By Cameron Chapman

We’ve all heard it: time is money. And as much as we sometimes hate to look at it in such base terms, it’s mostly true. As service providers (designers and developers), the time we spend on a project is directly proportional to how much we’re getting paid. How we spend our time also has a big effect on when money comes in.

If we want to get a better grip on our cash flow, we need to get a better grip on our time first. Sure, we all recognize that the time we spend working effects our overall income. But it’s often hard to see the relationship between time management and cash flow. Regardless of how muddy the relationship seems, there are direct ties between how you manage your time and how much money comes in when. Read on for more information on how to better manage your time so you can better manage your finances.

Take a Wide View

Time management is often dealt with on a micro level. We look at our time in blocks of fifteen, thirty, or sixty minutes, and assess how to best utilize those blocks. But when it comes to managing your time with an aim toward more stable cash flow, this micro-management doesn’t do much good.

What you need to do is take a macro view of how you’re spending your time, and manage it based on when you need to complete billable work. Rather than looking at time in blocks that make up a fraction of your day, look at it in terms of what you’re doing this week or this month.

Regular Billing Intervals

One thing you’ll want to consider when planning your long-term time management is the frequency at which you’ll be billing clients. There are a few things to take into account here. One has to do with how many projects you have going, and how staggered they are. Ideally, you’ll want your projects to overlap in such a way that you can send out bills on a weekly or bi-weekly basis. This means you’ll have money coming in virtually every week, which is a big plus for any freelancer’s cash flow.

The other thing to consider is how often clients are billed for work. Some designers might only bill their clients at the end of a project (in addition to a deposit up front, of course). While this results in larger payments, it also means payments are coming in less frequently. You’ll need to decide if you can justify billing more often during the project. Breaking down the project’s fee over three payments can not only aid your cash flow, but also your client’s.

Again, the goal here is to have money coming in on at least a semi-regular basis. Many freelancers will want payments arriving on a weekly basis, so there’s less budgeting involved. Others might prefer to have larger payments coming in less frequently. You’ll need to work out which system works better for you and the types of bills you have and then plan your projects so deadlines and billing cycles correspond with your desired payment schedule.

Set Goals and Work to Deadlines

Goals and deadlines are two of the biggest tools in your time management arsenal. Putting them to the best use take some practice, though.

You’ll want to set both long-term and short-term goals. Your short-term goals might include things like finishing up a project or landing a new client. Your long-term goals might be income-related or have to do with purchasing new equipment, hiring an employee or two, or expanding your services. Your goals don’t need to be set in stone, but you should have an idea of where you want your business to go, and then make sure you’re allocating enough time to certain projects or activities that will help you reach those goals.

Some people opt to put their goals up where they can see them. Others don’t bother writing them down, even. Either way is fine, just make sure you know what your goals are and what you need to do to move toward them.

Goals don’t have to be set in stone. There are people who are resistant to setting goals, as they feel like it might limit them and make them miss other, better, opportunities. That doesn’t have to be the case, though. Just because you’ve set a goal doesn’t mean you can’t change it or adapt it if you’re wants or needs change. The goal’s true purpose is just to keep you moving forward and give you something to aim for.

Deadlines

On most projects, you’ll have a timeline or deadline you have to work to. But sometimes a client is more lax about when their website needs to be done, giving you a deadline that’s months away. This can wreak havoc with your work schedule and your cash flow. So set a deadline that’s more closely tied to when you can realistically finish the project.

It’s also a good idea to set deadlines for yourself for stages within each project, especially for milestones that will trigger a payment. Set deadlines for things like invoicing and making any collections efforts, too. You should aim to send invoices as soon as possible, but setting a deadline of 1-2 days after work is complete (and/or approved by the client) is a good practice to get into. You at least want to be sending invoices on a weekly basis to ensure you have a steady cash flow.

