At my apartment, I've been moving from one room to another until I get bored of working in each, then the circle repeats. Same with coffee shops. I do have a desk/office space at work, and I actually enjoy going there as well on occasion (well I have to be there a bit more often than on occasion), because it means an environment change.
That is, I can productively work 14+ hour days, but only if I can flip between 2-3 locations. And even when I'm working shorter hours, I really benefit from being able to get up and walk away whenever my thinking is stuck in a rut
"Spending less than 50 percent of the week in the collocated office affords more flexibility and aids in the balance of work and personal roles, which teleworkers find satisfying."
Less than 50%. When I was a more of a contributor versus my current manager role, coming into work 2 days a week and getting my stuff done at home would have rocked.
There are also many things that weren't said. I have a 10x16 office with a door and windows. The folks on my teams are in 4-person semi-private pods with plenty of room with attractive color schemes, reasonably high quality furniture and natural light. It's work, but everyone is pretty happy.
In other roles, I've been in 4x4 high-wall cubes in windowless pens with 40 people where the brightest colors in the room were the red nubs on IBM thinkpads. That was a miserable working environment.
Personally, I'd rather work in my current environment than home. On the other hand, I'd rather work in my basement sitting on a stool and using my furnace as a desk than previous, crappy office environments/cattle pens.
I work in one of those environments right now, and let me tell you, I am honestly 500% more productive on those occasional days where I work from home. Not just happier, but leaps and bounds more productive.
It's not just the change in surroundings, but also the change in attitudes. People seem to be less susceptible to the subtle inanities of "office mode" when out of the office. For instance: when I'm working from home, I can be efficient. I don't need to fritter away 4 or 5 hours straight in strings of pointless meetings. (That's not a critique of group collaboration, per se, but a critique of meetings-for-the-sake-of-meetings, which are quite common in corporate America and probably account for 75% of the weight of my meetings in any given week).
I prefer working from the office, but I imagine I would have a different opinion if working from the office requires a long commute or scraping ice off my windshield in the morning. I also work for myself, so it's MY office. ;)
I also somewhat enjoy the feeling of being among the hustle of downtown. There is energy there. So many people doing their thing to carve out their slice of the pie and I'm among the relatively happy and successful. That's motivation and energy that I don't feel at home.
If you career goal is to move up through the organization though, missing the chance encounters with people in the hallway or not being seen is a liability that may negatively affect you. I've noticed in my career that being in the right place at the right time means something.
I did end up putting together a large "standing desk" area in the garage, though, in our detached garage. The house was just a bit too crowded. Putting together the space in the garage, complete with air conditioner, was a good thing.
I really really really disliked growing up in my family. It's not that I hated them, but I hated having to be around them all the time. Forced vacations on someone else's schedule, forced meal times, etc. I just really hated it. That was taken (even by my family) as rejecting them, which wasn't the case, but hard to articulate when you're 9.
I really enjoy having time with my brothers now (and my parents) but it's because it's on my time and my schedule.
I am pretty sensitive to sound, and having to sit around people who chew with their mouth open is torture. Same thing with gum chewing. I left a job once partially because I was forced to sit in the same room with someone who'd taken up gum chewing. Growing up with the family, meal times were really bad. Now, as an adult, I can politely leave the room for a few minutes if I need to (to destress) but as a kid, I couldn't.
Being able to control where you work is great, but just reaffirms that as humans, we are happier when we are in control all aspects of our own lives.
I think noise-isolating earbuds or headphones are what you want. Just completely block out external sound, listen to nature/bird chirps or your favorite music.
What's working nearly as well for me (I've tried the bose headphones - not comfortable for long stretches for me) is $5 in-ear earbuds running whitenoise, sometimes with classical music overlaid.
I now realise that this separation is important for your long term health and relationships.
It helps to have a real home office, a place you use for work and nothing else, in a separate room if you have the space. It also helps to set "work hours" otherwise you feel sort of like you're always (at least potentially) at work.
I'm more productive, I'm happier, and I really think it shows in my work.
Of all the job changes I've had, this has been by far the most pleasant change.
You can also pick your working environment to suit your mood, I find sometimes I want minimal distractions and no commute so I work from home for a bit; after a few days of that it's refreshing to be in the office and around people for a while and then the cycle repeats.
What I'm getting at is I think people who have the option to work from home are likely to be more satisfied rather than people who exclusively do.
Of course there are problems but i dont see them as a reason not to telecommute. If anything they present great challenges to overcome.
would like to know why you think that though.
Also, I suppose people that work from home are satisfied with their job exactly because the job allows working from home. It's not that common yet, so if you want it and find a job that allows it, it's double fun.
Right now I am working from home, and I find I work from the moment I get up until the moment I go to sleep. I was considering going back to working at the office but I realized that back when I refused to work from home, I spent most of my time worrying about work. At least now I can get up in the middle of the night to check email.
