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Just to note that I've been working from home for nearly 14 years now, and I have always broken almost all of these rules. Except the one about loving what I do. Because I do love it: if I didn't, I'd get a different job.
I don't have a set routine. I don't avoid the sofa. If I want a mid-afternoon nap, I have one. If I don't get up until noon, that's fine. I monitor my outputs, not my inputs -- which is why you'll sometimes find me working at 5am on a Sunday morning, or over a public holiday, and why you'll sometimes find me shopping or in the pub during office hours. (Not to mention the gym: I try to schedule my exercise for times when everyone with an office job is at their desk.)
Outputs. As long as the work gets done, you're good to go. And apart from that, make sure you still have a social life.
Drawbacks: it's easy to vanish down the rabbit hole: working in an office is an oft-unacknowledged social experience, and even though your co-workers may not be people who'd hang out with otherwise, human contact is important.
Just a question, are you married/have kids? I feel like that can be an important part of the schedule question. With a family, you can't work all those extra hours; or at least it would be much more difficult. These rules would help enforce a normal running of the household. Any thoughts from other at-home workers with families?
First - I'm a huge fan of your novels.
I would assume it is a bit different for you, right? You need to do whatever is necessary to produce a few very high quality works. Some tech workers like Linus Torvalds writing git are in that category too, but for most tech workers we just need to crank out decent software asap. Most software devs are using some form of agile & have fairly brisk targets to hit on a frequent basis. Is it common for writers to do something similar, like Chapter 4 has to be done in 2 weeks?
Yes. I had a hard time working from home at first, feeling guilty because I wasn't disciplined in the traditional way, with schedules and boundaries. But I learned to trust that my way of working, with long breaks (even days long) and no particular schedule, was effective for me. In the end, I get great work done, on time (or ahead of schedule).
A common pattern I use when I face a challenging problem is to not work on it for several days. My mind is working on it, but not entirely consciously, and then when I do tackle it directly the solution seems to flow easily. As long as I produce results, even the people who pay me don't need to know the details of my methods. Often it's easier to keep them insulated from those details so I don't have to worry about them getting nervous.
I'm sure that for some people my strategies wouldn't work. The important thing is to figure out what works for you, and when you find it don't worry too much if it doesn't match the common wisdom.
I slack off way more when I am in the office because I view it as killing time till I leave. I browse reddit, hacker news, techmeme, sometimes I even just pull up an eBook and read.
When I'm at home I will sit in front of my computer for less time and it will appear that I am slacking off a lot more if someone were watching me, but my time in front of the computer is way more productive because I don't have to pretend to be busy for 8 hours but rather just have to do 4 really productive hours of work.
I rarely work from home though, so I'm sure my work habits might be different if I were working from home for an extended period of time.
edit: while it may not seem like it, I feel like I need these breaks in the office to "slack". I can't stay focused for 8 hours every day, but I do have to be in the office for 8 hours straight so... that's what the company gets.
The key to this was mentioned early in the article. You have to really like your work for it to work.
These are all great points. However, he doesn't mention something I have dealt with after a decade of freelancing: isolation.
I was always an extrovert before I started freelancing, and enjoyed meeting people and going to events/parties. Unfortunately, after a decade of working alone from my home office, I've slowly become an introvert, and am decidedly uncomfortable in social situations. I'm attempting to change this by forcing myself to go to various meetups, but it's hard.
Working from home has been a great benefit, and has helped my wife and I raise our children in the manner we had hoped. But I've definitely paid a price for 10 years of freelancing from home, by myself.
I'd recommend scheduling frequent social events on your calendar from the very start.
This was by far the biggest problem I had working from home. I had a little bit of a double-whammy; I moved from Northern California to San Diego and started working from home at the same time. I simultaneously lost most of my social circle and surrounded myself in a bubble of work. I was working for a company, so I at least had my coworkers on Skype most of the day, but really, my only sources of face-to-face interaction with people were my wife and the dog park in my apartment complex.
