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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.

Copyright lawyer rating Determining what's in a Copyright Lawyer Rating You can find a copyright lawyer rating these days by doing a quick search online or by subscribing to a mailing list to the copyright lawyer guild. What goes into determining a copyright lawyer rating may be how many cases he/she has won or lost? The person that has won the most cases will be at the top of the rating chart, however someone that just comes in may be at the bottom for lack of experience. If you are searching for a copyright lawyer you will want the best but keep in mind that if they already know their copyright lawyer rating is high, their price might be raised more than the others in the field. So, make sure this is someone you want to represent you or to do your filing. If you are simply getting a copyright you probably don’t have to have the best and can go with your average rating. Someone suing you for copyright infringement or something else means you may want the best; you don’t want one that had a bad copyright lawyer rating. Do you? Today many companies are offering their own little search areas for towns, you might find a whole list of companies that need reviews and chances are those that are all bad rating are from one person. These sites are very new and popping up everywhere, the only way to find out how true the copyright lawyer rating, is by asking them. Another way they do a copyright lawyer rating is by passing out a few sheets of papers with a bunch of copyright lawyers names on them and having their peers rate them. I don’t really consider this fair because someone with the same amount of time and wants to be top in the field may mark their competition down just to get up on top. Not to mention how can they rate them when they may have never heard of them. Do you give that person a bad rating or a one star because you have no clue how they perform? Do you leave it blank? Find out why a copyright lawyer rating got the marks they did. Keep in mind that a client that didn’t win a case can have it out for them and rating them bad or review them as bad in every site that they can, which can cause a big drop in ratings, especially if they are new. Not all lawyers like that fact that just about anyone can rate them online these days, it was easier when their ratings only went with what cases they dealt with, how many they represented and their win/lose streak. There is a website called Martindale, it gives you ratings of many lawyers. This is a great site to come view to find lawyers in all types of fields, not just copyrighting. Explore it, there are a ton of reviews written by lawyers and clients, there are also legal articles, cases, events and much more for you to look at. Don’t forget about the peer ratings, which you can find person most qualified to help you. This is one place that does seem fair when giving out their copyright lawyer rating, they make sure that the top person can only be rated if they’ve been in that field for over 10 years, which makes it fair to a person that has very little experience. They won’t be on the rating list which means they won’t be at the bottom of the list. Remember, if your copyright lawyer rating isn’t up there doesn’t mean he/she is bad, they may have requested not to have it published or may not have been in the field long enough to be judge. The best judge for them will be you.

The Convenience of Online Writing Degree Programs (online writing degree programs) Online writing degree programs are not readily available, but they are growing in popularity. There are many traditional and online schools that offer online degree programs to busy writers. The online degree programs offer courses that teach students the basics of writing, including paragraph structure, theme writing, descriptive writing, tech writing, and grammar. Usually in writing degree programs, writers are given many assignments within one week, which range from analyzing the work of others to composing their own short stories and essays. The courses offered in an online writing degree program are much like the ones offered in traditional programs, and students will begin their program by taking beginner’s courses and eventually work their way up to the more advanced. The beginner’s course teaches the basics of writing, but after taking them, students will be able to take more specific courses, such as creative writing and tech writing. The online programs give students more freedom, but the workload is almost the same and students will have more and more writing assignments as they move further into the degree program. The online writing degree programs offer bachelor degrees as well as masters’ and there are many schools that offer these online programs. Chatham College is one school that offers online writing degree programs. Chatham online is the online division of Chatham College, which offers online masters’ degree programs for writers. The writing degree program offered by Chatham online offer 7-week courses and it has no residency requirement. The programs give students the freedom to study anytime or anywhere an Internet connection is available. Chatham online offers many degree options for its students, including the Master of Professional Writing degree, which gives students training to become technical writers, content developers for the web, advertising copywriters, and public relations specialist. It also offers the Graduate Certificate-Non-fiction Writing. This program gives students the opportunity to use their nonfiction writing skills and focus one subject, which include nature, environmental, or landscape writing. Students are given many writing assignments and attend many online writing workshops where their work is presented and critiqued. Once the program is finished writers will have a portfolio of their work that is of publishable quality. Another unique program is the Graduate Certificate-Writing for Children and Adolescents. The Certificate in Writing for Children and Adolescents provides students the chance to write fiction and nonfiction for children and adolescents. There are also many other colleges that offer online writing degree programs including Burlington College. Burlington College offers a Bachelor of Arts in Writing and Literature through an online program. However, this school does require a four-day residency in Burlington, Vermont at the beginning of each semester. Goddard College is also a school that offers a master’s program online. The college offers a Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing degree through their online program. In this program, students are able to study poetry, fiction writing, creative nonfiction writing, and memoir, play writing, and screen writing. A short residency is also required for the program at Goddard College. The University of Denver is another school that offers online writing degree programs. It offers the Certificate of Advanced Study in Creative Writing. The program includes a range of courses on content and writing processes for fiction, nonfiction, poetry, and other areas of writing. There are many other colleges and universities that offer online writing degree programs including Goucher College, Lesley University, University of Central Florida, and Washington State University. Like all degrees, online writing degrees are not simple to obtain, but they can provide convenience and knowledge, which helps them advance as a writer, or develop writing skills to that will help them in the future.