Hey y’all. This is the first in a series of quick business tips based on my lessons learned starting a small business.

To kick things off I thought I’d go with something I’m seeing as being more and more important — being easy to work with. It’s not a big surprise actually, in the past when I was asked to interview people I almost always went for personality before skill and experience. Someone who meshes well with others is hugely important. After all, you’ll probably be spending lots of time with that person.

I’m seeing this being a huge factor in the success of my own small business and I’m trying really hard to mold myself into someone that people really enjoy working with. In order to do that I’m:

* Making sure I’m flexible as possible. One of the reasons why I went into business for myself was to have more flexibility with my time, the least I can do is pass that flexibility along.
* A good communicator. In many ways this means over-communicating. I find that it really helps to make sure my clients know what’s going on at all times.
* Available. With some exceptions (I like to keep work and life separate as possible) I want to be able to be reached easily.
* Positive. A positive attitude is key.
* Not defensive or pushy. I really try to communicate in a positive way at all times, with everyone I work with. This can be a real challenge and I find that the closer I am with someone (my coworkers) for example the harder I am with them. But, hey, I’m a work in progress.
* Honest. I feel it’s important to be transparent and as up-front as possible.
* Fun. Humor goes a long way, and even if people don’t share my funny-bone, a lighthearted attitude can be felt by everyone around me.

As you can see, I feel that communication is a big part of being easy to work with. I want people who work with me to feel like they can talk to me about whatever they need to. Being open and responsive, available and flexible is very important. It’s an ongoing process but one that I feel just about anyone could benefit from.

For practically all my life I’ve had trouble going to sleep. I’m not an insomniac…I just think a lot. I’ll lie in bed thinking about what I want to do tomorrow or what I should have done today or how much I love eating cold pizza or how absurdly messy my desk is….you get the idea. And when I say I have trouble going to sleep…I’m not talking 20 or 30 minutes…I’m talking 2 or 3 hours. Because what will happen is after about 45 minutes to an hour of trying to go to sleep, I start thinking about how I’m not asleep but I should be…and thus the cycle begins.

Now, I may be a bit of an extreme case here, but I know for a fact that there are others out there who have trouble going to sleep. So, I’ve pieced together various bits of advice I’ve received over the past few months that have not only helps me get to sleep faster, but helps me get a better nights sleep.

1. Don’t watch TV or even so much as look at a computer screen atleast 30 minutes before you lie down. The light from both a television as well as a computer monitor mimic the same intensity of light as sunlight. This fools your body and brain into thinking it’s nowhere near time for sleep.
2. Drink milk. Milk has an amino acid in it called Tryptophan that increase the levels of serotonin and/or melatonin in the brain which slow down brain activity. It’s science folks.
3. Go to bed when you are tired. Different strokes for different folks here. Just because your wife goes to bed at 9PM doesn’t mean you are ready. You might only require seven and half hours of sleep while she might require ten. If you aren’t tired, do something low-key until you are, like read a book, play solitaire (NOT on your computer), or play with some legos.
4. Reserve the bed for bed things (ie sleep and sex). I for one don’t strictly follow this rule as I’ll read some before I go to sleep, but for some people this is a must.
5. Meditate. No, don’t cross your legs and hum, but focus on relaxing…if that makes sense. Take deep, long breaths. Tense each muscle one at a time from head to toe. Focusing on doing this takes your mind off of other things and you’ll be in lala land in no time.
6. Excercise during the day. I emphasize during the day. Excercising at night just gets everything going instead of shutting down for sleep. But excercising during the day tires the muscles out and makes for a solid nights sleep.

These are the majority of the things I have either tried or actually do routinely. What are some things that have worked for you?

I think it’s probably safe to say that a very large percentage of computer users have, at some point, either purchased or sold something on eBay. And the same percentage of users who have bought or sold have seen the either extremely brief product descriptions or the descriptions that are so long that you could never possibly weed out the “real” info.

