Our work lives are creeping into our holiday time as mobile devices become an extension of our offices. More than half of office workers are planning to crank out some work over the winter holidays this year, according to a recent survey by presentation app maker SlideRocket. If you're one of them, use these tech tips to keep your life organized away from the office and maintain your sanity.
1. Plan Your Time in Advance
Don't plan to work during certain hours each day, unless you absolutely must be on call. Instead, schedule the time that you need for your tasks, and do them when you can find the time. Family members may want to go shopping, old friends may want to catch up over a coffee, and just about anything else can happen over the holidays. To help you organize your time, Gtask syncs with Google Calendar and brings the power of Gmail Task to Android phones. While pricey compared with similar apps, Omnifocus comes highly recommended for the iPad and iPhone as an extremely useful, task-based productivity app. If you need a ticking clock to help, check out a software timer.
2. Store All Your Files in One Place Online
Storing must-have files in the cloud is essential if you work across multiple machines or in various locations, especially if family duties take you away from the main office this season. While there are many cloud services that enable this, I use Basecamp and Google Docs to store documents. Both tools allow you to collaborate with clients or co-workers quickly and from anywhere in the world. Google Docs is free, and you don't need to create a document in Docs to use it. You can upload any kind of file and store up to 1024MB on your Google Docs account.
Basecamp is the next step up for those who have outgrown Google Docs. It allows you to organize your files into projects and give clients or co-workers access to their projects. It starts at $24 a month for 15 projects and 5GB of file storage. You can try it for a month free, and test-drive it over the holidays.
Source:http://www.cfoworld.com/technology/28080/practical-tips-working-over-holidays
