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Achieving a Better Family and Work Balance Makes for Better Job Performance Are you constantly working after hours and weekends at the office? Are beginning to forget what your family even looks like? Many people find themselves in this predicament. Work seems to get more and more demanding with every passing day, and to stay on top of your game at work, you feel like you need to put in long hours. The flipside to this is that of course when you are at the office, you are away from home – away from family dinners, play time and your kids’ sporting events or school plays. You may feel like your hands are tied – that no matter how much you want to be more involved with your family life, you have to keep working as hard as ever to make sure your family is provided for in the long run. The truth is, however, that you may be doing yourself a disservice on both fronts. Studies have shown time and again that well rested workers with well balanced lives are more productive in the time they do spend working. In the end, the best way to be a stand out worker at the office is to be fully involved and present in your family live. But wait, you say, “I’m working practically around the clock now, and everything still isn’t getting done.” However, maybe the problem isn’t that you aren’t working hard enough. Maybe the problem instead is that you aren’t working smart enough. Think about the way you spend you working day. Are you taking on more responsibility than you need to, instead of delegating tasks to others? Are you spending a lot of time chatting in the break room when you run for a cup of coffee? Are you procrastinating so that big projects require you to work all-nighters instead of spreading out the work? Keep a journal of all of your activities at work for a few days. You might be surprised to see how you are really spending your time and in what areas you could make improvements. Simply staying on task and delegating effectively could get you home in time for dinner. When you have done everything you can to make your work habits as productive as possible, it is time to turn to other ways to balance your work life and your family life. Rule number one is the hardest one for most people to follow you – draw clear lines of distinction between work time and family time. Family time isn’t really family time if you are constantly on your cell phone making and receiving work calls or if you are on your laptop for the entire family vacation. When you’re working – work. When you’re with your family – concentrate on them. The time you spend actually taking a breather from work will recharge your batteries and make you a better worker when work time rolls around again. Next, you have to evaluate your priorities. Maybe working around the clock will help you make partner faster, but at what cost? Decide if seeing your daughter’s soccer game every week is more important to you than moving up the corporate ladder quickly, and make adjustments in your schedule appropriately. There is no right or wrong answer, but deciding where you priorities lie will make scheduling easier for you. With your priorities in mind, see what work options are available to you to help you meet them. If you want more time with the kids, see if your office offers flex time or part time hours to help you meet your family commitments. Last but not least, don’t feel guilty about taking time with your family. Not only is this time important to your family, you can rest assured that the time out from the office stress will make you more productive when you return to work.

Some Info on Those “Get Paid To” Sites Where You Can Get Free Stuff Anyone who has spent even five minutes online is aware that there are many websites that offer free stuff, and many people cash in on hundreds of dollars of free stuff every single month. But what about taking that one step further? What if you could not only get some free stuff, but also actually get paid to get free things? It sounds impossible but actually you can make a profit on getting free things online. The catch is that you have to devote a little bit of time and effort to finding these deals and completing them, but many people find that getting paid to get free things is well worth a little time investment. One of the top places to cash in for free stuff is so called “get paid to” websites. These “get paid to” websites usually act as clearinghouses for all kinds of internet offers that give users the chance to make some quick cash by completing some tasks. Most of the time, the tasks you have to complete on these “get paid to” websites involve filling out some kind of survey or submitting your contact information to a company. When you visit one of these websites, you can often click through offer after offer and complete them in your own time, racking up the cash along the way. But sure, filling out surveys is a way to get paid for doing something very easy, but what about getting paid to get free stuff? These offers also appear on these websites. Most often, you will get a free meal at a local restaurant and then get paid for submitting a report about your experience there. This kind of “mystery shopper” deal is also in place at many big chain stores, where you may be given a gift card for a small amount to go into the store, buy something and report back about your experience. Companies use these services to test their customer service in stores and figure out what they could be doing better. So, not only will you get a free meal or a free item at a store, you’ll get paid for telling the company if you were treated well by the staff – not a bad gig if you can get it! The way to get one of the deals is to keep a close eye on the “get paid to” websites. There are many of these websites out there, so the best way to figure out which ones are worth your time is to look for ones that have deals on offer from big name companies that you know. Most of the times, a major company will work with one website exclusively, so you getting in with the website that has the biggest number of big name companies mean you will have access to the most valuable “get paid to” deals on offer. Is there a catch to all of this free stuff? Well, there can be, but you can mitigate the hassle to some extent. The biggest problem with free stuff online is that you have to hand over your email address to a company who is sure to both solicit you in the future and sell your email address to other companies who will also start soliciting you by email. Cut the hassle by setting up a separate email address just for these purposes, so that your primary email address does not struggle under the weight of the spam. Also, never give out your phone number – you can use a phony one with a 555 exchange or set up an online number that you use only for freebies. Managed properly, you can really get paid to get free stuff with a minimum amount of hassle.

