I work from home. If you do too, you know what that means. For those of you that don’t, I don’t recommend it. As a 44 year old male that’s been in the software business for over 20 years, I thought this would be straight-forward and relatively easy – basically, common sense. Well, not exactly.

For those of you that must work from home, here are my new rules based on a few glitches that I’ve been trying to work out…

1. Start by brushing your teeth before you head down to your home office. This may sound easy, but it’s not. It’s easy to defer and then you’ll find yourself with ‘cigar breath’ around 2pm. Not good, even my headset complains. Shower? I’m not going to touch that yet…that’s way too advanced.

2. Eat Breakfast – hands down, this is the hardest thing to do before starting work. I do this 2 out of 5 days and this is after the 10 minute debate inside my head, “why eat now, I can work for ‘a while’ and then eat in ‘a bit’”. Yeah, right. I’m now 150 lbs and dropping every day. I may be Johnny Winter by next winter.

3. Block out your lunches – many reasonably smart people can’t deal with the 4 US time zones very well. Therefore, on 4 out of 5 days, some jack%#@ has booked a meeting over my lunch hour. Oh, you’re too important to eat lunch or take a break? Even if you’re the CEO you should block off some time whether it’s for a work-out, reading time, eating, meeting with a friend/mentor or just thinking. Block out at least 3 of your lunch hours a week – do it.

4. Don’t Fold Clothes or Do Dishes – many of us are over-achievers and as such, we can’t stand to have idle seconds or minutes. During long conference calls, 60-120 minutes, I’ve folded clothes, done dishes, and even picked up dog crap in the backyard. I don’t recommend this although I will say that if you’re picking up dog crap it can have a positive mental effect that may help you. For example, if you’re picking up dog crap, nearly everything you hear on the phone will sound reasonably good and you may even find yourself volunteering for a ‘new project’.

5. Put up a cool picture in your office – you will need something to stare at because you will be bored out of your mind on some calls. Boring college classes won’t even come close to comparing – in fact, those classes way be viewed retrospectively as some of the “best times”. Hang some cool pictures in your office that help you escape the dementia.

6. Occasionally, just bow out – in sports, it’s common to find yourself in a situation where you just need a break, rest, or water. It’s like getting “dizzy”. Don’t be too proud. Occasionally, ok daily, on 1 of my calls, I’ll just declare myself “too fatigued” to continue. This typically catches most people off guard because who and the hell is too tired to finish a conf call? Well, it depends on the company. I get fatigued daily and I just admit it and then bail out – some people wear me out…like the DMV may wear you out. It works surprisingly well and everyone seems fine with it, almost relieved. Although, I do think there are some unanswered questions floating around.

7. Remember that you’re not alone – this is mostly to just placate my audience. You are alone, that’s what it means to “work from home”. Maybe it’s your “dream-job” or maybe you are just a great “individual contributor” (wink-wink)? Either way, you are going to be alone for more hours than you’ve ever imagined. Prepare for the pain of spending so much time with yourself and look for ways to improve on your bad habits (especially – #1, #2, and #3 above).

Good luck, god speed and buy a nice chair.

About the Author
My name is Greg Davoll and I’m a fan of Imulus. I work for a cool software company called Quest Software and I run marketing for our Data Protection business (fancy term for backup and recovery). If you like this, please follow me at twitter.com/duvylove or check out my profile on LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/gregdavoll

In 2003 we switched up our SEO terminology from marketing ourselves a “web design” company to an “interactive agency.” We had several reasons for this move:

• Less competitive
• Higher quality traffic & leads
• More inclusive than just a “web design” or “web development” company

We’ve done well over the years optimizing for “interactive agency” and have benefited on secondary terms not specifically target till many years later. We weren’t the only agency calling ourself an “interactive agency”, but in 2009 we noticed a decrease in our “interactive agency” referral traffic & lead quality. We started seeing well-respected international competitors move to the term “digital agency.” Internally we started debating should we lead with “digital” or “interactive.” To settle this debate, we turned to Google Trends.

We ran a query on the two terms and yielded these results showing a drop in references made to “interactive agency” and a general increase in references for “digital agency.” Please check it out for yourself.

Using that data as our guidepost we’ve shifted our SEO strategy to focus on “digital agency.” If you are ever in a debate over which keywords are a good fit for your SEO strategy don’t be afraid to rely on Google Trends data.

A while ago I did a full roundup of GTD personal management apps, my clear and decisive winner for this roundup would have been The Hit List except at that time there wasn’t an iPhone app.

Over the past two years this app was vaporware — at one point Andy Kim, the developer of THL, posted a screenshot on Flickr of the interface, only to vanish from the the earth another year. Finally, yesterday (July 6th 2011 at 10:23a.m.) he appeared on THL Google Group to notify users that THL iPhone would be launching on the app store within a few hours. So, finally, THL has arrived.

I’ve purchased the app and signed up for the year long sync service, so far, things are beautiful. Syncing works like a charm, I dare say on the same level as Simplenote. The interface is jaw dropping, and the speed of the app is on par with other top-tier iPhone apps.

I will give a full review when I’ve gotten my whole life switched back into THL, but until then I wanted to let people know the new iPhone version seems like a winner and might actually have been worth the wait.

What’s your name, position, goal in life?
Erik Smith, Programmer. My goal in life is to program, live comfortably, retire in the mountains to ski, bike, and golf until my body wont let me anymore… then ill code.

If you could define yourself as Beats Per Minute, what number would you be?
I’d probably be a shade above the average of ~70. I consider myself fairly even keeled. However, since I grew up outside of NYC, where everything moves a mile a minute, I constantly have to tell myself to slow it down.

What is the worst thing you’ve ever done and gotten away with?
I’m not past the statute of limitations yet.

What’s the most challenging part of your job?
Learning the mountain of technologies in front of me.

What’s your favorite thing about Colorado so far?
Where do I start? The mountains, the view, the skiing, the hiking, Boulder and Denver being 20 minutes from me, the biking, the people, the weather, and the lack of humidity. 95 degrees here feels like 80 degrees back east! Did I mention the mountains?

What’s the best part about your job? The worst?
The best part of my job is the relaxed atmosphere. So much different than what I am used to. A great change of pace. The worst so far has to be route 36!

Sweet or salty?
Salty.

Would you rather be mechanically induced to scream at the top of your lungs for an hour or have your eyes glued shut for a day?
Eyes glued shut. I have a very hard time sleeping for extended periods of time, so if my eyes were taped shut, that just might help me along…

If you could change one thing about your past, what would it be?
I would have probably not accepted my first job out of college as a non-technical job. It set me back a few years getting to where I want to be in my career. Hindsight is 20/20?

What’s your favorite meal of the day?
This is an easy one. I love to cook so it hands down has to be dinner. Plus, its the only meal where I have time to make something. I recently bought a new grill so now I’m enjoying it even more.

Describe your biggest achievement.
Ask me in 30 years…

If you could be any animal, what would you be?
I would have to say a Grizzly bear. What other animal can run 30 mph, scare the hell out of everything and everyone, stuff itself for 3 months each year while sleeping for the next 6?