Station Master's Journal

Nothing kills your ability to get things done faster than a bad night's sleep. Studies show that sleep deprivation costs Americans significant work productivity; yawning employees can't stay alert, make good decisions, focus on tasks or even manage a friendly mood at the office. There are lots of ways to beat insomnia, increase the quality of your sleep, and master the power nap. Check out Lifehacker for a list of their top 10 favorite sleep techniques, tips and facts.

Have you ever needed to email someone - a stranger, asking them for a favor? How can one compose email such that they will be read and responded to? How do we effectively email someone who gets a lot of email?

Whether personal or business, the ability to compose efficient and effective email is super useful - both in terms of productivity and responsiveness.

We’re all busy, and we’ve all received long, ambiguous and rambling email. Ironically, most of us have also been guilty of writing such verbose email while requesting for someone else’s time.

Source: 15 Tips for Writing Effective Email

I just came across a very detailed and explanatory visual guide to the financial crisis that more or less sums up the current situation in an easy to follow flow chart. Although it's initially a bit visually overwhelming it really does help explain things clearly once you start reading.

This morning I read a really interesting article on the design approach for Barrack Obama's campaign logo in the New York Times. The logo itself was designed by a small design firm in Chicago called Mode.

When we received the assignment, we immediately read both of Senator Obama’s books. We were struck by the ideas of hope, change and a new perspective on red and blue (not red and blue states, but one country). There was also a strong sense, from the start, that his campaign represented something entirely new in American politics — “a new day,” so to speak.

I must say I really liked their approach here by starting with immersing themselves in their client. By getting to know the man, Barrack Obama, they were able to really create a logo that speaks to “change.”

After reading the NYTimes article I did a little digging to see what some of their other work looked like and I must say I was a little surprised to see that they primarily seem to be a motion design company and that their website seemed quite bland for the quality of clients and work that they produce. It always strikes me when I see a piece of great design work but the creator has a really poor website. How do good companies that produce high quality work get away with having such bland looking websites? When I googled “Mode design Chicago” they didn't even come up in the listings and if it were not for Google Maps I never would have found them. They must do 90% of their business through word of mouth because they are virtually invisible on the web.

It's not every day I run across a clip on YouTube like this one so I decided to share. It's probably old news for a lot of steady YouTube fanatics but I just loved the theme and the stunning locations so much I just couldn't avoid posting it on the Simple Station blog.

The title is “Where the hell is Matt” and it's basically one man's quest to dance everywhere on the entire globe. He does a pretty good job. One question though - where on earth does he get his funding!?!

The large number of small businesses in Victoria that are operated from a home office always surprises me. Hopefully this entry will help those of you who are working from home. Recently A List Apart had a great article on working from home. They asked their readers to write in the best tips and tricks for working in a home office environment and they responded with some excellent tips.

Here are your secrets—how to balance work and family, maintain energy and focus, get things done, and above all, how to remember the love.

There's a solid 20-30 tips in the article so be sure to give it a good read if it apply's to you. While I can't say I'm a huge fan of the printable CEO series (I find it too much paperwork for my liking) I do find their tip on using GrandCentral catching my eye as I've been thinking for a while that it would be nice just to be able to give out one number to clients instead of both office and cell numbers.

A List Apart has also ran a similar article on the home work environment theme titled “Walking the line when you work from home” which is also a good read.

Enjoy!

When the benefits of teleworking are discussed, one of the major points raised is that teleworking is better for the environment. One of the more obvious causes of this is that if more people work from home, lesser people drive to work, reducing petrol consumption and the emissions that result from it.

A recent survey by the US Consumer Electronics Association found that although the carbon emissions from home offices increased because of telecommuting, the saved petrol consumption more than makes up for it:

The report states that there are 3.9 million people in the U.S. who work from home at least one day a week. By avoiding an average 22-mile commute to the place of work, and taking into account the increased power use in the home, this practice saves about 840 million (U.S.) gallons of petrol, equivalent to taking two million cars off the road for a year.
Source: PC World, Telecommuting Saves Carbon Emissions

Despite these claims, there are still some skeptics. Read more at WebWorkerDaily.

So it looks like if you work from home you're doing the environment a favor. Hooray for web workers!