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I started the work-at-home discipline when I was in sales and worked
out of my house. If I was in the field that day, I'd get up every
morning at 7am, get dressed, and go out to make sales calls. If I was
working from home that day, I'd get up at 7, take a shower, put the
coffee on, and start my computer by 7:30-8am and work for the day.
Now, when I'm writing from home, I still get up at the normal time
and work the normal 7 hours. The difference is that I kick back in
the lounge chair with my laptop in my lap, put on CNBC or MSNBC and
crank away.
About a week aho, my girlfriend worked a half day and came over at
3:30. She kept herself busy until 5pm (actualy, she took a nap), when
I shut the laptop and "finished my workday".
When I go into the office, I commute an hour and 15 minutes each way.
I start up the laptop and work for an hour.
Of the three locations (home, train, office), I'm probably the least
productive in the office. It all has to do with discipline.
> > You cannot participate in a
> > team if you're holed away at home. One of the most
> > serious problems among tech
> > writers today is isolation. Writers sit in their
> > cubes (or at home) all day
> > theorizing how it all works. without constant
> > connection to the real world,
> > tech writers get even more obsessive. This is about
> > when people start thinking
> > they need some huge process to help them handle
> > reality.
I space out the days when I'm working from home...in fact, I
alternate days Mon., Wed., Fri., I'm in the office. Tues and Thur I
work from home. If I need to switch (liker this week), I worked home
Mon, came in Tues and Wed, will work frrom home Thur.
One of the disadvantages to being out fo the office for multiple
consect days is that the people in the office tend to forget you
exist...they forget to tell you about meetings, they forget to get
you new releases of the software...ya gotta make an effort to stay in
the loop.
=====
John Posada, Senior Technical Writer
"How to be happy in life: Never impose your beliefs
on anyone else and never fry bacon in the nude."
-- Anon mailto:john -at- tdandw -dot- com, 732-259-2874
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