Better Than Xanax

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Way back in March, I wrote about pushing through periods of low motivation when it seems as if everything’s going wrong.

Well, August has been another rough month. My car got caught in a flash flood, and languished at an auto mechanic for two weeks. Then – just when I thought the car was taken care of — I had to replace the windshield. Paychecks were late, and bank accounts became dangerously low. I was forced to take an on-site proofreading gig to compensate for my low income levels.

Blech.

In my previous post, I wrote about how to remain productive, even when all you want to do is give up. But sometimes, powering through isn’t the best — or most healthy — solution.

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What To Do When You’re Disconnected

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Yesterday, at around 4 p.m., the Internet went down. When connectivity hadn’t returned an hour later, I picked up the phone to call my parents and see if I could work over there, and discovered that the phone lines were down as well. When I returned home about an hour later, my husband pointed out that the cable TV was down, too.

Triple poop.

Our lines were down for over 20 hours in all.

What I did when I was disconnected:

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Resource Roundup: 4 Time Management Applications

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Since scheduling my days into blocks of time dedicated to specific projects, I’ve been much more productive (we’ll discount the latter half of May for a multitude of reasons…), miraculously finishing up projects that had previously kept on falling to the bottom of my list of priorities.

Hallelujah!

While I have my personal schedule stored only in my noggin, on my weaker days (like that day I got sucked into a Tales from the Darkside marathon after sitting in front of the TV for a lunch break), I probably could have benefited from some sort of time management application.

Because I hope you can succeed where I have failed, I present to you 4 time tracking applications that will help you stay on…well…track:

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How To: Be the Boss

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When I first left my publishing job to freelance full-time, I thought I was leaving office hierarchy behind.

I soon realized, however, that I had to be my own boss, and eventually became the toughest one I’d ever had.

But leading a team of bloggers was an entirely different animal.

After the jump, what I learned about being the boss:

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Overcoming Chronic Fatigue Syndrome

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I’ve been having trouble waking up lately, feeling not at all refreshed by my 8.5 hours of sleep.

And yesterday, I was only able to manage one flipping blog post.

After that, I couldn’t bring myself to care that not working meant not getting paid.

It’s not typically like this.

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How-To: Work Through the Weekend

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Last weekend, I spent the bulk of my time copy editing a manuscript. I have to be honest…it made me feel a little guilty, especially after the revelations of this post.

But sometimes, deadlines are deadlines and, if you’re prone to burning out quickly during the week, it sometimes helps to stretch out tasks into the weekend.

And so, as a counterpoint to my blissful weekend of slacking off, I present some tips for working through the weekend:

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Going Unplugged: Impossible?

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Earlier this week, one of the members of UPOD challenged all of us to give up our three greatest online addictions for an entire week. While the prospect intrigued me, I came to the conclusion that it would be impossible for me to do.

My three online addictions? Gmail (and the accompanying gchat), Google Reader, and Twitter. The thing is, I often use gchat to communicate with my team of MM bloggers; the scouring of other products blogs through my Google Reader is a necessity for my work; and, aside from using my Twitter account to promote my own work, I’ve also been tasked with managing MM’s Twitter account.

While I may occasionally have dreams of unplugging (very occasionally), my career is inextricably intertwined with the Internets.

And besides, wouldn’t it be more productive to just figure out how to manage my online time more effectively?

After the jump, several tips for doing just that:

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Coffee Break: Working on the Weekend

We haven’t had a nice, long coffee break in awhile here.

I wanted to tell you about last weekend.

My husband left on Thursday night to hang with some old college friends for a few days. He wasn’t slated to come back until Sunday. I decided to use this time as a vacation for myself, and it ended up being the first time in awhile that I didn’t spend my weekend working.

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Since You’ll Be Home All Day…

Just the other day, I read a post over at All Freelance Writing on the misconceptions people can have about the freelance life.

Among these was the lack of respect people in our lives can often have for our work hours.

It hit a chord with me as, just the other week, my husband had chewed me out for not taking out the garbage that day. “You were home all day!” he said.

It was true. I had been home all day but, in all that time, I had barely even left my computer, as I had multiple projects on my plate, and not a moment to spare. His presumptuousness made me angry, and I stewed over all the other times him or my mother had asked me to pick up stamps,  or run to the supermarket, or do the laundry…all with the assumption that I now had the time to spare, because my commute merely consisted of the walk from the bedroom to the computer room, and I had no one to answer to but myself.

Little did they know that I was a tougher taskmaster than any of my previous bosses had been, and it was because I had to be if I wanted to stay afloat. Unfortunately, it’s tough to change the misconceptions of non-freelancers, but we can at least attempt to do so by setting limits:

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Flip That Pitch

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While I’m always going on and on about this one class I took at New School, there’s another one I took before that — From Pitch to Publish, taught by Cris Beam — at which I learned a very important lesson: You must keep the momentum going.

So as I started receiving my very first rejection letters, I didn’t sulk. Instead, I became a master at not taking it personally, and quickly flipped the pitch.

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