I have always been interested in computers, and would find myself hanging out with the Computer Science students instead of the Aviation Management or Business Management students I was a part of. At home and at work I have been largely self-teaching myself using computers starting with Excel and Access with VBA through ASP and SQL at work. Thankfully my current employer values education, and so I have been taking classes and not only learning the technology, but un-learning what I have been doing wrong over the years. At home, though, I have been teaching myself Linux, system administration, networking and the overall method of migrating our system from Windows to Linux. I am involved in the Danbury Area Computer Society (DACS.org) I have the opportunity to take what I've learned the hard way and hopefully help others.. I have been enjoying Open Source for a while now, and I am hoping to get a better understanding of the entire model and application.
Authored Comments
One suggestion I found is helpful is plan your day/week/whatever beforehand.
This way when you get to work in the morning, your day's planned activities are already laid out and you can get started right away.
This way you don't lose time trying to figure out what you are going to be doing that day, and risk getting distracted instead.
I usually plan for the week and try to do it Friday before going home (in the last 1/2 hour, or so). It's a nice way to back off from anything that requires deep concentration because, well, it's Friday and like a kid in the last period of school, I'd be watching the clock tick. ;)
So Monday morning, I get settled in (i.e. get my coffee) look over the list and have a chance to get started before I get distracted (which is way too easy).
It also lets me easily see what was planned, and what comes up during the week. I can see when I didn't get much of my planned stuff accomplished because I had a large number of drive-by projects or fires pop-up during the week.
Wasn't there a web chat client in Firefox that goes direct (no servers in-between)? I think it may be called Firefox Hello. And Firefox is cross-platform.
Or if somebody's into hosting, I think there is a plugin for Nextcloud.
Sounds like everybody is willing, and able, to switch to whatever service you decide on. My problem is finding something that satisfies everybody and then convincing them to switch to it!