Establish Good Habits

If you want to keep a steady flow of cash coming into your business, you’ll need to develop some good habits. Habits are necessary because they become second-nature after awhile. When you’re in the habit of doing something, it’s automatic; you no longer have to think about doing it. While habits aren’t necessarily essential (a good to-do list can replace them), they will make your business run smoother.

There are some habits you may want to develop that have little to do with your cash flow directly. Things like starting and ending work at the same time each day, taking regular breaks while you’re working, and taking time off are all good habits to get into, but they won’t have a direct impact on your cash flow. However, these habits all serve to make you more productive, which will have a positive impact on your cash flow and other aspects of your business.

Send Invoices Regularly

In order to have money coming in, you have to ask for it. That’s what invoices do. Depending on the volume of your business and how tight your budget is, you may want to dedicate a few minutes at the end of each day to preparing invoices, or a couple of hours one or two days each week. You also might consider getting in the habit of taking time as soon as a project (or part of a project) is finished to prepare the invoice, before moving on to the next project.

Another option is to keep a running invoice for each project, adding hours or other billable items to it as you complete them. This way, when you reach a billing trigger, the invoice will be ready and all you’ll need to do is print it out or email it.

Other Bookkeeping Tasks

Keeping track of bills and outgoing money is just as important as keeping track of income. You need to know when your bills are due or when to expect an expense so you can prepare for it and make sure the money is available. There’s nothing worse than getting a big payment for a project and then realizing you have to send three quarters of it off for your rent or some other bill.

The same goes for taxes. Get in the habit of keeping track of how much money you’ll owe for taxes and taking that percentage out of each payment that comes in. Considering in many countries you may pay anywhere from 25% to 50% of your income to taxes, this is vital to making sure you have a stable cash flow and won’t get hit with a huge bill when tax time rolls around.

Taking a few minutes each day or an hour each week to make sure your finances are in order is vital to making sure you have a stable budget and a stable business. If you’re constantly having to scramble to make payments on things, set aside the time to better manage your finances.

Respond to Requests Promptly

Sometimes the reason between you getting a contract and your competitor getting it has more to do with how quickly you respond than with the actual proposal. Once a client makes a decision to go ahead with a website redesign, in many cases they want to dive right in and get started. If you turn around and get a proposal to them within a few days, and your competition takes a week and a half, they might sign with you before they even receive the other proposal.

It’s a good idea to get into the habit of taking some time whenever a request for a proposal comes in, and deciding right away whether it’s something you want to respond to or not. If it is, take the time to gather any additional information you need and put together the proposal right away. More work will almost inevitably help your cash flow (provided, of course, your new client pays their bills when they’re supposed to).

Keep Better Track of Your Time

Tracking where your time goes helps to eliminate wasted time. Now, that doesn’t mean every single minute you’re sitting at your desk has to be spent in the most productive way possible, but if you track your time and find you’re spending more time on Facebook than actually working, you should probably make some adjustments.

There are dozens of time-tracking apps and methods out there. Any of these can be used to better determine where your time is being spent. I’d suggest keeping track of your time for at least a week before you make any adjustments. A month is better. After all, you might find that you’re less productive on a certain day of the week, but on other days you completely make up for it.

The other big advantage to accurately tracking your time is that you’ll be able to create more accurate estimates for your clients, and you’ll be less likely to undercut yourself. Maybe you think a certain web design task will only take you an hour, but when you actually look at the time you’re spending on it, it’s taking you three. While you might not be able to bill for the difference on your current project, at least you’ll know to bill more for the next one.

Make Adjustments as Needed

Time management is a constant process, not a one-time project. You can’t just set up a schedule and expect it to work for the next five or ten years. You’ll need to review where your time is going on a regular basis, monthly or bimonthly is usually a good schedule, and make sure you’re not only not wasting time, but also billing for the time you’ve spent on particular projects.

