative Commons.

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