I just started a job with a very large software company, they sponsor an America's Cup Yacht every year (if that gives you a hint).
Once I get up to speed, I'll be able to work from home a few days per week.
How do you stay focused/motivated while at home and trying to work? I've never been able to work from home regularly, so I'm not familiar with this.
(I'm a single guy about to be in a downtown bachelor pad, no kids, no pets.)
I work from home a day or two a week.
I actually find it a nice reprieve from the chaos of the office where I can focus into deeper diving projects that are purely computer based.
Have a workspace thats comfy (could you spend hours browsing GRM there?) and without the TV there to bother you. I find radio is a good background.
Just depends how wrapped up in your projects you get. Look at it as the ability to get wrapped up without interruptions that occur in the office.
When you were in school, how did you focus on homework?
I don't do it often, but I've found certain things to be helpful.
First, have an "office". Whether this is the basement, garage, a closet, have a place with a desk/table that is for work and work only.
Second, start and end your day within an hour time-frame. So start between 8:30 and 9:30, finish between 4:30 and 5:30. Don't sway from that other than extenuating circumstances. When you get up, brush your teeth, shower, put on clean clothes. Maybe it isn't a dress shirt and slacks, but you still need to start your day.
Last, don't forget your normal breaks for lunch/morning/afternoon. Easy to forget them, but they help in the office and they help at home. But because you're at home, also do not forget to get back to work.
FWIW, I work from home about 10 times a year.
asking citizens of an internet forum how to stay focused while working from home during business hours. That's like visiting a prison and asking inmates how they plan on not becoming repeat offenders.
I have a home office. I have work to do. It needs to get done. But, except for meetings I do it whenever I want - so I can take some advantage from my companies free ride of not maintaining any facilities or providing me any telecommunications, electricity or heat to do my job. That means that if I can squeeze two days of work into one by staying in my office until 11PM, I do. My reward for that - is what I'm doing all day tomorrow. Going riding. I manage to get a free day or two where I may just need to dial a phone from the road or carry a laptop just in case often enough to make the trade-off worth it.
So, basically, my motivation to berkeley off whenever possible makes me get my E36 M3 done sooner than later.
Technically speaking - I'm an idiot for not just taking my laptop and going somewhere else to work. I sit here typing and talking on the phone in my own house when I could be literally anywhere with 4G. I could be working from the beach.
^Our boss is very flexible like that as well. I'm already planning on working some of this weekend so I can really enjoy NYE.
mtn wrote: I don't do it often, but I've found certain things to be helpful. First, have an "office". Whether this is the basement, garage, a closet, have a place with a desk/table that is for work and work only. Second, start and end your day within an hour time-frame. So start between 8:30 and 9:30, finish between 4:30 and 5:30. Don't sway from that other than extenuating circumstances. When you get up, brush your teeth, shower, put on clean clothes. Maybe it isn't a dress shirt and slacks, but you still need to start your day. Last, don't forget your normal breaks for lunch/morning/afternoon. Easy to forget them, but they help in the office and they help at home. But because you're at home, also do not forget to get back to work. FWIW, I work from home about 10 times a year.
Unfortunately, it's a 1 bedroom apt, a 2 bed where I wanted to live was just more than I wanted to spend.
I'm in the office, on lunch right now, dress code is....clothes? I'm wearing a Big Lebowski T-shirt, jeans, sneakers.
In reply to Huckleberry:
this, just be sure to pay the work forward as opposed to berkeleyling off and putting the work to be done on credit to be done at the end of the week. Also, when weather is crappy, always work extra.
I guess I'm the same as Huckleberry, I only have two work modes which are "marathon ninja work" and "occasional work combined with rampant time-wasting." I manage to do enough of the first to maximize the second. I don't feel any less focus or motivation working at home vs. the office (where I work rigid full-time hours unfortunately). In fact I probably feel more motivation working at home because I know I could be doing fun things that aren't possible when trapped in a cubicle until quittin' time.
z31maniac wrote: ^Our boss is very flexible like that as well. I'm already planning on working some of this weekend so I can really enjoy NYE.mtn wrote: I don't do it often, but I've found certain things to be helpful. First, have an "office". Whether this is the basement, garage, a closet, have a place with a desk/table that is for work and work only. Second, start and end your day within an hour time-frame. So start between 8:30 and 9:30, finish between 4:30 and 5:30. Don't sway from that other than extenuating circumstances. When you get up, brush your teeth, shower, put on clean clothes. Maybe it isn't a dress shirt and slacks, but you still need to start your day. Last, don't forget your normal breaks for lunch/morning/afternoon. Easy to forget them, but they help in the office and they help at home. But because you're at home, also do not forget to get back to work. FWIW, I work from home about 10 times a year.Unfortunately, it's a 1 bedroom apt, a 2 bed where I wanted to live was just more than I wanted to spend. I'm in the office, on lunch right now, dress code is....clothes? I'm wearing a Big Lebowski T-shirt, jeans, sneakers.
Yeah, but you're wearing them and they've been laundered recently, right?
I never had a problem with it. I actually worked faster at home because there was motivation foto me not to be doing work and getting paid. I'm very much like huck/gps in that respect. I will crank out as much work as I can as quickly as I can, skip breaks, etc so I can berkeley however I want. More than once id get caught up, and go in thr other room and play gran turismo. Or even build an rc car.
I currently work from home one day a week. For a short period in 2015, I worked from home full time.
First, without a doubt, you have to be self motived. You just do. If you're not a self starter, you're really going to struggle. I have had staff who report to me work from home and the results are mixed....and it was all about their internal motivation. It's very easy and tempting to be less productive than when in an office, so you have to be the right personality.