Enter audio. With the debut of services like Odeo, it’s easier than ever to publish audio content on the web. So what is being suggested here? Podcast your eBay auction! Simply record your product description and then link to the audio on your eBay auction. You’d still want to include a written description for obvious reasons, but using an audio description sure would set your auction apart.

Tip: Auction Bytes

I thought that maybe a few of you might be in the same boat, so I wanted to share an idea with you. In years past I’d always take some time and create an online “gift” of some kind. It was always well received and was something that I could take my time with because delivery was almost instantaneous. This year, while I don’t have the time I used to, I can use this idea to make sure I’ve got something going out to friends in family that’ll get there before the season is too far gone.

Creating a holiday Web “gift” is easier than ever and I’ve got a few ideas for you:

* Create a special holiday Flickr photostream. This is something you can make private if you wish. You can include messages and captions with your photos and allow people to reply with holiday greetings of their own.
* Do a holiday blog post (or two, or three). Getting a blog is a piece of cake. You can use a hosted service like Blogger or WordPress.com or you can get your own domain and host it yourself. Dreamhost has good, cheap domain and hosting services with one-click installs of WordPress.
* Create a slideshow. I did this a few years ago and it was a big hit. It was a lot of work, but now with products like Slideshow Pro this kind of thing is pretty easy.

I’m still not 100% sure what I’ll do this year for friends and family, but I’m really glad I’ve got the WWW to help me out of a time crunch. Nothing like next-to-instant communication. Speaking of which – HAPPY HOLIDAYS EVERYONE!

Feel free to share your own “Webby” holiday ideas in the comments, you may provide me with some creative energy to do something completely different this year.

I’ve been doing a bit of research into health type stuff recently. My wife and I are in pretty good shape but we’ve been letting things slip a bit of late. Probably all the stress from the wedding, new business, buying a house, etc. It’s not that big a surprise that we’ve turned to food and booze to take the edge off! Oh, and the holidays don’t help. Seems like everyone is ready with a beer or some delicious eats that goes straight to your waistline.

But it goes beyond keeping the weight down. The holidays and cold weather can do a real number on you in lots of ways.

One of the things I’m going to try really hard to do this winter is not get sick again. I’ve been under the weather on and off for the past week and I’m bound and determined to put a stop to that. Luckily there are all sorts of resources that offer advice on keeping fit through the winter months. I’ve compiled a list of tips for those of you who, like me, want to get a head start on your healthy New Year’s resolution.

h2. Thing you can do to take care of your body during winter

* Drink in moderation. I know it can be hard, especially during the holidays, but the more you can limit your alcohol in take the less chance you have of getting sick.
* Drink lots of water. A good idea for holiday parties is to substitute a bottle of water for every other drink. This cuts down on your alcohol intake and helps you get the extra water you need.
* Wash your hands regularly. You’ll want to keep as clean as you can to avoid germs.
* Keep your home and work space as clean as possible.
* Avoid smoking. If you’re trying to quit, the winter months is a good time to start. Smoking (or second-hand smoke) greatly increases your chances of getting sick.
* Take time out to relax. Try to keep some free time in your busy schedule for yourself. Winter can be stressful.
* Get plenty of sleep.
* Bitters for digestion. If you’re planning on eating a lot during the holidays you might want to try a digestive aid such as some kind of bitters.
* Detox or cleanse. This might be something you want to wait until after the holidays to start. A good cleanse can really leave you feeling better. I’ve done it a few times and my energy level has gone way up after and I’ve just felt lighter. My advice is to start slow and see if it’s right for you. You can find a cleansing kit at most specialty markets or various places online.
* Get a flu shot.
* Take your of vitamins. Stress and long days and nights can really deplete your body and lower your energy level. Vitamins can help.

So you’re Getting Things Done, you’ve defined your projects, implemented your productivity processes and are humming right along with the future’s so bright you need sunglasses, right?