By better managing your time, you can make sure that your cash flow is more consistent, and that you have money coming in when you need it. And the only way to effectively manage your time is to review, on a regular basis, where your time is needed, where it is most effectively spent, and where it is being wasted.

Our business themes are by far the most popular range of themes on WooThemes (did I just use “themes” 4 times in the same sentence?), which means that a month without a new business theme almost feels kinda weird…

Sealight (by Chris Rowe, who also designed Spectrum) is our shiny new theme which is geared at being the beacon within your business. So expect to want to change your business website when Sealight is released soon. And then here’s the teaser so long…

Our business themes are by far the most popular range of themes on WooThemes (did I just use “themes” 4 times in the same sentence?), which means that a month without a new business theme almost feels kinda weird…

Sealight (by Chris Rowe, who also designed Spectrum) is our shiny new theme which is geared at being the beacon within your business. So expect to want to change your business website when Sealight is released soon. And then here’s the teaser so long…

Our business themes are by far the most popular range of themes on WooThemes (did I just use “themes” 4 times in the same sentence?), which means that a month without a new business theme almost feels kinda weird…

Sealight (by Chris Rowe, who also designed Spectrum) is our shiny new theme which is geared at being the beacon within your business. So expect to want to change your business website when Sealight is released soon. And then here’s the teaser so long…

Can be used in lots of different ways

• Use as a Coming soon page for your website / Application / Software
• Showcase your product in one single page with featured image and description on the right. Lots of iPhone App websites are built this way. You can use this theme to create a website just like that.
• Showcase your digital product by creating a very quick website by previewing screen shots.
• Use this theme as a list builder by enabling Feed burner Subscription Form from the design settings.
• Any other way you want.

Customize per your imagination.

In the design settings, we have provided all the options to choose colors of your choice in every aspects of the theme. You may change fonts, background color or image, content color, product image and so on. So, your imagination is the limit. Be a little bit creative and create a unique design for yourself.  The color picker will help you choose any colors of your choice without having to know exact color codes. Check some of the quick customization we did with this theme.

Demo & Download

View live demo here and Download the Coming Soon theme

How to use?

Once you upload and activate the theme, you should see “Coming Soon Theme Options” link in your wp-admin > Appearance section. You will find all the versatile design settings there. You can change content, images, colors and other aspects of the theme from here itself.

Note: This is just a single page theme for the unique purpose explained above. It does not support wordpress pages, posts or categories.

  

We are regulalry collecting useful JavaScript and jQuery snippets, libraries, articles, tools and resources and present them in compact round-ups here, on Noupe. This time we are again covering some useful JavaScript and jQuery techniques, plugins and tools that may help you improve the user experience for your site.

Useful JavaScript and jQuery Techniques

Colorful Sliders With jQuery & CSS3
In this tutorial we are using jQuery and the new transformation features brought by CSS3 to create a three dimensional dynamic slider effect. The techniques presented here – for creating sliders, and CSS dynamic resizable bars, can be used together or in part for powering all sorts of jQuery goodness.

Sponsor Flip Wall With jQuery & CSS
Designing and coding a sponsors page is part of the developer’s life (at least the lucky developer’s life, if it is about a personal site of theirs). It, however, follows different rules than those for the other pages of the site. You have to find a way to fit a lot of information and organize it clearly, so that the emphasis is put on your sponsors, and not on other elements of your design.

TipTip jQuery Plugin
TipTip detects the edges of the browser window and will make sure the tooltip stays within the current window size. As a result the tooltip will adjust itself to be displayed above, below, to the left or to the right of the element with TipTip applied to it, depending on what is necessary to stay within the browser window.
TipTip is a very lightweight and intelligent custom tooltip jQuery plugin. It uses ZERO images and is completely customizable via CSS.

Nivo Slider
The Most Awesome jQuery Image Slider

jQuery.Syntax
jQuery.Syntax is an extremely fast and lightweight syntax highlighter. It has dynamic loading of syntax source files and integrates cleanly using CSS or modelines.

jquery.timepickr.js
This is my humble attempt to enhence web time picking.

