Though winning projects will depend on what jobs are out there, the services you provide and the quality of your work, there are several things you can do, as you go about using social media, to help push the likelihood of winning work in your favour:

1. Add prospects to your social networks

You may have lots of connections on Twitter, but are they really likely to ever be clients of yours, or just friends, or, at worst, indifferent to what you share? The main reason for you not attracting paying clients on social media sites, is because they simply are not in your network.

This owes itself to: a) You aren’t reaching out to or adding them in the first place, and b) You are not sharing updates, content and information that is truly of interest to them, as we talk about next.

2. Create content that is of interest to prospects

This is something that ties in very closely with the previous point because without relevant content to your prospects, people are unlikely to follow you. In the world of social media, those that win, are those who help others, are sources of interesting information and those who care about others.

Think about what it is that people who have the potential of hiring you would be interested in and include it.

In this environment, it’s not how good you are as a designer that gets people’s attention, it’s how valuable an asset to your network you are. Once this has been established, people start to hire you.

3. Maintaining professionality online

A great deal of people are failing to win any clients or projects online because they simply don’t treat that space with much professionalism. This does not mean being all corporate, traditionalist and boring. Far, far from it.

Those that are winning work and interest on social networks are those people who have mastered the balance of staying professional, whilst maintaining the interest and enthusiasm in their follower’s, all the way along.

This means reducing the amount of junk you share, creating a professional profile, bio and about area, having a decent photo of yourself, being courteous, and so on.

4. Interspersing valuable content with a few references to your own work

Steer clear of sharing constant updates specifically to your own work, portfolio and other promotions online. Maintain a balance of having people interested in you and caring about you in return, whilst also sharing occasional updates to what you are doing professionally (ideally also of interest!). Keep it to a ratio of around 10 percent promotion and 90 percent sharing good, interesting stuff.

You will find that good things come to you, when the majority of what you do, online and offline, is in adding to the success and joy of others. Filling in the gaps with a little self promotion is one of the best strategies.

5. Contact people individually

Reaching out directly to someone who you think you could work with through an ‘@’ mention, email or direct message can be a powerful way of establishing solid contact with them, which could eventually lead to being hired. Find people who you think could genuinely use your services, then come up with a good reason you think you could work with them.

I would not recommend approaching people without having established some form of rapport beforehand. This rapport can of course be built up on social networks themselves!

6. Sharing your portfolio/website at the right moments

When the opportunity arises, such as when someone mentions their own work in a discussion, or when the topic of the kind of work you are in comes up in the comments on a post, you could provide feedback, and share your own work too.

Doing this means the self promotion isn’t quite so blatant as otherwise, and for the most part, will be a welcome addition to the interaction in question.

7. Collaborating with other people

You can use social networks to find other people who could join forces with you in a joint venture, for the purpose of promoting each other’s services and products. People are more likely to take notice when you are promoting someone else’s work, than your own (obviously you will be keen on sharing your own work). As such, joint promotion ventures can be very useful.

For example, you could join up with someone who has a mailing list to swap a mention on each other’s lists. Doing this could open up a whole list of responsive clients in one go. Or you could do a feature of someone on your blog in return for the same from their side, or simply swapping a share (a post, a photo album, a link to work) in Google+, for example.

I’d love to hear any further comments from you, as well as a tweet or share of the article with your friends, which you can do below.

My online course: ‘The Freelancer’s Guide to Winning Incredible Clients through Google+ Mastery‘ can be purchased and downloaded instantly here.

If you don’t have Chrome, I suggest you download and use it. It does seem better and quicker to me, and it generally integrates better with all of Google’s services.

I’ve had a go on many of the available extensions, and have seen that some are useful, and others aren’t really worth it. Here are my top 8 in no order that are worth installing, especially for freelancers using Google+ professionally.

For each of the following, click the name of the extension to be taken to a page where you can click ‘+ Add to Chrome’ to install it.

1. SG Plus

This is useful for being able to see your Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and RSS streams inside your Google+ stream. The extension also provides options so that you can share your Google+ updates in Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn. Very useful.

2. Surplus

This is handy for displaying your notifications ‘red square’ in your browser from any web page, not just Google+.

It also allows you to create and respond to posts from within its popup, and read your notifications.

3. Replies and more for Google+

A nice tool that adds a ‘reply to author’ button underneath posts. This basically means it will tag the author of the post so that your comment goes directly to them.

