All it takes is one mis-key or a brief power interruption, and you can find yourself staring at a blank screen. Usually after struggling with some particular difficult bit of phrasing. Hit the save key OFTEN. After every sentence wouldn’t be a bad idea. A nice and simple tip for today, and yet it can be pretty important.

And it also carries over to the work you might do online, directly into a database or CMS system. Save frequently in these instances too. There is an extra saving tip I have here as well. If you are working for someone else, and write your material directly into a CMS, I highly recommend you cut and paste a copy into a word processor and store on your hard drive. You could even take a screenshot of the finished piece. You may find yourself without access to your work at a later date, due to technical difficulties or the company you work for closing up shop. I lost a big chunk of work this way just last month.

Save often, even the material that you aren’t writing directly onto your hard drive. And of course it goes without saying that you do a regular back-up of that hard drive, right?

Another thoughtful piece of insight from me today. Since you are freelancing and likely working from home, you are free to work in whatever manner you like. So take advantage of that and don’t worry about trying to stick to any “real-world” schedule or format. I’ve recently come to a couple of realizations about my own work habits and I’m a bit surprised. (more…)

According to Brandon at Shane & Peter you are doing the world a wonderful service by working from home. It’s very environmentally-friendly of you, so congrats. One of their recent posts titled, “Save the World, Work from Home” provides a whole host of specific details and statistics on how working from home helps the planet, mostly from reduced transportation fuel usage.  So if you’re thinking about taking the plunge and doing some tele-commuting, this just might be enough to convince. Don’t do it for yourself, do it for the Earth.

I haven’t been posting too much over the past couple of weeks, which creates the perfect example of what I’m talking about. When you’re at work, it’s a business environment and the interruptions are minimal and usually business related anyway. Not so when you work at home. Anything can happen and you have to be ready to roll with the punches, so to speak.

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Sitting at a desk all day is hardly a strenuous activity, when compared to putting a new roof on your house or hauling firewood. But even so, it can take some toll on your back muscles. As I’m sure any serious computer-worker knows, it can get painful sitting and working for hours on end.

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