Angela Randall's Blog

Play some karaoke favourites of mine while you read on…

What Does My Current Work Life Look Like?Working for the council getting people out of hospital and into care.Freelancing doing business & marketing consulting & training.I write a lot on Medium and Substack and I have a few books in the pipeline (see sidebar for links to my recent articles).I run Bookings Connected and have a few big projects underway.I’ve been awarded my MBA and also become accredited as MIoL, MIDM, MCMI, and ACIM.I’m singing occasionally on Smule, but not really doing a lot else right now except karaoke.I’m reading mainly non-fiction business books to complement my studies. See the sidebar for some random recommendations and below for recent business books I’ve read and recommend.I watched all of Doctor Who from the reboot with my kids so we can watch the 60th anniversary specials and the new season together, and then we had a huge gap so we watched all of the Sarah Jane Adventures too

Here’s my work playlist. It’s good fun! 🙂

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This page was last updated in May 2024. I’ll try to keep it up to date.

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Share book reviews and ratings with Angela, and even join a book club on Goodreads.

The post Now – 30th April 2024 appeared first on Angela Randall.

I’ve just updated my Now page and have decided to copy it across to a blog post for posterity.

Here’s my newest work playlist. It’s good fun! 🙂

What Does My Current Work Life Look Like?Working full time as a marketing manager at Rockford, all from home thanks to the pandemic.Freelancing doing business & marketing consulting and training.I write a lot for Medium and I have a few books in the pipeline (see sidebar for links to my recent articles).I run Bookings Connected and have a few big projects underway.I’m studying an MBA and a CIPD Level 7 Diploma in Human Resource Management (plus a bunch of smaller courses).My MBA Research Project will probably revolve around business performance and decision-making in leadership.My HR Diploma Research Project will probably be based on the effects of good leadership, information management and internal communication on managing a remote workforce.I’ve recently become accredited as MIDM, MCMI, and ACIM (see my certificates).I’m singing with the Ipswich Gilbert & Sullivan Society, but through the pandemic most of my singing has been via Smule.I’m reading mainly non-fiction business books to complement my studies. See the sidebar for some random recommendations and below for recent business books I’ve read and recommend. .gr_grid_container { /* customize grid container div here. eg: width: 500px; */ }</p><p> .gr_grid_book_container { /* customize book cover container div here */ float: left; width: 98px; height: 160px; padding: 0px 0px; overflow: hidden; } Ange’s Recent Recommendations

Share book reviews and ratings with Angela, and even join a book club on Goodreads.

The post What Am I Working On Now? appeared first on Angela Randall.

It’s been a while since I updated my Now page, and it’s worth posting the changes for anyone who’s following along.

I’m listening to this. Play something while you read on.

My two brief trips to Paris recently have convinced me I need to spend more time there. Much as I am also looking forward to living near London, I will want to duck over to Paris as often as possible, I’m sure.

I love the buildings, the streets, the parks with chairs under every tree and around every fountain. And there is so much left to see.

I loved every second of walking around Paris (even while carrying kids and luggage and stressing about visas), while Bruce complained about everything and couldn’t wait to get home.

So, despite the fact that we’re moving to the UK, I’m going to actually ramp up my French learning and find some good excuses to come back as often as I can. Paris is actually about the same distance by train from Suffolk as it is from Aquitaine, so despite crossing the channel it’s not as crazy as as it sounds, compared to visiting from here.

The whole UK move is basically for Bruce, anyway. He’s itching to have English-speaking friends to play games with, and just for everyday life to be a bit simpler.

In the UK, I’m going to enjoy the easy access to vegetarian food and close proximity to London. I’ll no doubt make a few new friends and catch up with some old ones, too.

But England is too much like Australia and it won’t truly feel like a big travelling adventure, which France has managed to do for years. Even though we’ve been stuck at home with kids a lot, there’s always something new to learn every day about France that’s so completely different to anything I’ve come across before.