4. Helper

With the ability to re-share posts to Twitter (as well as translate text, see desktop notifications, and bookmark to Delicious) this can be used as a handy ‘retweet’ tool.

5. Plus One Anything

This installs a ‘+1′ button next to the address bar in your Chrome browser, and means you can +1 any website (your seal of approval that can be seen by friends and contacts), even those whose webmaster hasn’t added one.

6. Photo Zoom

Take the strain out of your eyes by using this extension to enlarge photos just by hovering over them.

7. Usability Boost

This one improves the readability of posts and other sections in Google+ by defining edges more, as well as allowing you to star posts to read later. It just makes Google+ a little easier to use.

8. Google+ Directory

Here is a useful search directory for other Google+ users that you can add to your own circles, right from within your browser. You can specify quite focused search terms in finding people to network with, and be found by others.

As Google+ expands, and more people create more extensions, this list will be added to, and some extensions will probably fall off this list. I’d love you, the keen reader, to add any others you think help enhance your Google+ experience.

Thank you!

So much so, that I’ve compiled this handy little list, not intended to scare, just to get people thinking about what they might be missing out on by not throwing themselves into the Google+ social theatre. That includes you.

Here is that list:

1. Losing out on much better control

Google+ is just miles ahead when it comes to functionality. Every feature such as sharing posts, editing photos, and following feeds has a built in control that is very powerful, and puts you the user in control at every point during your Google+ experience.

Things like being able to share to certain circles, lock posts for re-sharing, view posts from particular geographic areas, dragging and dropping media into posts from elsewhere and more, allow you to really be on top of everything when it comes to managing how you engage with others, as well as your own content and data. This is important when it comes to using this for professional purposes and coming across as such.

One in depth example of the control you have with Google+ is through its picture tagging function. While Facebook doesn’t warn its users whenever a photo of one user is tagged in an album, Google+ deals with this by giving users the ability to choose which users that can tag you.

2. Not being part of a professional social environment

What is very evident from using Google+, is the sense of professionalism that the site creates in the way that its features and interface are designed, as well as in the attention to making things secure and private.

Google has made it easy to reduce clutter and noise on the platform through allowing users to restrict the content they see and take out elements within profiles themselves. This combined with the fact that the interface and overall design is cleaner and better designed, adds to the professionalism of it.

Google has been strict about security in order to reduce spammers and other unwanted characters that have a negative effect on the experience of its users. Facebook and Twitter have trouble with fake accounts and spamming, not to mention being overly busy (think endless farmville invites on Facebook) and this is something that Google is seeking to avoid.

Google is also proving to manage data much more effectively and has shown to in the past. Having also learnt from Facebook’s mistakes, Google+’s offering has shown itself to be very secure.

With the ‘Data Liberation’ tool, you can be very explicit about what gets shared, and where, as well as what doesn’t. There is total control for all your work, and all your information on Google+.

All of this combines to create an environment that is very preferential to professionals, including freelancers looking to engage with and build networks of great people.

3. Not targeting what you share to the right people

The ‘Circles’ function in Google+ is an excellent way of allowing you to share certain things with certain people that you have organised into specific labelled groups.

If you have had trouble with promoting your work on other social networks and elsewhere, much of it will be to do with the fact that you are sending out content to anyone and everyone without thinking about how something can be targeted. This is absolutely essential to promotion these days, and Google+ has cracked it in finding a way for you to do this.

Circles allows you to share work with people you want feedback from, for example, without concerning anyone else.

You might want to build up a circle of art director contacts, for example, and regularly show them updates of the work you have been creating, and engaging with only those people strategically.

4. Not taking advantage of better contact-building capabilities

Interacting with people is a crucial part of gathering support, fans, connections, exposure and ultimately paid work for freelancers. Doing so online to complement your engagement in the ‘real world’ can be very powerful if done correctly.

Google+ allows users to reach out to potential clients, key influencers and others who support your freelancing business in better and more effective ways.

Firstly, because the system allows you to follow the updates of people without them needing to accept a friend request, you are in a better position to attract connections by engaging with their content and mentioning their name appropriately through ‘+ tagging’, in a similar way to Twitter, so that you get on someone’s radar.

This means that people are more likely to begin to see your own value and add you to their circles. The open (yet secure) system also allows your updates to filter through the Google+ network (depending on who you want to share with) so that you pick up more fans and prospects as well.

Secondly, the circles tool allows you to share the right information with the relevant people, which allows for the sharing of content in a much more targeted way.

