downtime

If it's true that the backbone of any small business is its employees, then I believe it's fair to say that the muscle of many small businesses would have to be their computers.

Downtime can disrupt your business, customers, and damage your company's reputation.

There are a number of benchmarks, which we may use to evaluate hosting companies. One of these is, reliability.

Quantifying the cost of downtime can help you gain funding for technologies that enhance performance and mitigate downtime risks. Yet most organizations have a difficult time calculating the losses associated with downtime because of its complexity.

When I first began my business I would freak out every time the phone stopped ringing, until I learned the importance of the down times. Now whenever they occur, I simply get away from it for a little while. It seemed that whenever I watched and waited nothing happened but when I left the situation and put my mind on something else, things shifted. By changing my focus, new ideas would bubble up and I would feel more creative. So although it may seem as if you've done all you can, more than likely there's a whole lot you haven't tried yet.

Managing downtime requires creativity, which shouldn't be a big problem since all of us are pretty creative. To get your creative energy flowing, here are some tips for managing your downtime. Work on new or existing projects of your own. I would bet a dollar there isn't a freelancer alive who doesn't have some sort of work in progress, such as a book, series of articles yet to find a publisher or other project. Use your downtime to dust one or two off, and get to work!