I have worked from home off and on for years, and this is pretty good advice. The most important is the dedicated space with a door that closes. So you still "go to work", just with a very short commute. A few other things that I have found helpful:
- When you're in your office, you're at work, working.
- When you're not in your office, you're at home, not working.
- Work in 48 minute bursts, then take a break.
- Only check email & voice mail during your 12 minutes off.
- Put internet and work on 2 different machines (if possible).
- I prefer radio over pre-recorded music; it reminds me I'm not alone.
- Eat lunch out with a friend several times per week.
- Eat home meals away from your office.
- If you're local, go in to the office once per week.
- If you're not local, go to the office several days per month.
- Dinner with SO every night, no matter what you're working on.
- A regular schedule of sleep, meals, exercise, and work makes things easier.
As someone who has worked from home for a year and half I can testify to the fact that wfh is not an easy thing to do. What I missed the most was whatever little interaction I had with colleagues. I used to get so frustrated at the end of the day that I just had to get out somwhere at the end of the day - be it to a coffee shop,just to see some people. Given a chance I wouldn't prefer to wfh again. I beleive the ideal combo is to work from office 3 days and wfh 2 days. That said, I know several folks who successfully wfh. I believe a lot depends on your personality.
Definitely depends on your personality. I work from home 3 days a week usually, but at the moment I've been doing 5 days a week from home. It has the upsides and the downsides.
The biggest upside for me is that you can get lots more done - if I'm in the office then someone can interrupt me physically. If I'm at home, the best they can do is MSN me (I can ignore), they can e-mail (I can ignore) and they can phone me (I can ignore that). If something is not urgent I will leave it for a couple of hours.
I also find these does actually help co-workers learn - if you're in the office and they ask you for help, they get it. If you can't respond right away, it often means they'll spend their time on their own trying to fix the problem and then they don't actually need you and they increase their knowledge.
The other massive upside is travel costs (depending on location of your office to your house). Fortunately my wife works from home a lot as well, so it means we only need 1 car (saves a fortune) and obviously spend far less in petrol. Even though we sit in the same room, we barely speak to each other all day a lot of the time - she is often on conference calls and I am coding, but at least if we want a bit of human interaction, we have it.
We've been doing this for 2+ years and we don't have any problems - I guess some couples might find it a strain but it works really well for us.
As a full time telecommuter for almost 3 years now, my opinion is quite different. I can barely imagine going back to a commuter life.
The few times a month when I have to drive during rush hour remind me how much better life is when not spent in traffic. And without the daily distractions of office life I get much more accomplished in much less time.
So long as you have good self control, and can work independently and self-motivate, it can be a wonderful arrangement. If you are lacking in those areas, I imagine it can be very difficult.
I work at work 2days a week and from home 3 days, I too like this balance. It's great for focus when programming, and enough time for meetings. Takes a bit of discipline though. Working from home is great for having time to pick up the children from daycare without having to leave early too.
I think you've got the ideal setup there. 5 days a week in the office leads to too many distractions / meetings; but 5 days a week WFH leads to loneliness. I'm currently stuck only allowed to WFH when absolutely necessary. I'd love to sell this to my employer - was this a change that got implemented or was it that way from the start?
From the start because I could not afford to commute, but I am also a cofounder so I have a lot to say on the issue. I think that for just plain "time to crank out massive amounts of code" nothing beats working from home. I've coded most of the non-routine new stuff like new improved libraries and frameworks this way. For coding maintenance stuff: I think I can do that better at the office.
I think you are right. I was in the situation that I worked from home for 6 months and I found it very hard at the end because I got call only for problem to fix. So, the only interaction was from "negative" conversation. The mix of working home and to the office is the best IMO.
The thing that always puzzles me about the working from home discussions is why programmers seem to be the only ones affected by it.
I hang out on a few boards for machinists, many of whom have one-man businesses, some run out of their garages. I have never heard any of them mention issues with working alone except for safety-related concerns: having a lathe attempt to rip your arm off when there's no help nearby can be a problem...
Similar for other fields I can think of where people primarily work alone. Farmers come to mind. In fact, most of my wife's work is done with no other people around (she trains horses) and it's perfectly normal for her to not see other people from the time I leave home in the morning to when our son comes home from school.
While farmers and mechanics work from home their actual work environment is outside of their normal living space. Its pretty easy to stay on task when you're out in the garage or barn. Meanwhile, we all know what its like to sit down in front of a computer and have a whole world of distractions at our finger tips.
I find working from home (or somewhere other than the office) to be much easier than working at the office because I'm away from my co-workers. Great folks, but they don't seem to get that headphones, terse replies, and furious typing mean, "Go away, somebody is actually working here." lol. Doesn't help that I share an office (no door closing) with a non-programmer and nobody else writes code there either. :\
I worked from home for two years and will soon be doing so again. I think sometimes the key to working home is occasional gross inefficiency. It's almost replenishing depleted mental reserves. If I started feeling causeless frustration, I'd take a day off and vegetate: watch bad tv, lay in the park without doing anything, go out with friends, go to a bar, etc. The next day I was usually reinspired...although sometimes it felt like I was inspired again because I felt like I spent a day wasting time.
For me, the hardest part about working from home (been doing it since late 2006) is dealing with unproductive days. Some days, try as I might, I just can't seem to get anything done. I end up feeling guilty about this, far worse than I ever felt about wasted days while in an office. The fact that productive days will (hopefully!) outweigh the bad ones should be consolation—but in practice it's not much of one.