This is very powerful when we are talking about relationship- building. Thirdly, the highly superior search function inside Google+ makes searching for people, as well as content to share and engage with much easier.

This is not to mention the fact that profiles and brand pages, including yours will favourably appear in Google’s search engine results too. Fourthly, circles enables you to group your contacts easily and visibly, so that you can group people that need to be contacted, for example, or simply use circles to store contacts, like an address book.

The extended circles element will even allow you to share your updates with people you follow who haven’t followed you back yet.

5. Wasting valuable time by not using Google+ as your professional ‘social hub’

Google+ allows you to focus pretty much all of your professional promotion and engagement activity in one place.

For example, you can send updates that you post on Google+ automatically to Twitter and Facebook, so you never have to leave Google. Creative freelancers can use Google+ as their first port of call for showing prospects their secondary portfolio, as well as bio, collaborate through hangouts and grouped circles, and gain critical feedback on work, for example, all through the tools on Google+.

Being tied in to other Google products and services like documents and Gmail, means you can get a lot done from one place via the Google bar that shows up at the top of the screen.

What this all means is that you will be in a position to streamline your self promotion and engagement activities and bring a lot of your focus, including actually getting work done, into one place.

Many more features, including streamlining your network outside of Google+, will be revealed in our course on Google+ tailored especially for freelancing professionals.

6. Being forgotten by Google’s powerful search engine

Being associated with Google+ means that everything that originates from you, including your profile, and brand page, will attract preference from Google’s powerful, and well known, search engine, so that you, your brand and your shared content will be found more easily.

The value this presents for self-promotion is very evident.

Google is taking a very strong interest in material that is being shared socially, i.e. on Google+, and will make sure that socially-shared material gains priority through their engine.

Google’s recent introduction of the +1 button means that anything that receives a +1 (similar to Facebook’s ‘like’) will gain even more preference through Google search.

As everything shared in Google+, including images now, has a +1 button linked to it, there is a lot of scope for gaining huge exposure through this.

7. Failing to be part of Google+’s growth and integration

With 40 million users joining Google+ in its first four months of existence, there clearly will be no shortage of users that will serve to further drive and support it.

What you needn’t worry about is if Google+ failed to get anywhere close to Facebook numbers of users. It’s the quality of users it attracts that is important for freelancers, and with fewer users, the more you stand out as a professional in any case. Google+ has the benefit of being part of the Google family, and this means being able to integrate them into the system.

A lot is yet to come, but things like Google’s search engine, Gmail, Picasa for pictures, YouTube and Documents will bring big benefits to a presence on Google+.

As well as having an excellent mobile version of Google+, Google’s Android operating system is getting a lot of people very excited about the integration of app design within the Google+ system, so there’s plenty of opportunity there.

8. Missing out on Google+’s excellent collaboration tools

Collaboration, sharing and discussion is obviously a key requirement of a freelancing professional or independent worker.

Google+ provides a host of tools that allow this to be done smoothly and effectively. Adding people you want to collaborate with to a specific circle, if they do the same, allows you to send through updates that can be shared with the ‘team’ you are collaborating with.

Apart from chat, Google+ ‘Hangouts’ is another method for collaboration, which allows groups to discuss projects via a simple video feed. Many are saying that Google circles is just as effective a tool as Basecamp, a highly sophisticated project management and collaboration tool.

As Google+ is free, the benefits of this alone are clear.

Perhaps this little list has built up something of an appetite for wanting to try out Google+ for professional and fun reasons.

We’re about to launch a step-by-step course especially for freelancers on exactly how to use Google+ for winning clients and more. If you’d like more information on the course and to keep up with the launch, have a look here.

I’d love for you to share this post with your freelancer friends via the buttons below. That would be appreciated! Comments are welcome.

Here’s how to do it:

1. Install a launcher program

Mac users should try either Launchbar or Quicksilver. Windows users could try Launchy or AutoHotKey(for power users). Once set up, the launcher program is activated with a keystroke combination (Command-spacebar in my case), and then you start typing the program or name of the folder or file you want to open.

Usually the correct name will be automatically completed within a few keystrokes, and you press the “Return” key to activate it.

It’s much faster than finding the right icon on your desktop, and then double-clicking it, especially if the desktop is covered by a lot of applications and windows.

2. Delete all application shortcuts

Many people have shortcuts all over their desktops for commonly used applications/programs. You don’t need them anymore, now that you have the launcher program.

Delete them all.

