Working From Home

As technology allows us to be more mobile, it also allows us to work in areas that contain distractions, including, when we are at home, our children. Web Worker Daily has several good tips for working with kids in the house. Some of the tips work good whether you are working from home or not. For example,

1. Wake up early. I’ve trained myself to get up at 4:30 a.m. most days (sometimes I sleep in until 5:30 or 6:00 a.m.). Now, I’m not saying you have to get up that early, but getting up even half an hour or an hour earlier than the younguns can give you some time to do some uninterrupted work in the quiet of the predawn hours.

3. Stay up a little later. While my kids are going to bed, I jump on the computer and do some writing, clear out my email inbox, take care of a few other web tasks before bed. I can often get a good hour or so after the little ones are tucked away.

Both of these tips allow you to get a little extra work done to clean out your inbox or get some mundane tasks out of the way so that you can focus on your important task. Best of all, you can choose which one works for you, depending on whether you are a morning person or a night person.

I also like tip number 6

6. Go to a coffee shop or library. Sometimes you just gotta get out of the house and find some peace and quiet. If you’ve got a laptop, go be among grownups and do some work at a coffee shop. If not, a library is a great place to work, with free Internet connections and a quiet environment. Just make sure it’s not kids’ read aloud hour.

Sometimes a change of scenery can do wonders for you. Getting out of the house or away from the office may be just thing you need to finish that brief or motion.

A Periodic Table of Visualization Methods

I am still not quite sure what I would ever use this for. However, it is really neat and someone clearly put a lot of time and effort into creating it.

Inbox Zero

If you are not yet familiar with the concept of Inbox Zero, you need to check out this video presentation by Merlin Mann.

The idea behind Inbox Zero is that you should not be using your email inbox as a storage or filing location for your email. The concept ties very closely with David Allen’s Getting Things Done concept.

Basically, Mann advocates a ruthless processing of your email on a schedule that you control. Process each email and then get it out of your inbox. I know this concept is an anathema to many people. However, I have found getting rid of emails from my inbox to be very liberating. I encourage you to watch this video and try to follow Mann’s suggestions.

Don’t just take my word for it either. Michael Hyatt has written before about how much imposing email controls has improved his productivity.

[googlevideo]http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=973149761529535925[/googlevideo]

Friday Fun: Electric Toothbrush or Milk Frother?

If you enjoy science fiction, you should be listening to Escape Pod, a science fiction podcast magazine. I recently listened to a story there titled Conversations With and About My Electric Toothbrush. This story addresses the age old question about what to do with an electric toothbrush which longs to be a milk frother.

As a gadget geek, I must admit that I am a little disturbed with the idea that one day my toothbrush may be surfing the internet and talking to me about it. Then again, maybe I will just learn to like cappuccinos.

Thinking About Getting a GPS?

Now might be the time to pick up that GPS that you have been thinking about. Palm has their Palm GPS Navigator Smartphone Edition 3 on sale now.

The regular price is $249. Palm is now offering it with a $30 instant and $50 mail-in rebate. Thus, you can pick up this GPS solution for only $169. It uses TomTom Navigator 6 software, comes with a 1GB card with a map of the US and Canada, a device cradle and suction cup, and a vehicle power adapter for the GPS receiver. Plus, the GPS receiver communicates with your Treo via Bluetooth.

A great GPS solution at a reasonable price.

CrossLoop

I recently stumbled across a program called CrossLoop. it is a secure screen sharing utility. Best of all, it is free.

The publisher claims that it works simply and does not require you to do any router or other configuration to get the program to work. Further, the transmission between the computers is encrypted (128 bit), and explicit permission from the host computer is required before the remote computer can connect.

This looks like a great program to use when you need to fix the computer of your family member who is somewhere else (whether across the town or the ocean).

It looks like a great idea that is easy to use. Has anyone here tried it?

Firefox: Great Even Without Extensions

I am a big fan of Firefox and have been using it for quite a while. One of the things that I love about Firefox is the ability to customize it using extensions. A few months ago, I wrote a post where I discussed my favorite Firefox extensions.

Lifehacker has a post that talks about the great features of Firefox that are built into the program, the stuff you can do without adding any extensions.

My favorites from the list are Tweakable search engines and Undo closed tab.

