As Web designers and developers, we invest a lot of time and effort in nurturing professional relationships, including those with clients, prospective clients, coworkers, peers and others in the industry.
Unfortunately, while many Web professionals work hard to make these work-related relationships as strong as possible, they often neglect their non-professional relationships, including those with family and friends and even with themselves and their own health and well-being.
I began thinking about this article after reading about a fellow Web designer who was going through a divorce. Divorce rates are depressingly high anyway, so this sad scenario is not unique to the Web industry, but I do think that Web professionals, and IT workers in general, often struggle to maintain a healthy work-life balance, and their relationships often suffer because of that struggle.
In this article, I will offer some of the ways that I have found helpful in my own life and career to foster healthy non-professional relationships and personal well-being.
As an industry, we are keenly focused on solving problems, yet some of the most important problems we face are the ones away from our computer screens.
When I first began thinking about this article, I was actually very hesitant to write it. I did not want to come across as sanctimonious, nor did I want to present myself as something I am not. The reality is that I am not an expert on relationships, human psychology, or mental or physical health. I questioned whether I was, indeed, qualified to write this article.
What I do have is experience with working hard to maintain a balance between my work life and my life away from the office. I have personally struggled with this balance for years. Along the way, I’ve made my share of mistakes and I’ve learned many of the lessons contained in this article the hard way — through my own experiences and failures. If any of the tips that I can share will help even one of my colleagues to better manage their work-life balance, then, qualified or not, I will have been happy to share my experience.
Yiannis Knostantakopoulos recently wrote an excellent article here on Smashing Magazine about “Dealing With Workaholism on Web Teams.” His article explores the misguided way that many companies and individuals in the Web industry “not only disregard” the dangers of workaholism, but “actively promote it.” Yiannis’ article does a great job of illustrating workaholism in the workplace, but it does not cover another equally problematic scenario: Web professionals whose workaholism manifests itself in numerous small jobs and projects, as opposed to one 14-hour-a-day job.
Web professionals have a number of ways to “keep busy” — all I have to do is look to my own life for an example. In addition to my full-time job as head of website design and development for Envision Technology Advisors, I also teach night classes at the University of Rhode Island, maintain my own blog and portfolio website, and write articles like this one for other publications. This is in addition to occasional personal projects and design work for friends (how many of you have been asked to design a friend’s wedding invitation?). Yes, workaholism often manifests itself in the way that Yiannis describes in his article, but all of these little “side projects” can also easily consume and overwhelm someone.
These side projects are often tougher to deal with than what Yiannis describes because Web professionals enjoy these side projects and view them as an outlet for their creativity, as opposed to an extension of their workday. I can relate to this. I love being able to meet and instruct new students in the classes that I teach. I also very much enjoy sharing my ideas and experiences through the articles that I write. I find both of these activities enjoyable and rewarding, but they do take time away from other non-work things that I could be doing.
There are only twenty-four hours in a day, so use them well. (Image credit)
Maintaining a healthy work-life balance means learning to say “no.” This might mean saying “no” to staying late at the office, or turning down a freelance project, or politely telling a friend that you do not have the time to design their invitation. You might enjoy doing all of these things, but they are all work. If you fill all of your time with work activities, then you will have no balance in that aforementioned work-life balance.
Saying “no” can be very hard, and everyone has a different threshold for how much they can take on while still maintaining balance. But one thing is certain — no one can do it all. One of the first things you need to do is recognize your threshold and prioritize your time. If you know you can spend only so much time on “work,” then you will be better able to decide which projects to proceed with and which to decline.
I remember interviewing a young designer a while back. In the interview, I asked him what his hobbies are. He responded that he spends all of his time “online, working on HTML and CSS and building websites for fun.” I suspect that he thought I would be impressed by this statement, and I know that some companies would find this appealing, but I just found it sad. I also remembered being like that at one point in my career.
There was a time when I would spend every night and weekend learning the latest Flash tricks (yes, it was quite some time ago) and redesigning my own website over and over again so that I could apply the skills that I was learning. The problem was that, while I was learning a lot, I was not healthy. I had put on a substantial amount of weight, I was consistently lethargic, and I had grown somewhat distant from the people I cared about. I finally realized that the problem was that my “hobbies” and my “work” were one and the same. I was always in front of a computer monitor, which left very little room for other activities or people in my life. The situation had to change. I decided that I needed to find hobbies that did not involve a computer.