3. Put all folders/files into your Documents folder

Don’t worry too much about sorting them. The launcher program can find them much faster, or you could use the search function of your computer to quickly find anything you’re looking for.

4. Hide everything else

On the PC, right-click on the desktop, go to the “view” menu, and unselect “show desktop icons”. On the Mac, in the Finder, go to File -> Preferences, under General, and unselect all the items under “Show these items on the Desktop”.

Now all your icons should be gone from the desktop.

.

Doesn’t that look and feel better?

Thanks to Leo Babauta for the ideas contained here.

From working on your dream project to learning new skills, your time is your own to use as much or as little of as you choose.

Here are ten ideas to put to use in order to use your extra time productively:

1. Make a Plan

Back when you started out, was there an end goal you had in mind that has got lost among the day-to-day work? Perhaps you have a new goal but it seems far away or almost impossible. Now time is on you side, why not make a plan of action for the next week, month or year to help you get closer to achieving it.

2.    Do What you Dream of Doing

While you’ve been knuckling down and working hard for other people, has there been something in the back of your mind you’d love to be doing? Now is the time to start that graphic novel, draw that comic or create that amazing typeface. Even if it is out of your usual area, your personal work could spark off new ideas and techniques to use in the future.

3.    Learn a New Skill

Whether it’s on the computer or using paints, is there anything you’ve ever wished you knew how to do? From making vector badges on Illustrator to how to paint snow, there are tutorials available online to help you do almost anything.

4.    Try New Ways of Self-Promotion

Aside from social networking, there are many other ways to promote yourself and drum up business. Try contributing an article including links to your work to an article site, create an exciting item or product to give away in a competition, or send out promotional postcards to your contact list.

5.    Contact Someone You’d Like to Work With

Send out an email introducing yourself to an artist or writer you’d like to collaborate with, or get talking to an organization or company. You may not set up a job straight away, but you can establish a dialogue and get your name out there.

6.    Write a Guest Post for a Blog in your Industry

A great way to be seen as an expert in your field, a guest post including your link will provide ongoing traffic to your site. Show off your knowledge to the community and get your name and links on sites with high visitor numbers.

7.    Re-Visit your Portfolio

If you’ve just come out of a busy period, chances are you’ve not had chance to update your portfolio in a while. Is there anything missing from it – a new skill you can show off and market yourself with, and does the work already in it still really represent you as a creative?

8.    Do Some Research

Although it’s a given that you’re interested in the field you’re working in as a creative professional, it’s worth taking the time to immerse yourself in the work of others. This is useful not only as an opportunity to check out the competition but also to see where your field is heading. See who’s new and what’s popular and what you can take from that to boost your own work.

9.    Try Creating Stock Images

There are numerous sites out there you can submit your work to, and not only will they keep you in the creative mind set, but you could earn a little money off them too. Check out what’s trending in the news and what gaps there are in the market to make your work more likely to sell.

10. Give your Workspace a Clean Up Blitz

Remember that idea you had a few weeks back? You wrote it down but it’s now lost in the mess on your desk. Organize your workspace and not only will you find all sorts you thought you’d lost, but when you start your next project everything will feel a lot less hectic.

This article should provide you with a large resource of software tools to help you block out distractions and get more done.

“Man must shape his tools lest they shape him.”

Arthur Miller

Keep in mind that these suggestions are not necessarily the solution to your lack of focus, but tools to help you build momentum in blocking out various distractions that can affect the quality of your work.

Here are 18 tools for beating distraction:

Mac

Freedom: An extreme tool, but an effective one that disables your entire Internet connection for a time period set by you. Perfect when you really need to focus for an hour or three at a time.

SelfControl: Disable access to mail servers and websites that distract you. For example, you could block access to Facebook, Gmail, Twitter, and your favorite blogs for 90 minutes, but still have access to the rest of the web. Once started, you can’t undo it until the timer runs out.

Concentrate: Create an activity (design, study, write, etc) and choose actions (launch or block websites, quit applications, speak a message, and more) to run every time you concentrate. When ready, just click “concentrate.” All your distractions will disappear and a timer will appear to help you stay focused.

WriteRoom: One of the best, distraction-free text editors. Goes full screen so all you have is your text. No formatting, just writing text. Beautiful program, copied by many others.

OmmWriter: A beautiful app just for writing. Has a serene backdrop with background music, perfect for creating the distraction-free writing environment (especially if you use headphones).