Music copyright infringement How Does Music Copyright Infringement Affect Me? Music copyright infringement happens all around us every day, by both well meaning people downloading music from their favorite social networking site to the guy who’s reselling MP3s. To be certain, most people who commit music copyright infringement don’t realize what’s going on, and are in turn doing something very illegal and prosecutable in the United States. Copyright Infringement, as defined by Wikipedia.org states: “Copyright infringement (or copyright violation) is the unauthorized use of material that is protected by intellectual property rights law particularly the copyright in a manner that violates one of the original copyright owner's exclusive rights, such as the right to reproduce or perform the copyrighted work, or to make derivative works that build upon it. The slang term bootleg (derived from the use of the shank of a boot for the purposes of smuggling) is often used to describe illicitly copied material.” We’ve all heard of ‘bootleg’ recordings – usually audio recordings taken from concerts and sold on home made cassettes or CDs and distributed (sometimes out of the trunk of a car) to anyone that will buy. Bootleg recordings have changed, however, as music copyright infringement has branched into video recordings. Music copyright infringement has exploded with the advent of the internet, and now people from all over the world are sharing every type of imaginable file – from eBooks to audio to music – and small label artists began feeling the pinch years ago. However, many new and older artists are beginning to see the beauty of the internet, and are offering their music for sale track-by-track on iTunes and other MP3 sales websites, as well as through their own band websites and MySpace pages. The internet has exploded in the possibilities it’s given up and coming musicians to become visible, while at the same time drastically increasing the number of music copyright infringement cases – some of which were against innocent people who just weren’t informed. Music copyright infringement cases have helped to create organizations that protect the fair use of an item, such as a song. Organizations such as CreativeCommons.com and the Electronic Frontier Foundation help individuals to know their rights under copyright acts. While there are organizations that help you understand your rights as a purchaser of copyright use, there are organizations that want to limit the ways in which you use the products you buy. It is rumored, for example, that record distribution and production companies want to limit the ways in which you use the music you buy – they don’t want you to put it on your computer or make a Mix Tape or CD from it – for fear of ‘sharing.’ It seems to me, however, when music publishers and distribution companies limit uses like this, they’re opening up a tidal wave of music copyright infringement cases. By limiting the use of purchased material, the companies are alienating their client base and pushing all their sales away from physical products and toward electronic ones – which are much harder to control. A way in which these companies tried to limit the uses was by creating a DRM program, which severely limited the where a CD could be played (on one computer, for instance). And, in one drastic measure, Sony placed a DRM program on all their CDs in the Winter of 2005, and severely crippled several networks when their ‘program’ was actually malware that seriously crippled network security. As you can see, music copyright infringement is something that is currently being fought between end users and music production and distribution companies. In this new century, we must find a way to retain copyright, and allow the customers to use the products they buy in a meaningful way, or otherwise the market will shift and the industry as we know it will be abandoned.