Find a hobby that takes you away from your daily routine work and freshens your mind. (Image credit)
I had always wanted to play the violin, so I decided to give the instrument a try. Later, I also began playing the ukulele. Both of these instruments gave me an outlet for my creativity that did not involve a computer.
In addition to playing music, I also began to enjoy hiking — an activity that not only takes me away from the computer, but also gets me outdoors exercising (more on that later), where I can spend quality time with my wife and kids. Hiking became a family activity.
While playing the ukulele or heading out on a hike might not appeal to you, the point is that you need to find a hobby that takes you away from the activities you do in the workday. This does not mean that you should not spend any of your free time on the computer learning and experimenting — our industry actually requires this level of dedication to continual learning. But it does mean that you should not spend all of your time improving your professional skills at the expense of everything else (and everyone) in your life.
There is a reason that the workday, and the work week, ends — it is so we can recharge and not become consumed by our jobs. In this day and age, however, the line between our time at work and our time at home has increasingly blurred.
Our society is more connected than ever. The mobile devices we carry allow us to stay in constant contact with the people in our life, including those we work with. Because of this level of connectivity, many people feel that they need to be “on” at all times, checking messages even after they have left the office for the night or the weekend. You need to break this habit.
For years, I would check my email right before bed. I’m not sure why I did that. It was more of a compulsion that anything else, but I can tell you that I endured many sleepless nights because of this habit. I would often read an email from a client that upset me, either because they were asking for changes that I didn’t agree with or because they made some comment or request that I knew I would need to address in the morning. The email would hang over me all night, keeping me awake and restless — all because I insisted on checking my email before bed, a time when I really couldn’t do much about it anyway!
About a year ago, I decided to stop checking my messages at night. It was one of the best decisions I’ve made. Immediately, the sleepless nights due to unresolved work issues all but went away. I still receive those distressing emails from clients, of course, but now that I check them during the workday, when I can handle them, they do not cause me sleepless nights.
Once I stopped checking emails at night, doing so on the weekend as well was a logical progression. This enabled me also to reclaim my weekend for activities outside of my work life and to recharge for the week ahead.
Speaking of recharging…
I have spoken to many Web designers and developers who have “taken a vacation from their job to catch up on their work.” While that sentence would make no sense to non-Web professionals, I’d bet that anyone in this industry knows exactly what I mean!
Taking a vacation from work so that we can get to other work that we have not been able to do is a recipe for burnout. A quality vacation does not need to be a big expensive trip to some exotic location or to a ride-filled theme park; it just needs to be a time when work is put aside.
Vacations, like weekends, are time when we need to step away from work and recharge. (Image credit)
Do not try to get in some extra work or check email just so that you can “keep up and not get swamped when I return to the office.” Those messages and projects will be waiting for you when you get back, refreshed from your time away and ready to tackle the challenges ahead.
IT professionals, as a whole, are not considered the healthiest people around. An overabundance of caffeine, sugar and heavily processed foods seem to be par for the course for many in our field. Couple that with the long hours spent sitting in front of a computer, and you do not exactly have the makings of a healthy lifestyle. This is why your health must be a priority.
When I decided to change my own lifestyle some years ago, one thing that I did was pay more attention to the food I eat and my physical activity. Even small changes to your diet and exercising a few days a week will have a considerable impact on your life. I found that I had more energy (especially in the hours after lunchtime, when my energy level would normally crash), and I was able to think more clearly. I also lost some weight, which made me feel better about myself and had a positive effect on my interaction with clients and others.
Now, I am not one of those people who will talk about how much they love to exercise. On the contrary, I pretty much hate it. Every workout is a struggle, and it is very easy to say “You know, I’m just not feeling it today” or to make excuses by believing other things are a priority, like your current project, but the reality is that that project will still be there after your 30-minute workout! Squash those excuses, and make your health a priority. After all, you are the only one who can maintain and improve your relationship with your own body!