Ulysses or Scrivener: Two great programs for writers, many more features than WriteRoom but great for longer works such as novels, screenplays, academic papers and more. Both feature full-screen text editors.

Megazoomer: A cool little app that allows you to put almost any Mac program into full-screen mode (ala WriteRoom) using a system-wide keyboard command or menu item. Requires you to install SIMBL — both programs are free.

Think: Little utility that will fade out everything but the app you’re working on at the moment. Allows you to focus on one document at a time, clearing the distractions.

Browser Plugins/Extensions

Leechblock (Firefox): Specify what sites you want to block in Firefox, and when to block them.

StayFocusd (Chrome): Choose certain sites to block, and you get 10 minutes total (by default) per day to go on those time-wasting sites. You can change the time allotted for time-wasting sites, and you can also “nuke” (block) all sites for a time you specify.

Readability (bookmarklet, Chrome extension): clears the clutter on any web article or blog post you want to read. Removes everything — ads, icons, widgets, and more — and just leaves the content in a nice, uncluttered, readable design. Quietube does the same for videos.

Windows

Dark Room: A WriteRoom clone for Windows.

CreaWriter: Distaction-free writing tool inspired by OmmWriter (above), with a peaceful background, full-screen writing, soothing ambient sound, and not much else.

Q10: Full-screen text editor with a timer for focused writing, typewriter sounds as you type if you want them. Freeware.

WriteMonkey: A new entry into the full-screen editor field. In the words of the makers: “Zenware for full screen distraction free creative writing. No whistles and bells, just empty screen, you and your words. WriteMonkey is light, fast, and perfectly handy for those who enjoy the simplicity of a typewriter but live in modern times.”

Other

Emacs: One of the classic text editors (vim is a good alternative and we won’t into which is better here), Emacs runs on all platforms (PC, Mac, Linux) and can hid the menu bar (M-x menu-bar-mode) and tool bar (M-x tool-bar-mode) in any operating system, and can hide also the window title bar in most Linux window managers.

Typewriter: A minimalist text editor that runs in Java (which can run on most operating systems – Mac, Windows, Linux). All you can do is type in one direction. You can’t delete, you can’t copy, you can’t paste. You can save and print. And you can switch between black text on white and green on black; full screen and window. Perfect for writing without stopping, and getting out that first draft.

Many thanks to ‘Focus‘ author, Leo Babauta for these resources.

Any other ideas or suggestions? Comment below!

As writer Louise Baker has kindly put forward, there are sites other than t-shirt shops, stock sites and sites selling merchandise like Cafepress, that can be used by designers to make money. Here are five places you can use to make money from your designs:

Graphic Leftovers

Graphic Leftovers provides a place where graphic designers can sell designs such as logos and icons to anyone that wishes to purchase them. You can provide your work for whatever price you want in the range of $1-$20, and you’ll get 52% commission of that.

You also keep the rights to all of your images, which means you are free to offer them on other sites if you choose to do so. This website is an excellent way to upload designs that you have already created and place then on the internet. Customers will browse the website according to categories to find what they are looking for or can search by keywords.

Themeforest

If you enjoy designing website templates and themes, this website is a great place to sell them to people.

You can sell your templates for anywhere from 40-70% commission. You are allowed to sell items that you have for sale on other websites, but you will receive a reduced commission rate. Be aware the payments are only made after you’ve made $50 or more, so if you don’t plan to selling a lot of designs it may take some time until you receive a payment.

Project4Hire

Instead of simply uploading your own work and hoping that people buy it, Project4hire allows you to design for specific companies or individuals. The person looking for designs will post what is required, and other designers will bid for how much they will charge. When the bidding ends, the person with the lowest offer will receive the job and will design whatever the company or individual has asked for.

Brandstack

This site offers several options for graphic designers. You can put up your logos or graphic designs for companies to browse and buy if they wish to. However, this website also allows you to create an online portfolio of your work.

Anyone looking for a custom design can view portfolios of designers, and then offer a job to any that they like. Here you have the opportunity to do custom work/requests or just sell what designs you already have.

MyFonts

If you like designing fonts, Myfonts is a great way to sell them. Just put up your font designs for customers to view and purchase.

If they buy your font, you will receive 50% of the price that it sold for. You also have some control over how your font is advertised, as you can add your own graphics to the page, write your own description, and create sales or promotions.

Comments and additional sites you know of are welcome in the comments!

Louise Baker blogs about getting an online degree at Zen College Life.