Photo Zoom Out Effect with jQuery
Today we will show you how to create a simple image zoom out effect with jQuery. The idea is show some images which are zoomed in initially and when hovering over an image it gets zoomed out. This effect could be used in photography websites or image galleries. Our example uses some black and white images to focus on the effect.

A Fresh Bottom Slide Out Menu with jQuery
In this tutorial we will create a unique bottom slide out menu. This large menu will contain some title and a description of the menu item. It will slide out from the bottom revealing the description text and some icon. We will use some CSS3 properties for some nice shadow effects and jQuery for the interaction.

Making a Mosaic Slideshow With jQuery & CSS
Today we are making a jQuery & CSS mosaic gallery. Mosaic, because it will feature an interesting tile transition effect when moving from one slide to another.

17 jQuery Plugins for Easy and Efficient Reordering and Filtering Page Elements
Having full control of elements on a page and the order they are presented in can be quite useful. jQuery as always is a safe choice to go for. There are several good quality plugins to pick from. This post provides an overview of plugins you can use to provide simple yet powerful functionality to reorder, filter, add drag and drop capabilities etc.

Create an Impressive Content Editing System with jQuery and PHP
I’m going to show you how to use jQuery and PHP to build a content editing system that will allow you or your client to easily edit .html pages visually.

jQuery MegaMenu Plugin

Excellent JQuery Plugins To Enhance Form Validation
Simple jquery plugins can enhance and beautify HTML form elements, these simple jquery scripts turn a simple HTML website to a fantastic look and feel. These plugins can be enabled very easily. In this roundup I have gathered most beautiful Jquery plugins that are related to all kinds of form validation. This list also includes roundups of some blogs. Go ahead and enjoy

gameQuery – a javascript game engine with jQuery
gameQuery is a jQuery plug-in to help make javascript game development easier by adding some simple game-related classes. It’s still in an early stage of development and may change a lot in future versions. The project has a Google Code page where the SVN repository of the project is hosted and a twitter page where you can follow the daily progress of the development.

Getting Buggy CSS Selectors to Work Cross-Browser via jQuery
Below I’ve prepared a simple table that describes a number of CSS selectors that are not cross-browser compatible, along with the jQuery syntax for each. The syntaxes are exactly the same as they would be in CSS, save for the jQuery wrapper (just remove $() and the quotes to get the CSS syntax), so using these selectors in jQuery will provide somewhat of a practice ground to prepare you for when they’re fully supported by all commonly-used browsers.

jqFancyTransitions: jQuery Image Rotator Plugin
jqFancyTransitions is easy-to-use jQuery plugin for displaying your photos as slideshow with fancy transition effects.

A demo of AD Gallery
A highly customizable gallery/showcase plugin for jQuery.

jQuery UI Selectmenu: An ARIA-Accessible Plugin for Styling a Custom HTML Select Element
Our latest contribution to labs is the selectmenu plugin, which is designed to duplicate and extend the functionality of a native HTML select element, and lets you customize the look and feel, add icons, and create hierarchy within the options. Best of all, it’s built with progressive enhancement and accessibility in mind, has all the native mouse and keyboard controls, and is ThemeRoller-ready.

Create a Content Rich Tooltip with JSON and jQuery
Today we’re going to break the mold of the traditional tooltip. This tutorial will demonstrate how to build tooltips that are powered by jQuery, with information pulled from a JSON array.

jQuery image zoom effect
So today I’m going to run through the technique used to zoom the image thumbnails and display the overlay of text.

jQuery Roundabout Shapes
Roundabout Shapes provide even more paths along which your Roundabout can move. The current version of Roundabout Shapes offers eleven additional movements.