Maybe not.

Are you actually being productive? Or do you think your being productive while all your time is being nibbled away by non-productive activities? Trust yourself – but verify you are Getting Things Done with a Time Audit.

h3. A Time Audit is Simple

Doing a Time Audit is so simple, you can’t avoid it. You can download a free Excel template here if you want, or just take a piece of paper and write down your top 10 activities and add a grid 1 week wide by however long your day is long, divided into 15 minute intervals. Why 15 minutes? An hour is a long time in our multitasking interruption-driven world; 5 minute intervals are too short: all you will get done is the Time Audit.

This template is yours at: http://safarisoftware.com/landGTD.htm.

As you work away- or after you get our of the meeting, conference call, workout or lunch – mark that time as one of your 10 activities, or leave it blank if it was just totally off them map. Each day, total up where you time is actually going.

You are not going to be a happy camper reading those results unless you’ve already achieved glow-in-the-dark Getting Things Done-ness. If you have, congratulations! If not… well, the truth will set you free, and in this case it will set you free from all those non-productive, non-Getting Things Done things leaching away your time.

P.S. Don’t tell your boss you’re doing this!

Author Bio: Bob Walsh divides his time between improving and selling MasterList Professional, a personal task management application, writing a book for Apress (Micro-ISV: From Vision to Reality) on how to start a self-funded startup, blogging here and at http://www.todoorelse.com, writing custom software applications for companies with needs and budgets and trying to remember what the words “time off” and “vacation” mean. He can be reached at bobw@safarisoftware.com.

One of the key tenets of Getting Things Done is getting your head clear so you focus on getting things done. Nowadays, with text, audio and video feeds from every major and minor news organization a click away, Google News, news alerts, RSS, IM and all the rest, you have about as much chance of getting your head clear as surviving 10 fire hoses turned full on at your face.

Too much news, way, way, way too much. All the news doesn’t fit: on paper, on your screen, in your head. Unless you consciously take control of when, where and how you get your general, sports, high tech and other news, your chances of getting things done, of creating work, will drown without you even realizing it.

h3. Take Control of Your News

Twenty plus years ago, I was a reporter in San Francisco for United Press International. I’d write (or rewrite from local papers) 40 to 60 stories a shift and put them on the wire. Big news, little news, didn’t matter: my job was to keep shoveling coal into the news engine.

The process worked for two reasons. First, at the other end of the wire, where you are now, there was an editor who would screen out 95% of the stuff because it didn’t matter to the readers or listeners or viewers. If they did not chop left and right, they’d have too much news to fit and they would not do the journalistic equivalent of Getting Things Done called Getting the Paper to Bed and be out of a job pronto.

Second, there were gradations of news so that when something really important happened, three, or four or God Forbid, five bells would ring in the UPI or AP teletype machine in every newsroom in the country and everyone would stop and rush to the wire copy machine because they knew something important had happened.

In our future-shocked, wi-fi, broadband, IM, email news alerts, terror alerts, information at our fingertips until your head is underwater world, guess what? You’re the editor. And here’s what you need to do:

* Audit all those little news feeds that have crept into your online life. Which are worth keeping? Which are noise? Turn off the noise.
* Decide when and how you will let the information megahose of online information be on, and turn it off the rest of the time. If there’s another 9/11, you’ll hear about it, in the meantime, get on with your life.
* Re Google Desktop Beta 2 Sidebar: it’s a great replacement for the old teletype, but don’t forget you need to cultivate ignoring the stuff that goes by, just as you do 99% of the time when you perceive but ignore what’s in the rear view mirror while your getting somewhere driving.
* Look for not just news, but analysis. The mainstream media has largely given up analysis because analysis upsets its corporate masters. Look to the blogs – whether its high tech news, sports news or politics – for people willing to call a spade a spade and own their words.

Your job is to own your attention.