Therefore, I’ve got together some useful tips for dealing with the negative effects (including eye problems, weight gain, and repetitive strain) of working at your desk for long periods. Obviously I’m not a doctor, so only take these tips as suggestions and not official advice.

Sit Properly!

The most important tip for staying healthy at your desk is to maintain a correct posture.

Be sure that your body is directly in front of your screen, so you are not twisting your torso.  Keep your feet on the floor or on a footrest and try not to cross your legs. It’s easy to slip out of a routine in sitting well, so get something to remind you to sit up on your desk, like a big fluffy banana.

Invest in a Good Chair

The first step to achieving good posture is finding a good chair.  It is wise to invest in a chair known for it’s good support for desk-workers such as the Aeron.

Think of how it will help you in the long run. Be sure to choose one with plenty of lumbar support and one that has wheels so you can turn in your desk without twisting your body.

Get an Ergonomic Keyboard

If you’re working on a laptop, this won’t apply to you, but if you’re working on a desktop, take a look at the range of ergonomic keyboards on the market.

Ergonomic keyboards are designed to minimize muscle strain and reduce the chances of developing carpal tunnel syndrome, which can be crippling to some computer workers.

Stop and Stretch Regularly

A quick Google search will reveal a plethora of nutty exercises, exercise equipment, gadgets and other ideas that will help keep you fit at your desk.  The majority of them are fairly ludicrous and impractical.  However, the ideas are good and it is important to keep mobile at your desk.

The most important exercises you can do involve your feet.  Stop every hour or so and make circles with your feet to mobilize your ankles and do foot pumps for example. Place your toes on the ground and lift your ankles in a pumping maneuver.  It’s also a good idea to do circles with your hands a couple of times a day to keep your wrists supple.

Avoid Carpal Tunnel with a Wrist Pad

If you’re using a laptop and you are worried about carpal tunnel (yeah, I’d never heard of it either), or you have experienced this at some point, you should think about purchasing a gel wrist pad, which you place just in front of your laptop.

It will help to keep your wrists elevated and comfortable, thus reducing the restriction on the nerves in your hands.

Don’t Eat and Work

One of the greatest problems with desk-based jobs these days is that people are gaining weight through lack of activity and mixing food with working at our desks.  Constant grazing while working is a problem for many of us and the bottom line is we’re simply not burning enough calories to justify the amount of food we eat.

Keep eating separate from work, and you’ll find you eat less. Get out and breathe some fresh air on your snack breaks.

Breaks Away From the Computer

Every hour, stand up from the computer and have a short walk around.  Heck, throw on some music and have a five-minute dance about. It’ll cheer you up too and clear your head. Take advantage of large downloads or installs on your computer to take a few minutes away from the computer.

Just keep taking breaks at least once an hour. Seriously.

Avoid Caffeine

Pumping our bodies with caffeine may help us stay focused for short periods, but you’ll crash after it wears off and you’ll be inclined to keep drinking/eating more. Replace your intake with other things like juice, but ideally:

Drink Plenty of Water

Water is the fuel that will keep you best focused and feeling most vitalized, even though it doesn’t seem so. Water also helps your body stay strong and healthy and will reduce your appetite. Water is gasoline for humans. Drink it and drink it a lot.

Check Your Eyes

Eye health or lack thereof, is another issue facing people who use computers for long hours every day.  To ensure optimum eye health, visit your optician for regular check-ups.  Noticing deterioration in eyesight quickly is key in maintaining good optical health.  If you are prescribed glasses, wear them!

Good Lighting

Our eyes need good levels of light to be able to work properly.  Make sure the area around your computer is well-lit.  If you have access to natural light, use it, but light in addition to the screen is important too.

Look Out of the Window

Every thirty minutes or so, have a look out of the window.  If you haven’t the fortune of having a room with a window, get out and train your eyes on something in the distance to redress the balance of looking at things close up.

Combine this with your break if you can.  It’s important for you to refocus your eyes regularly to avoid eye strain.

Use an Anti-Glare Screen

Some people find that fitting their computer with an anti-glare screen can help reduce eye strain and headaches from computer use.  It will also reduce reflection, which can be a big plus, depending on your working environment.

If you have more ideas for staying healthy at your desk, give us a shout and leave a comment below!