Extending jQuery’s selector capabilities

How to show/hide a hidden input form field using jQuery
This past week I was working on a project at work which included building a request form with multiple fields. It was a rather large form that included a dropdown list with an ‘other’ option. I wanted to allow users to select the ‘other’ option which then would show an input field so they can enter a specific description of what that ‘other’ item is. I didn’t want to clutter the form by displaying that additional field by default so I used a little jQuery, thus displaying it dynamically and only when needed.

A Better jQuery In-Field Label Plugin
This is a pretty nice effect, and it can really help to save space on forms. There are a billion different ways to implement this, and I don’t suggest you use the example from above because that was just a quick way to show the effect. So let’s walk through a couple of different implementation approaches and figure out the best way to implement this feature.

Useful JavaScript / jQuery Tools

JavaScriptMVC
JavaScriptMVC is an open-source framework containing the best ideas in enterprise JavaScript development. It guides you to successfully completed projects by promoting best practices, maintainability, and convention over configuration.

PEG.js – Parser Generator for JavaScript
PEG.js is a parser generator for JavaScript based on the parsing expression grammar formalism. It enables you to easily bulid fast parsers which process complex data or computer languages. You can use it as an underlying tool when writing various data processors, transformers, interpreters, or compilers.

PhoneGap
PhoneGap is an open source development tool for building fast, easy mobile apps with JavaScript.

JavaScript Shell
A command-line interface for JavaScript and DOM.

WireIt – a Javascript Wiring Library
WireIt is an open-source javascript library to create web wirable interfaces for dataflow applications, visual programming languages, graphical modeling, or graph editors.

JavaScript Programming Patterns
In this article I am trying to present some of the techniques out there that I have discovered. The patterns I would like to mention are the following:
- The Old-School Way
- Singleton
- Module Pattern
- Revealing Module Pattern
- Custom Objects
- Lazy Function Definition

Compare JavaScript frameworks
Modern Web sites and Web applications tend to rely quite heavily on client-side JavaScript to provide rich interactivity, particularly through the advent of asynchronous HTTP requests that do not require page refreshes to return data or responses from a server-side script or database system. In this article, you will discover how JavaScript frameworks make it easier and faster to create highly interactive and responsive Web sites and Web applications.

How to Test your JavaScript Code with QUnit
QUnit, developed by the jQuery team, is a great framework for unit testing your JavaScript. In this tutorial, I’ll introduce what QUnit specifically is, and why you should care about rigorously testing your code.

CoffeeScript
CoffeeScript is a little language that compiles into JavaScript. Think of it as JavaScript’s less ostentatious kid brother — the same genes, roughly the same height, but a different sense of style. Apart from a handful of bonus goodies, statements in CoffeeScript correspond one-to-one with their equivalent in JavaScript, it’s just another way of saying it.

Mind-blowing JavaScript Experiments
The following JavaScript experiments demonstrates the amazing capabilities of the modern browsers such as Chrome and Safari. In this post I will showcase to you an array of experiments that will surely blows your mind off.

Online javascript beautifier
This little beautifier will reformat and reindent bookmarklets, ugly javascript, unpack scripts packed by the popular Dean Edward’s packer, as well as deobfuscate scripts processed by javascriptobfuscator.com.

CSS & Javascript Character Entity Calculator
Enter your HTML Entity Character number (such as &#2335 or just 2335 – ?) to get the CSS and JS values for that entity.

Dygraphs: Create interactive graphs from open source Javascript library
Dygraphs is an open source JavaScript library that produces an interactive, zoom-able charts of the present time series. It is mainly designed to display the dense data sets and enable the users to explore and interpret them. It is a JavaScript Visualization Library.

