Since we are aware at 52nd & west that many of our readers are still students or some wise people who decided to resume their studies should that be to start an MBA or finally undertake the course they’ve always dreamed of, we decided to share with you this comprehensive review made By Jason Fitzpatrick of Lifehacker on what are the must have tools and habits to be a “better” student in 2010.
Enjoy the ride. Continue Reading →
I’m a happy man. I love my digital nomad life.
I consider myself very lucky to be able to choose every day from where I want to work, how I want to organize my time, but most of all to rediscover the pleasure to ride my bike or drive a car in an empty street. Rush hours? Would you mind reminding me what that is?
Traffic congestions has literally poisoned my life for years. Beside the disgusting smell of exhausts fumes that soaked my clothes every day (I ride a scooter), stress was everywhere, all the time: stress of traffic congestion, stress of the always possible accident I could have with my two-wheels-hell-engine, stress of not being able to find a place to park, stress of running late, stress of stressed people ridding their car… before landing in an office full of stressed people who got stressed in the same traffic jams. Damn. That was a bad era of BAD stress.
Then things went a little bit better. I did not have to ride any more to my office every day. The telecommuting arrangement I obtained from my management, allowed me then to have a 5 days stress-break every two weeks. Not too bad. However the issue was that I was supposed to telecommute 1,000 miles away from my office, and getting there was no piece of cake. Imagine a 1,000 miles journey starting after a day of work, split between metro, train, bus, airplane, bus, train again and taxi. All of that in 8 hours and following a VERY tight schedule (I only had a 10 minutes window to jump from my plane, grab a bus to arrive on time at the train station to get the last train to my final destination… If I had luck – this means no strikes in Paris or no bad ass air traffic controller in Vienna – I could expect to get home the next day at 2.00am… before getting back on-line at 9.00am.
Wow. Wouldn’t you call that “love” if all of that was for someone? Charlie and Craig Reid, you’re amateurs.
Anyway. After following this “diet” for a couple of month, I started to experience a general weariness. I was tired, easily irritable, and had the feeling that whatever I would try to do, I wouldn’t be able to achieve it. I was not experiencing a confidence crisis. I was just overwhelmed by the stressful idea of my upcoming journeys.
I personally believe in all the positive effects of those Zen-relaxation-hypnosis like programs. Relaxation is perhaps the single most important key to health and well-being. It is the antidote to stress which is known to contribute to the development of many diseases and ruins the pleasure to leave our lives. When we relax, our body has an opportunity to unwind. I just thought it would be too bad not to carry something all the time with me that could sooth my mind in the middle of my stressful journey.
Then I came up by chance with “Recoding your mind”, a very effective 20 minutes podcast I downloaded on fluentself.com. I first tried it at home and it worked so fine with me that I’m now carrying it everywhere in my mobile phone in case of stress-emergency. You can find plenty of downloadable podcasts featuring relaxation exercises on the Internet, like here for instance. Personally, I found what I was looking for in terms of relaxation programs with the following selection of MP3.
free relaxation on the go (downloadable mp3):
I just recommend that you browse the Internet for similar podcasts, download those you find, and then make your selection on the go, keeping those which work the best with you. Each of us is different, and our preferences (tone of voice, background music, length of the file, topic, etc) vary from one person to another.
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Why you should take time to relax
As a result of relaxation, many people experience –
[singlepic id=90 w=160 h=120 float=left]The best part about being a freelancer is having the freedom to set your own schedule and make your own rules. This, however, can also be the worst part. Without the normal structure of an office environment, many would-be freelancers find themselves wondering at the end of the day where all their time went. Getting the most out of your workday can be tough.
Cameron Chapman of Smashing Magazine, provides sixteen tips to help you better manage your time and improve your time management experience (“How to find time for… everything!”).
Very formative indeed, even for “veteran telecommuters”.
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I want to keep track of where I spend my time in: Five best time-tracking applications
read more on reducing task friction to get to task completion
Not enough? Check the Helpful hints for the home office warrior
This month, Wired has pictured what could look like our – take away? – office cubicle in the future
Is it so hard to imagine that this tiny pebble-like device may be our tomorrow’s workstation ? We’ll probably have the technology by 2017 to develop this kind of gizmo, but to have it enforced – socially speaking – in every offices is another story…
For the past six years, Wired magazine’s Found page has presented some of the best guess at what our world will look like in 10, 20 or 100 years. This captivating monthly exercise in futurism organized by the editorial team and Wired’s readers has regularly brought outstanding results as Found has turned into one of the most plebiscited pages of the magazine. Check here for more!
If you’re like me and split most of your “online time” between your smartphone, your computer’s chat client and your Facebook/LinkedIn page, Nimbuzz may be for you. It’ll make all those communications smoother.
My Facebook friends sometimes leave me wall messages that I take forever to respond to when I’m running between Paris and Vienna. Now they can call me or chat with me directly via a widget embedded on my Facebook profile page. The Nimbuzz widget detects presence and shows if I’m online. If I’m offline, Nimbuzz also includes a “Buzz” feature to alert me that people are trying to reach me. Continue Reading →
“Where will I be” you say?
my guess: “mmm, working from home?”
This morning all our worldwide offices received a mail from one of our London colleague informing us about the terrible weather conditions currently running in the UK. This is how it goes:
“Just to let you know that snow has caused havoc here. Most people WFH so just wanted to give you a heads up if you were trying to get hold of anyone.”
As this “alert” left me a little puzzled, I went on the website of the 
BBC to know a little bit more about what was going one there. Continue Reading →
In my previous post “my 50th week of teleworking” I did not think relevant to highlight one additional market accelerators identified by Gartner, which may influence the growth of teleworking worldwide: the notion of “”emergency teleworkers”. According to some US analysts, “continued or increasing political unrest, particularly where it includes a possible threat to the security of those in areas of greatest population and business density”, may influence the development of teleworking practice. How is that? Continue Reading →
What could be best for a first post than celebrating this 50th week of telecommuting from Austria? A few days ago I was still in Paris, working from the vast open-space of the PR agency I work for. Today, I’m sitting at another desk, 1.000km away from Paris, in a small and typical Austrian village… I took my laptop with me, transferred my office line to my SkypeOut account and my home Wifi spot just allows me to stay connected to the rest of the world! Was will man mehr?
And tomorrow?
I guess this is the way most of us will work by 2015 (particularly due to the growing environmental concerns). As a matter of facts, Gartner, in its study entitled “Future Worker 2015: Extreme Individualization”, drew a very attractive portrait of what the environment of the Future Worker 2015 will look like: “long-distance travel is common, personal computers and cell phones are ubiquitous, telework is routine, and business partners are as likely to be on different continents as in different cities”.
Influencing factors
Most of the teleworking groups or associations around the world, with incisive knowledge of how teleworking is developing within their area, highlight a wide chasm between the enthusiasm of the workforce for teleworking and the degree to which management will allow them to telework. Some of the major dominant market accelerators identified by Gartner’s analysts which will influence the growth of teleworking worldwide include: Continue Reading →
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