Put simply, being more productive means we get more done, and it shouldn’t require twenty cups of coffee daily to do so, even if you’re feeling low in energy. In fact there are numerous no-nonsense methods you can use right now to feel and act more productively, and have time left over to chill out. Here they are:

1. Exercise Daily

I’m no advocate of this, but in order for it to work effectively, you need to treat your body correctly.  You might think that since you spend a lot of the day sitting in front of your computer, your physical health is not all that important, but that’s just not the case.  In fact, because your job is often so sedentary, you need to exercise more than people with active jobs.

As a bare minimum, you need 30 minutes of exercise a day, but you will feel most productive and energized by exercising several times a day, preferably before each meal, even for 10 minutes at a time.

2. Get the Right Amount of Sleep

One of the greatest challenges of being self-employed is maintaining a healthy work and sleep schedule.  Experts say we should get between 7 and 9 hours sleep a day, but if you’re working until the last minute of the day, it’s hard to switch off and fall asleep.  The best thing you can do here is not work from your bed.

Turn the computer off at least 1 hour before bedtime and let yourself decompress fully.  Avoid the television, but instead try reading a book, taking a walk, or chatting with family or friends to help you relax.

3. Eat Well

Your diet is of utmost importance and especially if you work from home, it can mean finding yourself grazing throughout the day.  Structure your diet just like you structure your day, fitting in 3 meals and 2 snacks.  Be sure to buy lots of healthy food, and remove the temptation of junk food in the house.

4. Reduce Your Caffeine Intake

The age-old stereotype of writers and other freelance professionals living off coffee may be true, but it’s not a great habit to get into.  Caffeine results in us having less energy and feeling more tired.  Not to mention all the other bad side effects of caffeine.  If you can’t give it up altogether, limit yourself to one cup of coffee each morning and then switch to water or green tea.

5. Make and Maintain a Simple To-Do List

One of the most important tools for increasing productivity is your to-do list.  Make your list the night before, so you’re ready to go and have your daily goals clear in your mind the next morning, but keep it short and simple and be realistic about what you can achieve.

Be sure to refer back to the list throughout the day and at the end of the day.  Anything that’s not completed should move on to the following day’s list.  Write the list by hand, ideally, and if you have a whiteboard, write your list there.

6. Prioritize Your Tasks

When making your to-do list, place the tasks in order of importance. This will ensure that if you don’t have time for any of the tasks, it will be the less important tasks that get passed on to the next day.

7. Time Each Task

Procrastination is your worst enemy.  Picture this: You make a list of 10 tasks that you think you can complete in one day.  At the end of the day, you’ve only completed 5 of them.  What happened?  You were distracted, most likely without even realizing it.

Try setting a time objective for each task on the list.  Then, as you begin each task, start a stopwatch and be sure to complete it within the allotted time.  You will find this added “pressure” helps increase your productivity dramatically.

8. Set Long-Term Goals

Your goals should be set for a variety of timelines (weekly, monthly, quarterly and annually) and they should all be linked together.  Everything that you do should be leading up to, and contributing towards the annual goal.  When you make your action plan, step away from the computer and other distractions.

Perhaps go down to the beach or wherever helps you think clearly.  Once you have made your action plan, refer back to it regularly.  Stick it on the wall.  Update it as you achieve things and as you think of more goals.

9. “Am I Being Productive?”

Return regularly to the questions “Am I being productive?” and “How is this task going to make me develop as a professional?” These two questions will help you to be productive and stay on track with your goals and not get carried away with useless tasks that contribute little to your long-term plans.

10.  Remove Distractions

People’s homes have always been filled with distractions and it takes a certain type of person to be able to work from home productively.  With the advent of the internet, these distractions have multiplied.  Phones, instant messenger, email, web surfing and Facebook, can all be distracting if misused and can crush your productivity levels.

Where possible, turn these distractions off or work in an environment where these machines are absent.

11.  Certain Times for Certain Tasks

As a way of reducing distractions, establish certain times each day for certain tasks.  Email, for example, is one of the most time-consuming and distracting tasks of all.  Try checking and dealing with mail 3 times a day for a maximum of 1 hour each time.  This will stop you from checking email constantly and will allow you to be more productive with your other tasks.

12.  Step Away for Breaks

Many of us think that 15 minutes surfing our favorite social networking site or playing backgammon online with our friend in China is a break from work.  It’s not.  To revive yourself after a stint working on the computer, you need to step away, get some fresh air, exercise or otherwise clear your mind.  It’s the change of scenery that will help you come back feeling refreshed and more productive.