I’ve spent so much time in the past few years changing nappies and breastfeeding, with plenty of time to think about what I want to do with myself when I get to the end of it all. And that was always to travel A LOT. I think I’m also at that stage of motherhood now where the kids are okay with hanging out with their dad and I’m free to spend a bit more time away (and it’s not like Bruce wants to come travelling). So, it’s ON.

Bring on the travelling. And bring on my second home in Paris.

When your kids start demanding things that no-one in their right mind would understand (yet you do) there’s a problem. See if you can guess any of these favourite books, TV shows and movies.

Gwen: “I want Sunset Shimmer is a baddy, three mean singing girls, then the mean girls.”

So, that would be the MLP Equestria Girls movies.

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My Little Pony: Equestria Girls (Three Movie Gift Set) [Lenticular Cover] (DVD)




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Blaise: “Mog and sick witch!”

That’s the Meg At Sea book.

Gwen: “Scary Papa!”

That’s the Hotel Transylvania movie.

Blaise: “Dangerous mouse and scary frog!”

That’s the new Danger Mouse.

I’ve been curating and collecting all these productivity tips and tools remote workers can use, but sometimes it just comes down to reminding yourself to get shit done.

One of my favourite quotes on this point is “Discipline is Remembering What You Want” — David Campbell. It perfectly sums up the disconnect we often have between what we want for our future and what we want right now.

“Discipline is Remembering What You Want” — David Campbell
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Some of you may recall I like to rely on mental hooks to remind me to do daily chores and the like, and this led me to coming up with a little mantra to keep me on track with my freelance writing goals.

“Get an early night so you can get up early and write!” — @AngelaAlcorn
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I must admit, I don’t always stick to this plan, and my plans are sometimes thwarted by little kids who get up early as well. But it’s a great ideal nonetheless, and I thought I’d share it with you all.

I know you’re not all writers, but even non-writers in business usually need to write copy for their own websites, client emails and more. Keep it in mind.

Do you have any little mantras you use to motivate yourself? I’d love to hear them!

Whether you’re a 9-5 worker, a freelancer or an entrepreneur, social media can easily work for or against your efforts to make money. The trick is to always be making it work FOR you.

I recently wrote for MakeUseOf about how social media can really help you with your career, and I’d like to share a few of those ideas with you.

In brief, you should be aiming to do these things:

Actually Use LinkedIn: Use it properly to display your work history and network with professionals in your industry.
Curate Content About Your Niche: Whether you’re a freelancer looking for clients or a SAAS entrepreneur, you should know what your niche is and be able to cultivate a following of people who want to know more about it. Do this by curating.
Learn About Other Experts In Your Niche: Build relationships with other people who talk the same talk as you. You never know what you might learn from them — and you might be able to help each other out in the future.
Research Your Ideal Clients: If you think working for a certain company would be amazing, use social media to do the research. And don’t stop at LinkedIn — try some fancy Facebook searches.
Browse Facebook and Twitter for Jobs: Check out #BloggersWanted, or browse Facebook groups of your peers regularly for people asking for someone who can do what you do.
Stalk Your Peers A Little: Only a little bit! Just make a Facebook friends list and a Twitter list of the people you work with and occasionally take the time to see what they’re posting about. You may find new things to bond over.

All of this goes to build your credibility in your niche, bond with relevant professionals, and showcase the skills you want to be remembered for. Regardless of what your job situation is, this is something you should be spending a little time on every week.

Read the full article: 10 Ways Social Media Can Boost Your Career

Try LinkedIn Labs

As a bonus, you might want to check out Resume.LinkedinLabs.com as it can quickly convert your LinkedIn profile (which you always keep up-to-date, right?) to a PDF in a traditional resume format. There are a dozen or so professional styles to choose from, and you can modify it somewhat before saving. It’s a real time-saver if you rarely need to provide a resume for your work.