Showdown – Markdown in JavaScript
Showdown – a JavaScript port of Markdown

Copy to Clipboard with ZeroClipboard, Flash 10 and jQuery
With today’s post I will show you a contrived example to get you started. I eventually hope to add this to the contextMenu.js jQuery plugin that I use, but for now this should be pretty straight forward. I do want to note that in the demo and download I am loading the latest version of the jQuery library (1.3.1) from Google’s CDN for the first time in any of my posts. For more information on how to do this see the instructions from Google.

fLABjs
fLABjs is a special API wrapper around LABjs which adapts the code to work properly in a file:// local filesystem environment. There are a number of things with core LABjs does which are not appropriate for local filesystems, such as XHR, special path handling rules, etc.

jQuery LazyLoad Ad : Delays loading of advertising
jQuery LazyLoad Ad is a jQuery plugin that takes advantage of LazyLoad delaying ads loading.

qTip – The jQuery tooltip plugin
qTip is a tooltip plugin for the jQuery framework. It’s cross-browser, customizable and packed full of features!

jQuery Collapsing and Expanding Table Rows

Improving Search Boxes with jQuery
This time we will learn how to improve a little more our sites by adding some additional interactions to our search boxes like autofocus, highlighting, autoreplace default text and more by using jQuery.

jQuery Grid Plugin

Pines Notify jQuery Plugin
Pines Notify’s features include:
- Timed hiding with visual effects.
- Sticky (no automatic hiding) notices.
- Optional hide button.
- Supports dynamically updating text, title, icon, type…
- Stacks allow notice sets to stack independently.
- Control stack direction and push to top or bottom.

jQuery Slider plugin (Safari style)
jQuery Slider is easy to use and multifunctional jQuery plugin.

So this means that after an initial round of major upgrades, we’ve gone ahead and added even more functionality to the theme. Here’s just a few of the updates in the theme…

Coloured & custom PNG markers per category

A Few Pretty Colours

You can now set these per category- either just change the colour of the default Google Maps markers, or you can upload your own PNG version.

Street View

You need to go this way.

Jumping on the bandwagon of the massively popular Street View option in Google Maps, you can now guide your readers to your point of interest with Street View as well.

Full Map Template

Points of interest: Scattered.

The new version also includes a new page template to display a full map with all of the points of interest that you have added. We believe this is a great way of giving your users a good overview of all the interests available to them in your location.

  

Almost all of us listen to music. We listen at home, while working, on the subway, while driving, while running. Yet many of us don’t think of music as much more than entertainment. Did you know that you can use music as a tool? With the right music, you can increase effectiveness, create better stuff more easily, get into your creative zone quickly and kick-start a productive day. Add music to your workflow for better results.

This isn’t a recent development inspired by the iPod generation. People have been using music as a tool for thousands of years — ever since humans started hitting sticks against rocks. Indigenous peoples used music in rituals and ceremonies, drummers prepared warriors for battles, and significant life events (like weddings and funerals) are still marked with special music.

(Image by renneville)

So, how do you actually use music to increase creativity, productivity and effectiveness? Let’s consider a couple of ways of adding music to your workflow.

[Offtopic: by the way, did you know that there is a Smashing eBook Series? Book #1 is Professional Web Design, 242 pages for just $9,90.]

Get Into The Zone

Music has a strong influence on mood. Just try listening to some fast-paced energetic music while relaxing, or try getting pumped up with chill ambient soundscapes. It just doesn’t work. So, when you need to create something, play appropriate music to quickly get in the zone.

Different kinds of music complement different creative tasks:

• Listen to airy and melodic music to design something that needs to feel light and warm.
• Dark and industrial graphics? Put on some heavier music.
• Futuristic and exciting visuals? Play some energizing, progressive electronic music.

It’s like role-playing. The background music is your theme song, and you’re acting out the role. Each task to accomplish, each project you work on, becomes the mission of your “character.”

Get Energized and Get Focused

The human body naturally moves to rhythm. Whenever you hear a beat, you react to it subconsciously. Notice how people tap their feet or snap their fingers to whatever music is playing around them? You don’t need a sports drink or motivational coach to get going: upbeat music will energize you.

