One of the recent developments that have come with faster broadband connections is an increasing prevalence of software that runs over the internet, rather than being installed on your computer.

Non Cloud – Most people have used Microsoft Word or other similar office software products. You create documents on your computer and save them on your computer.

Cloud – With Google Docs, the software is installed on Google’s computers, and the files are saved on Google’s computers. You log in using your browser (internet Explorer, Firefox or Safari) to create and edit documents.

Also known as ‘Software as a Service’, the term ‘cloud computing’ comes from schematic diagrams of computer networks, where the internet is drawn as a cloud.

Some advantages of cloud computing are:

• Low cost – the software is generally free to use
• No upgrades are required – the software always up to date
• Automated backup – if your computer crashes, the files are accessible online
• Collaboration – many users can work on the same document, no need to email back and forth.
• Flexibility – You can work on the document from any location with Internet access, even your phone

Word processing is one example of cloud computing that you can start using immediately. But you can do almost all your computing in the cloud – email, accounting, customer relationship management, ecommerce, project management etc.

What do you do when you have many jobs to complete in a short amount of time, but finite resources?

I like to use the game of Ludo as an analogy. In Ludo, you have 4 tokens which all have to get from start to finish. Part of the strategy of playing Ludo is deciding which token to move forward on a given turn, when there may be four choices. Which one gets the priority? They all have to get to the end as soon as possible!

You could move one token on successive rolls and get it to the end quicker, but that leaves the other three back at the start. Or you could move the pieces in turn, so it will take longer to get any to the end, but they’ll get there together.

The difference between the game and the real world is there are often more than four simultaneous jobs, and they will have different priorities. The one that gets the highest priority is often the one that will bring the most pleasure (usually money) or avoid the most pain (an irate customer, for example).

Obviously the strategy is to get all the jobs to the end, but the tactics can change during play. You may have determined the priority is getting ‘Job A’ to the end as quickly as possible, but then new information comes in from ‘Job B’, and it suddenly becomes top priority, which makes ‘Job C’ get put on hold even longer.

Work can be stressful. The Ludo analogy is a way to picture all the jobs currently in play objectively, which can help to determine priorities. And, hopefully, add a light-hearted element to your workload, because remember, it’s all a game anyway!