Don’t Forget To Take Time Off

Now I’ll get back to what I really should be doing on Sundays. Good luck!

What Does My Current Life Look Like?

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I still work a lot for MakeUseOf, but I run several of my own projects, including my social media management business Vocal Content, and blogs Online Careerist and WriteRevolution.
Currently living in France, but we’re planning to move to the UK soon.
Bruce and I just had our 8th wedding anniversary!
The kids are four and three years old, so we’re looking into UK kindergartens and schools.

I went vegetarian (again) in 2015 and although morally I’d love to go vegan, I’m not quite up to that yet.
I’m still singing in choirs regularly and with the trio for weddings and events — and I’ve also gone solo.
When I’m not being forced to watch Cars, Frozen or Tinkerbell movies (or My Little Pony or Thomas The Tank Engine or CBeebies), I’m watching a lot of interesting TV shows. I’ve been really getting into documentaries and crime/law dramas like The Good Wife, The Bridge, The Mentalist, Sherlock and Broadchurch. It might be time to swap back to period dramas soon.
The books I’m reading are even more varied, and I tend to swap from non-fiction to fantasy rapidly. Currently that’s “The Diet Myth” by Tim Spector and “One of Our Thursdays is Missing” by Jasper Fforde.
I mostly listen to music via Spotify these days and Last.fm can show you exactly what I’ve listened to. Mostly it’s background music while working or stuff I plan to sing. Which means lots of schmaltzy love songs.
Most of my exercise is in the form of walking and riding, and I’m looking forward to living near a pool and joining a gym with regular classes.
We’re building up a huge collection of board games and play them whenever we get a chance. I’m currently addicted to Castles of Burgundy and Bruce has a hard time getting me to play anything else. The kids are into Super Rhino and Tummy Ache.
I’m starting to really get into survival needs and homesteading. I expect I’ll take up mushroom growing soon. 

Hey all! It’s time to chat about remote worker communities again.

I’ve spent the past 24 hours joining dozens of new Slack communities thanks to a nifty new tool called Hamster Pad. (If you’re desperate for an invite, bug me!)

The reason Hamster Pad is so awesome is that Slack admins connect their community directly to the app, meaning all users need to do is click a button to get their invite. This lets people bypass forms like my signup form for Online Careerists (this means the paid communities and people only trolling for mailing list signups probably won’t join Hamster Pad).

Meanwhile, plenty of thriving communities have already joined Hamster Pad, and it’s now so easy to join them. I’ve added Online Careerists to the bunch, and there have been massive influxes in all the groups I’ve explored (thanks to Hamster Pad appearing on Product Hunt, Tech Crunch and Lifehacker in the past day). I expect we’ll see some new blood soon, if you’re feeling chatty. Don’t forget to set up your notifications in Slack and to grab the apps.

Hamster Pad also lets you see how many people are in the community and how many are currently active. And it separates the communities you’ve already joined and showcases a bunch of trending communities for you.

Why are these communities important? Well, for remote workers, these are our lifelines. This is where you can ask other freelancers what tools they use, share niche-related news, get a second pair of eyes on some buggy code, or ask how much people charge. They let you whine about awful clients in the privacy of a community who completely understands. And they give you some people to chat to about random daily stuff, since there’s no water cooler chat in your remote office.

One of the articles I curated for this week’s Online Careerist publication was on this exact train of thought. You are not an island.

And so why am I telling you all this stuff about Hamster Pad? Well, I’m hoping it will bring many of these Slack communities back to life. So, so many of them have been quite dead for ages and it’s because Slack just isn’t that sticky. In the meantime, we still have the Facebook Group. See you there or in Slack!

It’s Sunday already, and the mountain of work looming on Monday’s to-do list is starting to drain your energy. What do you do?

Well, there’s always the option of martinis and snacks because “it’s six o’clock somewhere”, right? But I don’t think we need to resort to that just yet. We can wait until it actually IS 6pm, at least.