Author Bio: Bob Walsh divides his time between improving and selling MasterList Professional, a personal task management application, writing a book for Apress (Micro-ISV: From Vision to Reality) on how to start a self-funded startup, blogging here and at http://www.todoorelse.com, writing custom software applications for companies with needs and budgets and trying to remember what the words “time off” and “vacation” mean. He can be reached at bobw@safarisoftware.com.

In my seemingly never-ending search for ways of Getting (more) Things Done, I’ve hit upon a pretty good method I call Butterfly Stroke Productivity. Now I will be the first to admit my swimming techniques look more like drowning than the Thorpedeo, but Butterfly Stroke Productivity (BSP) works and has been keeping my head above water for the past year as I juggle contracts, development and writing.

Here’s how it works. As you plan each day’s work, focus on the 2 or 3 things which you’re going to have to really work at for an hour or two each to get done. These should be things you want to reserve your best efforts for because they will make the most difference in your life.

Now, make a 60-120 minute appointment for each. You can make it an Outlook Appointment, a Task Appointment in the program I sell or an entry in your daytimer. Leave time between these task appointments so you can come up for air, re-orientate and deal with other, less important stuff.

The goal for each of these Task Appointments is to get into the highly focused, creative mental state Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi defined as Flow. We’ve all had the experience of being so engaged in something that time flies by and we’re riding high; that’s Flow.

Since I make my daily bread writing code and writing words, I want to get into the Flow whenever I sit down to design an app or write. So, I start each Flow by filling in the basics of my Flow Form:

Nothing fancy, but it sets up the Flow.

For the next 90 minutes or so, no email, no phone, no web, no anything that is going to be a distraction. I’m head down and pulling. I have a plan for what I’m trying to do; clearly restating my objective and the goals that furthers dampens procrastination and I know that at least for the next little while I’m going incommunicado to get some work done. Then I set my (physical) desktop timer and go for the Flow.

An hour and a half later, my concentration is fading out and I come up for air and wrap up the Flow with whatever notes I need, follow-ups and rating of how good I did. Then, like satisfying a sweet tooth, I check email, blogs, news web sites and decompress.

What really makes this practice work is repeatability. Starting it by doing the form, setting my timer, turning off my phone etc. “cues” my brain that its heavy lifting time. Give it a try, and if you use Microsoft Publisher, drop me a line and I’ll send you free the form I use if that’s helpful.

There’s nothing more practical than a good theory!

Author Bio: Bob Walsh divides his time between improving and selling MasterList Professional, a personal task management application, writing a book for Apress (Micro-ISV: From Vision to Reality) on how to start a self-funded startup, blogging here and at http://www.todoorelse.com, writing custom software applications for companies with needs and budgets and trying to remember what the words “time off” and “vacation” mean. He can be reached at bobw@safarisoftware.com.

Having spent a good part of my life living with people who tend to misplace things, I’ve noticed a general tendency whenever such an event occurs. Panic immediately set in. A person who has misplaced something panics in accordance with the importance of the item misplaced.

Here’s an example based in part on a true story: A friend calls asking if I’d like to go on a hike. I agree and he picks me up. We arrive at the parking area near the trail head, and we fling open the doors and trunk. We change shoes, stow valuables in the trunk, swap coats for rain jackets, grab backpacks, etc. When we’re ready, we close up the car and start hiking.

Along the hike, we pass an abandoned well. My friend pulls out some pocket change and we toss some dimes and nickels to the barely visible water below. OK, that part I made up, but stay with me.

We return to the car after a couple hours hiking. My friend is frantically patting himself down. He can’t find the keys! He freezes in his tracks and looks at me with wide eyes. “I must have dropped them in the well!” he says.

This is where I intervene. Once that panic sets in, a person who has misplaced something tends to lose it and instantly thinks of the worst possible place that lost item could be.