Maybe I have weak self-control but it takes more then 8 hours to get 7 hours of work done from home at least.
To put it bluntly, nobody has an office at the beach. Certainly not the beach in the tropics where I want to be. If there was a Google campus on a remote reef pass in the Mentawais, I might consider taking a seat in a cubicle. But there's not.
We're living in the future, where laptops weigh two pounds and good wifi is everywhere. That means my office can be anywhere I want it to be. As it turns out, I don't want it to be in an office park in the suburbs. Fortunately, it's 2011, so that's not an issue.
Here's what does make me choose to work from home, usually one day a week, in no particular order of importance:
# Avoid driving. Santiago is a jungle on wheels and even one day of not having to deal with it helps immensely.
# Wake up later than usual and/or have a short nap after lunch. It might make me spend less time doing my work, but I'll be a lot more focused on it.
# Listen to the music I want, on my speakers, as loud as I want (within reason, of course). At the office I use headphones, to avoid bothering my co-workers, but it's really not the same thing.
# My coffee might suck compared to Starbucks, but it's a lot cheaper than it. And it's infinitely better than the free coffee at the office.
# My home computer has no annoying web filters. I can hook up my company laptop to its VPN and use my home computer for browsing in those idle moments.
# Hot water! Believe it or not, Chileans don't have a habit of washing hands with hot water. It probably has to do with the fact that they use mainly gas to heat water. Whatever the reason, being able to say "and now I'm going to wash my hands with hot water" is a really pleasant change ;)
In short, it's creature comforts that drive my decision to work from home. Most of that stuff could be improved by living closer to the office or the company providing better "stuff" on their premises, but those solutions seem rather inefficient compared to giving employees freedom to choose to work from home.
And selling a house is a pain in the ass and is a huge commitment.
Which would be fine if there was job security, but in this day and age, you won't be working for a single company your whole life
Add a family and kids and now you're uprooting everyone in your house from their schools and relationships and jobs.
1) getting away from coworkers and the office allows you at times to focus on the actual work you're doing.
2) we have a kid and extended family who live nextdoor, so having family around is good, but they're distracting.
3) change of pace ... nice to be able to do yoga at lunchtime without worrying about changing/etc.
From another angle: companies that are open to the idea of remote workers are more likely to show healthy levels respect and trust for their employees.
The second thing you can do is have set hours ... doesn't mean you force yourself to be up at 9am ... but do make it regular, even if it is from 12pm to 3pm (or whatever) take it seriously. No TV (can't stress this enough), no running to the store, or the post office to take care of that quick thing.
Those two things really helped me a lot, hope it helps you out too.
This is something you learn to manage. The fuzzy line is there whether or not you work from home. If you are a programmer or other IT type you probably already have the ability to do _some_ work from home and possibly have to be on-call sometimes (or all the time -- which I've done before).
Even when working on call, or doing some work from home, you can still maintain the mindset, "This is my home. I'm at home now. Work can't touch me here." I have tried to maintain that separation while working mostly from home -- by even physically removing myself from my office outside work hours -- but, over a long period of time, I can't help but feel my personal life is my work. I can never fully separate myself from where I normally work.
However, it's not fair to say that everyone will have the same experience, there are a lot of factors: work load, expected duties, office communication, and even your office layout -- I was worn down the most when I didn't have a dedicated office. Personally, I can't wait to get back to an office setting.
I've tried to remain positive -- and have for the most part -- but after time, and especially when I have projects at work accumulating, it's extremely easy to feel trapped at work/home.
I'm not a naturally social person, so without being forced to interact with other people by work I'll tend to only talk to my wife and the daily Skype meeting with colleagues in the office.
That's probably not healthy.
You have to work harder during your in-office time to create facetime opportunities. That may mean doing the rounds, spending time in common areas, talking to someone face-to-face instead of emailing and, unfortunately, going to meetings.
Making your schedule of in-office/at-home days public knowledge helps colleagues from scheduling important events on your at-home days (but not all the time).
It's also vitally important to follow-up on your phone and email conversations. It's too easy for people to ignore your VM's and emails so, you have to make them accountable digitally as well as in-person.
It's more work to make sure you're not forgotten but, for me, giving up the commute is worth it.
You see, the vast majority of homes use tankless gas water heaters. I'm not sure why, maybe it's the most efficient or most economic solution when your primary source of heating is gas.
Whatever the reason for, it's the reality and one consequence is that nobody likes to keep it turned on for longer than it's absolutely necessary, both for safety reasons and to avoid racking up the gas bill. So everyone is simply used to washing their hands with cold water at home. Since that's what they're used to at home, they don't expect anything different anywhere else.
My questions, though, does his home hot water heater use gas or electricity to heat the water?