Having said that, I actually find it a motivator. It's kind of me "reward" for working hard and dealing with my 60 mile each way commute. It's awesome to get to work in shorts and a t-shirt and sit on my couch. I typically don't turn the TV on, even as background noise. Same with music. Not saying I never do it, but it's fairly rare. I set goals for things I want to accomplish while I'm at home. I'll actually do that during the rest of the week. I work from home on Fridays, so Mon-Thur I may come across projects or other things outside my normal "day to day" work that would be well suited for doing at home when I have nobody coming to my desk, etc... Then I'll start in on those projects. It's also easy to get caught up in those projects and realize "E36 M3, I haven't eaten lunch yet and it's 2:00pm" or "E36 M3, I've got to take a E36 M3 and I haven't gotten up". I will take a lunch "break" and turn on the TV or sit outside or do a load of laundry. But then right back to where I was.
I love working from home once a week. I could do two. Not sure I'd want to work full time from home again, it's pretty isolating...I felt like a contractor rather than part of a company.
I fall into the marathon camp. Self employed work from home sounded like a great plan in the beginning, but i have attention issues and a child. I tend to work, quite literally, for 3 to 4 days straight through, no sleep, if I'm lucky I'll remember to eat,and then wind up not making any progress for a month. Rinse and repeat. Hard on the body, hard on the mind, but when i get on a roll,I can get a lot of stuff done over those few days.
Obviously not doable if you have deadlines or bosses.
Klayfish wrote: Not sure I'd want to work full time from home again, it's pretty isolating...I felt like a contractor rather than part of a company.
I have been working from home every day (except for lots of travel to clients) for the past few years. I really don't like it - but, I also could never stand to be in a fluorescent lit cube farm with all the politics and personalities and bullE36 M3 either. So, I consider it the lesser of two evils in my given profession.
When I go to clients I see them in their bleak little habitats slightly decorated within the confines of corporate rule, whispering into old tethered phones so as not to be overheard, scribbling on dry erase boards in red because all the other pens disappeared or dried up, see the little instructions taped on the company fridge reminding people to clean up after themselves and not dump coffee grounds in the sink... fighting over a conference room to host whatever meeting I'm there for. Every one in a different city, all the same.
It reminds me I can never, ever go back to that.
More and more recently I find myself thinking I'd be a hell of a lot MORE productive if I just had one day a week to work from home, without the constant interruptions, distractions, and fires to put out in the office.
I get on a roll and spend whatever time needed. I also tend to work evening and night instead of mornings when I can
Meth
E36 M3, I can't stay focused in the office. That's why I'm on this forum right now.
I worked from home for 14 years along with a lot of sales traveling.
The wife misses those nooners.
I have a really hard time staying focused if i have to do anything for a customer project at home. The only thing that usually get me to do it is the fact that if I don't, I won't get paid. And even then sometimes i'm so checked out mentally from being at home that i blow it off until the last possible minute
mtn wrote: I don't do it often, but I've found certain things to be helpful. First, have an "office". Whether this is the basement, garage, a closet, have a place with a desk/table that is for work and work only. Second, start and end your day within an hour time-frame. So start between 8:30 and 9:30, finish between 4:30 and 5:30. Don't sway from that other than extenuating circumstances. When you get up, brush your teeth, shower, put on clean clothes. Maybe it isn't a dress shirt and slacks, but you still need to start your day. Last, don't forget your normal breaks for lunch/morning/afternoon. Easy to forget them, but they help in the office and they help at home. But because you're at home, also do not forget to get back to work. FWIW, I work from home about 10 times a year.
This. I head to our computer room, shut the door and don't do anything different than I do at work.
Congrats on the job.
The key is to always have plenty of work to do do. I work from home a few days per month. It's nice.
When I do, I try to start work when I'd normally get in the car.. but skip the hour-long commute and actually work more. (Sometimes it is nice to sleep in that extra hour
)
If you're one that likes to test the limits of slacking, it may not be a good situation.
Business "extra casual" is very comfortable, and I tend to be tremendously more productive with fewer interruptions. Save money on lunch, too.
I've been working from home 100% for the last year, but generally worked a day or two from home over the previous 3-years. At first I was terrified - every other place I've worked always had at least one office-busybody who needed to keep tabs on everyone else(whether it was part of their job duty or not). I overcompensated by working an hour or two extra per day, and keeping a spreadsheet of all my hours worked.
After a while I realized that our company doesn't care that much. Of course they expect us to get our work done, as well as take initiative on any ideas we have that may improve productivity, etc., but no one is keeping tabs on us. We need to be available throughout the day in case anything urgent comes up, but otherwise it really doesn't matter when we get our work done.
I'm ADHD so your concerns are especially valid for me. I've learned to allow myself to take micro-breaks throughout the day - just a minute or two here(literally) or there - which allows me to focus back on the task at hand.
I'm self-employed and work from home. Knowing that if I don't put in billable hours the electricity get turned off keeps me pretty focused. I'm also scatter-brained (SWMBO says ADD) and work on multiple projects at once, so I can juggle doing dishes with spreadsheets. But the biggest help is having a schedule. You still depend on everyone else working 8-5, so those will still be your office hours (roughly).
The only way I'd go back to working for someone else is if I could still work from home. Heck, I probably work harder at home than I ever did at an office just because I know I won't have to spend two hours commuting every day.
Can you focus well @ work? If so, home probably wont be too much different, you'll probably just do it without pants.
Install something like StayFocusd for Chrome.
I'm reading through this thread for tips as I have a HUGE problem with focus both at work and at home. When I'm in the zone I can get stuff done crazy fast, but I'm also distracted super easy.
I've been working from home for a little more than 3 years now. I live it. I travel to a client's site usually a few days a month and it is so much harder to get stuff done with all the interuptions. That is where it is hard to stay focused. At home in my office it is easy.
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