I don't think you should feel guilty. This is the nature of our work. There are days where you "feel" it and days where you don't. There are days when there is a lot to do and there are days when you're in a holding pattern to see what's happening with something. At least here in Pennsylvania, the state labor board actually recognizes this fact and has classified software development professionals as "salaried, exempt" status, meaning there is an expectation of huge variation in hours worked, sometimes plus, sometimes minus. Unfortunately, most employers just use it as an excuse to force employees to work constant plus with no overtime pay.
I don't think I should feel guilty either, yet I do anyway. I don't want to give the impression that I think the guilt is rational, though. Still, rational or not, the feeling is real, and I'm not the only person by any means to have it.
I often wonder what it's like for people who need to use their minds when they work yet are under inflexible schedules, such as teachers. They too must have good and bad days, but they don't have the luxury to say "you know what, I'm just not going to teach anybody anything today, so after second period is over, I'm leaving." On the other hand, now that I think about it, I vaguely remember some high school teachers ending lessons early. Maybe doing so was their version of calling it quits for the day early.
From the teachers I know, and I went to a university that is traditionally a teaching school, they don't use their minds much at all. Most teachers aren't dedicated to the job, they're just looking for a job. They show up, punch the clock, zombie their way through the day, go home at the end of the day, and repeat the next day.
Unproductive days are the hardest thing for me to deal with as well. One thing I have done that helps me is to leave and go to a coffee shop the instant I start feeling unproductive. The 10 to 15 minute drive there usually helps me get back into the right mindset. The coffee aroma and an environment where others are working or appear to be doing something productive is also helpful.
I've worked from home for four years now and can't imagine consistently getting anything done at an office.
And that is even with three young children in the house because they know that when I'm at work, I'm not available and concentrating. Our development team's communications revolve around high bandwidth when necessary, but otherwise leaving each other delicately alone. But that would be different at the office: there would be many lunches and things of that nature as well as coworkers we are not directly working together with who have (admittedly very interesting) things to distract us with.
Sometimes I do need to break out my "cone of silence" which is a mix of earplugs AND whitenoise on headphones.
At one point I rented a spare office in a coffeeshop a block from my house... that went OK, it definitely helped with the "separate work environment" psychology that I think is necessary. The biggest problem with that was being in a coffeeshop: temptation to spend money on espresso constantly. After about 6 months of that, I decided to come back home. YMMV.
And that is even with three young children in the house because they know that when I'm at work, I'm not available and concentrating
Interesting. With one little girl in the house I find the occasional interruptions when she comes to visit downright welcome. A minute spent laughing with her always puts me in a good mood.
I do imagine that three at a time could be a little distracting, though.
I'm interested on what whitenoise you are listening to? There are times it feels too silent in my home office but I'm also not in the mood to listen to music.
I made it myself with audacity. Wearing earplugs at the same time, if I get the whitenoise to where I can just hear it this lets me work even in coffeeshops in almost pure silence. If you want the actual mp3, email me (email via profile).
I worked from home for a couple of years and just recently gave it up to work in a co-working space.
It took me almost two years to realize it, but the isolation of working at home nearly drove me crazy. Depending on my roommate's or girlfriend's schedule, two or three days could pass without seeing another person. For me, that just wasn't healthy. I found myself going out for lunch just to be around people. Not a terrible solution, but the cost and calories add up quickly.
So far working a few days a week at a co-working space plus getting a gym membership has made a huge improvement in my general health and happiness. I'm back to commuting on public transportation, which I now actually enjoy. Leaving my house and getting on the train forces a context switch from home life to work life, making me more productive. My work days are also shorter since I find I'm more focused.
Co-working also doesn't suffer from the problem of coworkers interrupting me to ask questions. Sure, a guy at the next desk might talk too loud on the phone but no one is going to tap me on the shoulder to ask for help figuring out why the request params aren't making it to the controller on their ajax call.
The only way I'm able to do this is because I live right in the middle of Manhattan, so I'm always able to go outside and see other people (even if it is just talking to the doorman), intersperse the day with meetings, occasionally rotate among nearby coffee shops, and plan nighttime activities. I can see how working at home might drive you crazy if you're in a less densely populated location with fewer people around.
Likewise for me, in Brooklyn. Of course, I only have one coffee shop around - but I know several of the baristas there (one is in a great local band, Pass Kontrol), and often see the bartenders from the bistro-bar down the block (whom I also know fairly well). Add to that the fact that the coffee shop has a "bottomless cup" option with cheap refills, and I find myself dividing my time like this:
When I need to do a lot of photoshop work (slicing, dicing, css, et cetera), I work from home where I have a large monitor. When I need to do a lot of code work, I take my laptop down to the coffee shop.
Wish I could stick my desk in the living room, but there really isn't any room! It is perpendicular to my south-east-facing window, though, so I get a lot of natural light which seems to help my mood quite a bit.
I couldn't imagine working from home if I lived in a suburb, though. The occasional ten minute breaks (when I'm out of home, instead of out of the coffee shop) to go down and get a cup (or just to have a smoke) are quite nice, because I see a lot of people that I know from the neighborhood. I wouldn't be able to get that, no how no way, out of a suburb.
It would be difficult, I think, to WFH if you lived alone. Except for doing charity work, my wife is usually at home, but does not interrupt me while I am working. Having friendly neighbors and friends who live near by is good also.
I used to work exclusively in my home office, but transitioned to also working in other rooms, and sometimes on our deck. I think that I take a productivity hit doing this, but it is fun to mix it up re: working environment.
I've been working from home on and off for two years now, and I can tell you that sometimes there is just no substitute for physically being in the same room as the rest of your team. Meetings are so much easier, getting help is far more efficient, and there's the social interaction there as well.
Having said that, it's also nice to have the flexibility of being able to work from home.
