Since January 2010, I have worked full-time out of my home. Being at home alone all day in front of the computer can bring a lot of opportunities for distractions. Emails from friends and family, jokes from grandma, Facebook, Twitter, blogs, instant messages, YouTube, Hulu, Netflix, etc, etc. This is just a recipe for disaster. Over the past year I have had to try and block out as many of these distractions as I can and really force myself to get work done. Here’s a few things I have done (or don’t do) to help myself stay focused when working on the computer:

• Disable Facebook notification emails: By default Facebook is setup to email you whenever someone posts to your wall, pokes you, or whatever. I have disabled all emails from Facebook. All of these notifications can be seen within Facebook and you do not need them in your email. Instructions on how to disable them.
• Limit Instant messages: I limit my buddy list to only specific people. Usually only work-related contacts. Anyone else can contact me through email.
• Disable sound notifications: I turn off sound notifications for instant messages and emails and opt for visual notifications (to an extent). Besides distracting sounds beeping at me all day, I usually listen to music or podcasts and sound notifications would get annoying.
• Disable pop-up notifications: I use Pidgin for instant messaging and I only use the taskbar highlighting when I receive an IM. For emails, I use Scott’s Gmail Alert which displays an icon in your system tray.
• Avoid social network add-ons/plugins: These are such services as Gist, RockMelt, and Rapportive. These add-ons put your social network contacts “conveniently” in your web browser or next to your Gmail. Doing web design, I am working in the browser all day long. I do not need to know when my friends are online or what they are doing.

These are just a few things to help with avoiding distractions and staying focused.

You probably thought it’s too much work or maybe you don’t know how to do it.  It’s not “if” you lose your files, it’s “when”. Backing up your files isn’t that tough though and there’s actually an excellent philosophy that you can live by. If you follow this philosophy, you can sleep tight at night knowing you will never lose your data.

It’s called 3-2-1 Backup.

3 copies

You should have three copies of your files. This typically means the copy on your main hard drive, a copy on an external hard drive in your house or a DVD, and one copy online in the “cloud” or possibly on a hard drive or DVD in a safe deposit box or at a friend/relative’s house.

2 different media types

Have your data stored on a hard drive, DVD, tape, thumb drive, online, etc.  This prevents different types of hazards.

1 offsite

Use an online backup service like Carbonite or Mozy to automatically backup your files online as you create them. (For photos you could also use a photo sharing site like SmugMug, Picasa or Flickr to backup your photos as well as share them online.) You could also keep a backup hard drive at your parent’s house (preferably several miles away from your house).

For more information on this backup philosophy and in-depth best practices, please visit dpBestflow.

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