13.  Define a Schedule

For most of us, this means getting started early.  Whether you’re an early bird or a night owl, be sure to set a schedule. If you want to work for 8 hours a day, split those hours in to 2 or 3 blocks of time.  Work solidly during those times and stick to your schedule.

14.  Get Clear

At the end of each day, tidy your desk.  Deal with all paperwork as soon as you receive it.  Once a week, include “Clean Inbox” on your to-do list and remove all unwanted emails and update/remove all completed tasks.

15.  Meditate

Don’t underestimate the power of meditating to quiet the mind, deepening relaxation and boosting productivity in the process. Just spending 6 minutes a few times a day to relax, focus on your breath and your surroundings will have a powerful effect on your energy levels and focus, making you more productive.

16.  Do Things You Love

Everyone knows that the tasks you hate are the ones that get done last.  As a freelance professional, try not to accept jobs you don’t like, you’ll find it helps you be more productive.  If you’re not passionate about them, you’ll be less inclined to get them done quickly.

17.  Be Positive

So you have a lot of work on your plate at the moment, but don’t let that get you down.  There are many struggling freelancers out there desperate for work.  Perhaps something else is getting you down and affecting your productivity, so you have to be positive.  Focusing on positive things, including things to be grateful about will help greatly with your productivity.

18.  Reduce Information Intake

If you work online, no doubt you subscribe to many RSS feeds and newsletters from websites relevant to your field.  While this is great, stop to think about how much time you spend reading every day.  Add on the time spent reading email and news and you’ll realize how much information you’re trying to digest.

Limit yourself to an hour of reading a day and you’ll find there’s more brainpower left for actual work.

19.  Focus on less

Stop trying to work on everything at once. Quite often we find ourselves trying to multi-task in order to deal with heavy workloads. This will make you less effective because you are making things complicated. Just focus on one task at a time, and your productivity for each task will increase.

20.  Save the Best for Last

We tend to procrastinate most with the jobs we hate, so each day, put the least enjoyable tasks at the top of your to-do list and be sure to actually do them.  Not only does this get the jobs you hate out of the way, but having jobs you enjoy left at the end of the day will help you to stay motivated and work for longer.

21.  Keep a Notepad With You

Some of the best ideas come to us late at night, about to fall asleep, or while sitting in traffic and when you’re back at your computer, you just can’t think of the idea.  Keep a notepad or voice recorder with you all the time, so you never forget an idea again.

22.  Get Dressed

This may sound stupid, but there are plenty of people working from home who don’t feel the need to shower and get dressed every morning.  Indeed, “working in your pajamas” might be one of the biggest attractions of working from home.  It can also be one of the biggest pitfalls.  Shower and get dressed every morning and you will feel a difference in your motivation, energy and productivity levels.

23.  Throw Yourself Into Your Work

‘Writer’s Block’ is something we all complain about from time to time, and it’s the biggest myth of all.  Just get started on a project, no matter how little preparation you feel you’ve had.

24.  Plan Your Finances

If you’re self-employed, it’s important to know how much money you have coming in and going out, especially when your income will change each month.

Establish how much you need to bring in, and focus on making at least that amount.  There will be months when you don’t hit your goals, so set aside money on the good months so you have an emergency fund.  This will help reduce stress on the lower-income months. Consider getting an accountant so you can really focus on being productive on actual work assignments.

25.  Reward Yourself

Whenever you complete one of your larger tasks, or reach one of the goals in your action plan, reward yourself by doing something fun – it will help renew your motivation for your other projects.

Comments and further ideas are welcome!

This could be in various ways, on and offline, including the ways in which I’ve talked about here and in my ebook, such as bringing targeted traffic to your blog, making connections through social media, engaging with prospects on forums, and introducing yourself via email to your prospects.

One of the best ways to get strong, consistent results with this kind of active self-promotion is to set yourself results-oriented targets instead of effort-oriented targets.

So, for example, instead of writing a post for your blog, tweeting it, then leaving it at that, make a real commitment to bringing a certain number of people to your post and blog within a week. This might mean using a few extra web tactics on top of using Twitter, but you know what you are aiming for.

Or, for example, instead of writing five email rapport-building introductions to potential clients, commit to writing as many emails or making as many calls as it takes until you receive a response from five people who ask for more information on your services.

You can apply these results-oriented methods to any active marketing technique you have in your arsenal.

These targets are short-term, but will help you stay focused on achieving your long-term goals, fast-tracking you to success.

Do people agree with these ideas?