If you’re a freelancer you know it can be hard to avoid distractions, not just the ones you create for yourself, but the ones that others create for you.
Apart from your own procrastination and frittering away time surfing, playing and having performance panic attacks, the categories and clients that most distractions and demands fall into are:
People Without Boundaries: These are clients, friends, family and people who don’t understand the word, “No,” or who take the word personally. They see your life as an extension of their lives. If they have …

In October I caught a mild respiratory virus. Nothing big. I had a runny nose, some sniffles, a few aches. It came and went in a few days and I thought nothing of it. Two weeks later however, I developed a  sinus infection. Not a big deal. I have sinus issues as do most older folks living east of the Mississippi.
I live in a rural area with lots of trees, leaves, flowers, weeds and all the dusty allergy type generating stuff common to the east. It was also a rainy …

Are businesses really doing so well they no longer have to pay attention to customer service? Or have I just hit the jackpot of bad customer service experiences this month?
Frigidaire didn’t return phone calls or emails for more than a year. They didn’t bother to respond at all until I posted on their FaceBook page. A brand-new fridge died less than a year after I bought it AND leaked putty and chemicals the entire year prior to its dying.
PopUp Domination NEVER returned an email EVER. I spent a week …

Believe it or not, your customers aren’t who you think they are. Television and the media would have us believe most of the population is young, hip, upper middle class and pretty good looking.
As of December 20, 2010 (the day before the 2010 Census was released), the estimated population of the United States was more than 310,950,000— or 310 million.
According to Martha Stout, a Harvard Medical School psychiatrist, as many as 4% of the population are conscienceless sociopaths who have no empathy or affectionate feelings for humans or …

It’s a funny thing about the word “No.” Some people have no ear for it. They’re blind and deaf and never seem to get it or hear it. Or if they hear it, they don’t listen. They keep charging onward like bulls in a china shop, destroying more relationships and opportunities in the process. So let’s recap something. When someone tells you they no longer want to be your friend, or your partner, or your buddy, or your business partner and you can’t resolve things at that stage, then it’s …