I calm my friend down and begin searching in the most obvious places first. We check pockets, slowly and deliberately, look in all backpack compartments, scan the car and the ground around the car. We continue this until we find the keys, which aren’t in the bottom of the well. Had my friend been alone, he would have climbed down into the bottom of that well and spent hours looking for keys that were still sticking out of the trunk lock.

One other detrimental habit of people who tend to misplace objects is that when they do start searching, they tend to base their searching technique on those they have seen on popular TV cop dramas. That is, they create a huge mess as they scatter papers, clothes, and drawer contents all over the house looking for their lost item. Not only do they create a mess, but they most likely lose something else in the process.

If you do misplace something, let the panic subside before starting your search. Start with the most obvious places first, even if you’re sure the item can’t be there. I’m amazed how often it is in the most obvious place. Second, make your search slow and deliberate. Keep places you’ve searched organized. It will likely increase your chances of finding your lost item, but even if it doesn’t, at least there won’t be an additional trail of destruction left behind.

Author Bio: Britt Parrott is the communications manager for an engineering firm in Portland, Oregon, by day and a screenwriter by night. He posts most of his nonsense at Perhapses.

Modern technology is often blamed for adding complexity to our lives. I frequently hear references to “a simpler time” before we had computers, PDAs, cell phones and home theaters.

Well, that’s a bunch of crap!

I will concede one point — computers and their technological brethren are enormously complex. But the best-designed gadgets and systems actually go a long way toward simplifying our lives.

Here are some of my favorite complicated technologies that make my life (and the lives of lots of people) much simpler. Each of these are, in my opinion, beautiful things.

• I-PASS from the Illinois State Toll Highway Authority (phew, what a mouthful!)

  Tolls have annoyed me since I was old enough to know what they were. Not only do you have to pay to use the road (a foreign concept to us Wisconsinites), but you have to remember toll money, wait in line to pay, and deal with irritable toll-booth attendants (if you don’t have exact change, which you never do).

  I-PASS does away with all of this. For a $20 deposit, you get a small radio transmitter to put inside your car’s windshield. Go online and load up your account, then hit the road. When you reach a toll, special I-PASS lanes let you zip through at (almost) full speed while automatically debiting the 75¢ (or whatever) from your account. Best part — when your account gets below a certain threshold ($10 I think), it reloads automatically from your credit card or debit card.

• Chicago Card Plus from The Chicago Transit Authority

  This one is like I-PASS for public transportation. You maintain an account with the CTA, which is accessible online and automatically reloads when it dips below a threshold you set. The card itself is a smart card — there’s no magnetic strip to scratch and you don’t have to swipe. Just touch it against the card reader (it even works through a wallet or pocket) and your account is automatically debited.

  What makes this truly complex — and truly simple for the people that use it — is that it’s smart enough to know if you’ve recently used the card (in which case it will charge you 25¢ for a transfer instead of the full $1.75) and where you’ve used it (you can login to your account online and see everywhere you’ve used the card).

• TiVo and iTunes podcast support

  I’m listing these together because they both simplify my life in the same way — they look for new content, then collect it in the place where I want it.

  TiVo does this with television shows and movies (to be fair, I am using a Comcast HD-DVR for a variety of reasons). I tell it what I want to see, then it records those programs so I can watch them later.

  iTunes does this with podcasts. What’s important to me is that not only does iTunes look for new episodes and download the audio files (pretty much any feed reader can do that), but it loads them on to my iPod automatically. So, when I get on the bus in the morning, the newest episodes of my favorite podcasts are waiting for me on my iPod.

(I didn’t include things like the iPod, which I consider to be very simple but actually a source of additional complexity in my life. What struck me about the technologies I mentioned here was that, even though they were highly complex behind the scenes, they help to simplify the lives of people that use them.)

So, your turn — what are your favorite simplifying technologies? What tools or systems bely their complexity by helping people simplify their lives?

Author Bio: John Zeratsky is an Interaction Designer at FeedBurner in Chicago. He blogs about design, tech and culture at johnzeratsky.com.