The people in your life — whether it’s your spouse, significant other or other family or friends — are important to you and need to be prioritized. Many of the failed relationships I see amongst my peers happen because people stop communicating or paying attention to each other’s needs. As I said earlier, when you are stuck behind a computer monitor all day and night, you leave no room for anyone else.
Long hours at the office and late nights in front of the computer take you away from the people in your life. If you consistently neglect a personal relationship because you need to work on projects, then that relationship will eventually fail.
Putting aside some code for a while to focus on a personal relationship is healthy and necessary. The code will be waiting for you when you return. The converse is not always true, however. (Image credit)
As I said at the beginning, I am not an expert in human psychology or relationships, but I do not need a degree to know that if you ignore the people in your life, they will not be in your life much longer.
However, if you follow the tips in this article, then you will be doing a lot to make the important people in your life a priority. Take hiking. My family began to join me on those hikes I told you about, so not only did I get away from the computer and get some exercise, but I also found something that we could all enjoy together.
Many of the activities mentioned in this article are like this. If you start making nights, weekends and vacations a time not to catch up on work, but to experience new things, then you will find that many of those new activities have room for your loved ones and will bring you closer to them.
Strong, healthy relationships require work. Just as you must pay attention to the needs of your clients and colleagues to keep those relationships strong, so too must you be mindful of the non-professional relationships in your life.
(il, al)
The post Fostering Healthy Non-Professional Relationships appeared first on Smashing Magazine.
]]>Ayasdi Shares Editors' Choice Best Practices Award With Collaborator The Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai for Its Use of Ayasdi Cure to Battle Diabetes
MENLO PARK, CA and BOSTON, MA, May 02, 2014 (Menafn - Market wired via COMTEX) --Bio-IT -- Ayasdi (www.ayasdi.com) today announced the company was named the grand prize winner of both of the Bio-IT World 2014 awards.Ayasdi is the only company to be recognized for both an innovative solution, Ayasdi Cure, and for that solution's key role in a breakthrough medical discovery. The new Ayasdi Cure application was selected Best of Show grand prize winner for Informatics Tools and Data. Separately, Ayasdi and The Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai were named the Bio-IT World 2014 Editors' Choice Best Practices Award grand prize winner for their collaboration and discovery in Diabetes research.
Best of Show Award: Ayasdi Cure Catalyzes Next Generation Precision Medicine Ayasdi Cure is a new application designed to help pharmaceutical and biotech companies accelerate the drug discovery process by 50% in the era of precision medicine. Ayasdi Cure runs on Ayasdi's award-winning machine learning platform, which merges hundreds of algorithms with Topological Data Analysis (TDA) and obviates the need for queries or coding.
According to a recent report by PhRMa, on average it takes 10-15years to develop a drug and costs more than 1.2B, with many industry estimates putting that cost even higher. By contrast, the Ayasdi Cure application streamlines the discovery process -- including Research and Discovery, Compound Selection, Preclinical Testing, ClinicalTesting, and Regulatory Review -- by rapidly identifying compounds,drug targets, biomarkers, and adverse events from a variety of public and private biological and clinical data. Ayasdi Cure reduces the time and cost associated with this process by lowering analysis time and discovering novel insights.
Best Practices Award: Innovating the Understanding of Type 2 Diabetes
Mount Sinai utilized Ayasdi Cure to analyze over 11,000 patient medical records paired with genetic data. With Ayasdi Cure, Mount Sinai was able to gain new breakthrough insights that can dramatically impact how Type 2 Diabetes patients are diagnosed and treated. Based on the shape of the data, Mt. Sinai discovered that Type 2 Diabetes is not a singular disease. This breakthrough in Precision Medicine can lead to more effective treatment protocols and better patient outcomes for all Type 2 Diabetes patients.
Bio-IT World's Best of Show and Best Practices programs recognize innovative solutions to important problems facing the Life Sciences industry, and are judged by a team of leading industry experts and Bio-IT World editors.
Separately at the Bio-IT World conference, Ayasdi announced technology partnerships with Intel and CLC bio. To learn more click here. Ayasdi also announced a partnership with U-BIOPRED. To read more, click here.