Of course, what counts as “energetic music” differs from person to person. Fast-paced rhythms and uplifting melodies work for many, and laid-back beats and airy vibes do it for others. For some, it’s heavy and dark tunes. Whatever makes you feel like doing things, that’s your energetic music.

So, to start with a bang, get motivated for a task or simply go for an invigorating run, listen to music that energizes you. Listen to whatever gets you excited in a “grab life by the throat and get big things done” way.

When it’s too quiet, your mind can wander. You start paying attention to every little sound and get sidetracked thinking about random things. Playing music of a consistent style in the background helps you stay focused and reigns in your wandering mind.

(Image by williambrawley)

Even if you’re not paying attention to the music, a steady rhythm induces a meditative state of mind: you focus on the task at hand because you’re subconsciously being carried along by the music. There are no inconsistent noises to distract you or hinder your progress. Think of it like white noise (like rustling trees or rolling waves). Consistent, even ambient sound helps you working consistently. Style- and vibe-specific DJ mixes, as well as “smart” playlists, can be great for this. An example of this are online radio stations Pandora, Grooveshark and Last.FM.

Background music doesn’t help everyone focus. For some, it can be a distraction; some work better in silence. And if that works well for you, there’s no need to stop. But if you find yourself getting distracted from time to time, give it a shot.

Next time you lose focus, put on some music and see how the next hour turns out. There’s a good chance you’ll be more focused and productive.

When To Turn Off The Music

As the saying goes, one can have too much of a good thing. As much as music helps you to work, is there a time to turn it off?

(Image by odreiuqzide)

1. Ear Fatigue

This is common sense: turn off the music if you start feeling ear fatigue. An aching head or throbbing ears will obviously distract you from work. Before you roll your eyes, consider that this is actually a common problem, especially for those who use headphones. After a few hours, non-stop music will tire your ears. Just as you should take frequent breaks to stretch, move and look around, so should you give your ears a break.

2. Distraction

Music should be turned off when it starts distracting you. This probably won’t happen for a while, especially if you’re busy creating. But again, too much of a good thing is bad.

When you start paying more attention to the music than to what you’re doing, turn it off for a while. The change of pace will help you refocus, after which you can always put it back on.

What About Shared Space?

Sure, playing music whenever you like is fine if you’re a freelancer who works from home or a location-independent person or someone who has their own office. But what if you work in a shared space? Is it a good idea to put music on in the background for everyone? Or is it better to keep the space quiet?

There do not seem to be any strict social conventions, so if a group is working on the same project and they don’t require complete silence, play some mood-appropriate music. It might get the creative juices flowing and get everyone into a steady rhythm. After all, the point is to produce coherent, creative results. Working to a soundtrack can help a group gel.

Returning to the analogy of role-playing, a shared musical experience while working can be like group role-playing. Think of your work as a “World of Warcraft” raid, with the right background theme to keep you all on task. A more probable analogy is office decor, which creates a distinct atmosphere of its own. Like furniture and decoration, music can augment a working atmosphere.

Neutral music (i.e. nothing too experimental) won’t distract. Of course, the group should decide together; if everyone can agree on a certain niche genre, then so be it.

What Else Does Music Do?

1. Increase Relaxation

Whether you play music while working, you can still use it to enrich your breaks. Music is especially helpful if you’re feeling stressed out and need a moment to relax. Relaxing instantaneously is nearly impossible, probably because shifting focus so quickly is hard. If you’ve been thinking about one thing, transitioning to something else can take a while.

Music, whether upbeat or tranquil, can facilitate the transition. It’s like auditory yoga, except you’re not forcing yourself to do anything uncomfortable; the music does the work for you.

2. Improve Presentations

Just as appropriate music lends itself to different creative atmospheres, it can also influence viewers of your presentations. Choose the right music and they’ll be interested, excited, even ready to buy.