Many times I have accidentally closed a tab before I intended to. The Undo closed tab feature is a real lifesaver in those situations.

Check out the entire list. To find out more about a particular feature, click on its name in the list.

Balancing Your Connectivity When on Vacation

Here is a nice post from Reid Trautz on creating a communication policy while on vacation. Treo 700p Reid offers some great advice about how to stay connected to the office, while making sure not to cut into family and vacation time.

His policy on checking voicemails is one that I typically follow when on vacation:

As the sun rose on the third day of my vacation, I realized I finally had to make some decisions. The easiest decision was to rely on the out-of-office greeting on my phone, and not try to deal with voice mail messages in any way, shape, or form. However, I decided to keep my cell phone powered on and with me in case there was a business emergency. People who need to reach me can reach me through my office even if they don’t have my cell number. This gave me peace of mind without my having to check my phone messages daily.

I know that in the event of an emergency or something that needs my immediate attention, my office can get in touch with me. Everything else can wait until I get back in the office.

I also liked Reid’s idea of allocating only 60 minutes a day to checking email, as well as the fact that he tried to do this in the morning while everyone else was still sleeping.

If you are considering taking a vacation soon, this is a post you want to check out.

Favorites: Adobe Acrobat 8 Professional

I often see people complaining about the costs of Adobe Acrobat and, as a result, seeking a lower cost alternative to creating PDFs. I am not here to justify the costs of Acrobat ($449 retail for a full version of Acrobat 8 Professional). However, I would note that, if you already own a copy of Acrobat, the upgrade is rather reasonably priced ($159).

There is no doubt that you can find less expensive solutions to create PDFs. For example, Word Perfect will natively create a PDF. However, creating a PDF is only the first step in a paperless filing system. In addition to creating PDFs, you also need to be able to manage, annotate, or otherwise handle those PDFs. I have yet to find a less expensive solution that gives me the power that I find in Acrobat Professional, version 8.

Last week I talked about how I do all of my commenting or highlighting on cases in Acrobat. This way I always have my annotated copies of the cases with me. This practice saves me If you have ever unsuccessfully tried to find the copy of a case that you made your notes on, you know how much a timesaver this can be.

In addition to the annotation and commenting features, there are also several other features about Acrobat that I really like and use on a regular basis.

The Typewriter Tool. This tool, which Adobe added in an update to version 7, allows you to type on PDFs just as if you were using a typewriter. This tool is invaluable when it comes to filling out forms from organizations that refuse to provide the forms electronically. I also use this tool to complete forms that people fax to me. My fax arrives via email. I open the PDF. Complete the form. And then fax or email the form back to the sender, all without having ever printed anything.
Combining PDFs. Version 8 contains new wizards to assist you in combining PDFs to create one PDF or a PDF package. I typically find wizards annoying. In this case, however, I think Adobe has done an excellant job of creating wizards that help, rather than hinder, someone combining PDFs.
Speaking of wizards, when creating a PDF from an Excel file, Acrobat asks you which sheets you want to include in the PDF. This is a great feature. I don’t know how many times I had to create the same PDF multiple times because I had forgotten to tell Excel to print all all of the sheets to PDF.
Redaction. Version 8 Professional includes a great redaction tool to allow you to remove sensitive data from your PDF. This is invaluable in making sure that you do not disclose privileged or confidential information. The tool is easy to use and I am glad to see that Adobe added it to the program, thus saving you the additional time and cost of finding and using a plug-in.
Bates Stamping. Another way in which Adobe has eliminated the need for the use of a plug-in is in Bates Stamping. The Professional version now allows you to easily stamp (or remove your Acrobat applied stamps) from a PDF. This a great feature that I use regularly in discovery.

The program has several more features that I love and use regularly. However, I think I will pause my list at this point.

If you haven’t tried to leverage the full power of Acrobat, download a 30 day free trial and see what Acrobat can do for you.

Practicing in a County With a Small Bar

One of the things that I love about practicing where I do is that, despite the overall population of the area, the litigation bar in DuPage County is still relatively small. I saw a perfect example of this yesterday.

I was in court waiting for a case to be called when a local attorney entered the courtroom. The judge, who was in the middle of her court call, paused the proceedings and publicly congratulated the attorney on the fact that his son had just been awarded a Rhodes Scholarship.

I just thought it was a neat moment.