About Bio-IT World (http://www.Bio-ITWorld.com) Part of the Cambridge Healthtech Institute Media Group(http://www.chimediagroup.com), Bio-IT World provides outstanding coverage of cutting-edge trends and technologies that impact the management and analysis of life sciences data, including next-generation sequencing, drug discovery, predictive and systems biology, informatics tools, clinical trials, and personalized medicine. Through a variety of sources including, Bio-ITWorld.com,Weekly Update Newsletter and the Bio-IT World News Bulletins, Bio-ITWorld is a leading source of news and opinion on technology and strategic innovation in the life sciences, including drug discovery and development.
About Ayasdi Ayasdi is transforming how the world uses data to solve complex problems by automatically discovering and operationalizing insights from complex datasets. Founded in 2008 after a decade ofDARPA and NSF funded research at Stanford, the Ayasdi Platform executes and merges the results of hundreds of machine learning algorithms using Topological Data Analysis (TDA), enabling users to explore their data within interactive and intuitive applications.Funded by Khosla Ventures, Institutional Venture Partners, GEVentures, Citi Ventures, and FLOODGATE, Ayasdi's customers include General Electric, Citigroup, Anadarko, Boehringer Ingelheim, the University of California San Francisco (UCSF), and Mount Sinai Hospital. To learn more, visit www.ayasdi.com or follow us @ayasdi.
Ayasdi helps the world's biggest and most sophisticated organizations discover breakthroughs that change how we all live and work. People who share this passion can view Ayasdi career opportunities here.
Intel is a registered trademark of Intel Corporation in the United States and other countries.
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Every designer knows that free fonts are a godsend when working on a project, but truly valuable free fonts can be tough to find.
With this list we’ve endeavoured to bring you as many full font families as possible; fonts that are genuinely free (not just one style or weight free), a balance of fonts that work well for body text as well as display, and a full collection of fonts that are pleasing to the eye.
Everyone can find something new and useful among these amazing free fonts.
We’re kicking off our list with fonts that have some serious weight to throw around!
ChunkFive is a classic, but there are some other heavy contenders in this batch as well. Check out Troika for an edgier, paper-cutting inspired display font.
If you’re trying to fit a lot of text into a small area, these narrow fonts can help you get the job done.
Bebas Neue and League Gothic will be familiar names to some, but check out Valencia and Simplifica for new and interesting variations on the theme.
Nothing makes a perfect pairing quite like fonts with sans and serif versions, so in this section we’ve found some of the best free couples out there – and a trio, too!
Names like Merriweather and Merriweather Sans might be familiar to many, but check out Mission Gothic/Mission Script or the Permian trio for a fresh update.
We love scripts for so many things, and the faces we’ve gathered below celebrate the best and most diverse free script typefaces available.
Dancing Script is a longtime favorite for many, but be sure to check out fresh faces like Yellowtail and Grand Hotel.
Great-looking display fonts can be tough to come by; as the most popular category of free fonts, one has to sift through a haystack of options just to find the few needles worth keeping.
We’ve made that process a little simpler by gathering up some of the best free display and experimental typefaces out there.
A necessity for any designer’s collection, the slab serif remains one of our favorite styles.
From the traditionally appealing Aleo to the architecturally inspired Korneuburg, this assortment of slab serifs is sure to delight any designer.
This group of fonts embodies the whimsical side of design, not quite display fonts, not entirely traditional, but each in its own way fun and unique.
Check out Bellota and Overlock for more delicate designs, or Rawengulk and Exo 2.0 for sans-serifs with an angular style.
Standard serif fonts tend to be easily dismissed, so with this collection, we aim to revive the classification and remind ourselves that fonts which are excellent for body copy or headlines need not be boring.
Check out the gorgeous Playfair Display or lovely ligatures of Valentina and then repeat this mantra: “I’m never going back to Times New Roman.”
For those of you with a preference for sans-serif fonts, we have collected our favorites below.
Versatile and easy on the eyes, check out Neris, which looks fantastic at any size, Fira Sans, from the good people at Mozilla, or Encode Sans, the newest project from the folks at Impallari Type.
| Classic, Warm Clavo Font Family with 10 Weights – only $37! |  |