A good presentation might use music at key moments. Even a tacky ’80s hit could work: it could trigger nostalgia, thus winning over your client. The right musical “moment” could lead to viewers purchasing or investing in your product, following your guidelines or just paying closer attention.

If you want prospective clients to take interest in your service, elicit their enthusiasm by playing music with an exciting build-up. To drive home a point or highlight a feature or benefit, sync a track so that the musical climax occurs at that point in the presentation.

(Image by tobiastoft)

Basically, decide what you want to achieve with your presentation. What is the viewers’ call to action? What do you want them to do afterward? Add music that suits the content of your presentation and that complements the emotional journey you want viewers to take. Music in a presentation elicits emotional investment, and you’ll probably get better results.

Music Creates Mood

Clearly, music isn’t just entertainment. The right kind of music is a tool that improves your day — and not just your mood: it can increase and sustain your creativity, productivity and effectiveness.

Remember these three reasons to add music to your workflow: to get into your creative zone faster, to stay energized and motivated and to get more important stuff done in less time.

(al)

© Oleg Mokhov for Smashing Magazine, 2010. | Permalink | Post a comment | Add to del.icio.us | Digg this | Stumble on StumbleUpon! | Tweet it! | Submit to Reddit | Forum Smashing Magazine
Post tags: music

Fully customizable front page

The homepage of your theme is completely customizable via custom dynamic widgets specifically built for the theme.

Custom Control Panel

This theme has an easy-to-use, intuitive control panel that allows you to configure all aspects of your blog without touching the code.

Localization Support

Translate this theme into your native language! Native translations of all blog content can be done through the theme’s advanced control panel.

Dynamic image gallery

it dynamically generates thumbnails from the images you upload on gallery page. Users can zoom the image to full preview.

Standard Features

• Seven detailed color schemes



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Whereas the authors of A Nation at Risk concerned themselves with the quality and breadth of the curriculum that every youngster should study, No Child Left Behind concerned itself only with basic skills. A Nation at Risk was animated by a vision of good education as the foundation of a better life for individuals and for our democratic society, but No Child Left Behind had no vision other than improving test scores in reading and math. It produced mountains of data, not educated citizens. Its advocates then treated that data as evidence of its “success.” It ignored the importance of knowledge. It promoted a cramped, mechanistic, profoundly anti-intellectual definition of education. In the age of NCLB, knowledge was irrelevant.

As an advocate for higher order thinking, creativity, digital literacy, project-based learning and engaged, hands-on learning, I’m acutely aware of the damaging influence of NCLB in narrowing the curriculum. NCLB communicates to administrators, teachers, and parents that the only metrics of educational excellence which matter are student scores on standardized reading and math tests. This is a lie.

There are SO many other things which matter in learning, education, school and life. It is incumbent upon us as citizens and voters who care to not only work for the repeal of NCLB, but advocate for more differentiated, comprehensive approaches to assessment. NCLB was a tragic mistake, but thankfully we live in a republic. We can change our laws, and we should.

For more of my thoughts on Ravitch’s book, see my recent posts:

1. Schools must be data informed: NOT data driven
2. NCLB has killed creative teaching and energetic learning about science (at least before state testing)
3. NCLB was designed to define public schools as failures
4. Will Race to the Top Hurt Kids and Make Charter School Entrepreneurs Rich?

Also check out my phonecast from last week (recorded with iPadio) “Public Schools Are Not Businesses – Why Educational Sharing Matters.”

Since I started blogging in 2003, I’ve written 145 posts which reference NCLB. If you really want to step back in time, check out my April 2005 post, “NCLB may be a stealth agenda to allow corporations to take over our schools.” I’d also recommend the February 2008 post, “A contrary view of education and NCLB” (which is an admitted rant in response to a “State of the Union” address) and my April 2006 post, “Troubles for NCLB: It may not be improving achievement and it corrupts the profession.”

Creative Commons image by Colin Purrington

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