Between the isolation and the stresses associated with the job, I wound up moving back up to the bay area. I work in an office now, and essentially only see coworkers in the flesh for a few minutes each day, but I still feel so much less isolated.
All of that said, I am pretty sure that I want to be working from home again in the future; I'm just going to come up with some better coping techniques for it.
A good antidote to this is to live in a neighborhood where people are nothing but a short walk away.
Obviously, this isn't feasible for everyone. But if I'm feeling isolated, I have about 10 cafes that are a 5 minute walk away, and crowded streets where I can see human faces. Really helps to relieve isolation.
On the flip side, as an introvert, this is exactly why I love working from home. Especially as more and more start-ups and even large companies are starting to adopt open floor plan practices, I've really felt my productivity take a dive because I hate working with any kind of peripheral distractions.
And I'm social enough that I do prioritize hanging out with friends and seeing people on the weeknights and weekends so it's a good balance.
> he doesn't mention something I have dealt with after a decade of freelancing: isolation
Um, did you read the section titled "Preserving sanity"? It starts with: Working from home can be a lonely experience. And goes on from there...
I worked remotely for seven years, and I found the same thing. That is one of the reasons why I always went out for lunch. I just missed talking to people.
Yes, great advice, and I'm running into this pretty hard as well. For any given event I'd rather just do whatever by myself, but add that up over time and it gets kinda ugly. You have to force yourself to interact with others which sounds weird but is ultimately valuable.
Is that why a lot of people spend their time in a coffee shop? While probably not what you'd define as 'productive', it at least puts you in a social setting.
It's not just physical isolation, since you are the only one working on your projects, it's hard to find people to discuss your work interests (that's why i think freelancer meetups wouldn't work). It's a real problem though, i wonder if one day someone comes up with a startup idea to solve it.
You could try enrolling in a postgraduate program, if you have the time.
Meetup will save you there.
I've been working from home for 10 years now and love it. It's not for everybody, though. To add to the points from the article, here are a few things I've learned over the years:
- Your office chair is the most important piece of equipment in your office. You're in contact with it most of the day. Buy a good one and it will last you for years. Buy a bad one and it will give you back problems for years.
- If you can, join a CrossFit (or similar) gym. Not only will you get in great shape, they become a social outlet and because they're time boxed, you're in and out in an hour.
- Whether you like it or not, your spouse/significant other's days off become your days off so plan accordingly.
- Enjoy the flexibility of working from home. While you don't want to plunk down and watch TV when you should be working, you can do things like meet a plumber at your house without taking time off.
- Build in a hard stop at the end of your day so you don't blur lines between the workday and personal time. For me, I have a rule that I never work while the kids are home and awake. My wife texts me when they're leaving daycare and that gives me about 15 minutes to save what I'm working on and shift from work mode to home mode.
We're moving from Seattle to the Tokyo suburbs next month. The time zone shift + foreign country are going to add a new layer of complexity to working from home. At least I get to bring my chair.
What I never read in these things, but what is not a small aspect, is office politics.
I've only, a few months ago, realized how much time I used to spend manipulating my managers, bosses and coworkers' behavior. And how much time they used to spend manipulating mine. It's such an exhausting time consuming thing that is now gone entirely.
Every now and then I join a meeting at the office of a client and right away you feel the tugging, pulling and pushing taking place. A laugh to encourage behavior, a verbal stab to discourage it.
Such a waste.
I'm not sure how often this actually gets mentioned, but a huge problem is dealing with your spouse. "Oh, you're at home? Can you run these errands for me, and also clean, vacuum, and take the leftovers to my parent's place for me?"
It's extremely difficult getting your spouse to respect the "working" part of working from home.
Agreed completely.
I've seen it suggested before (and it's something I've taken to doing) that you can provide cues as to whether you can be interrupted.
I've got it to the point that if the door is closed, no-one should interrupt me. Most likely I am on a call. If the door is closed, but I have music on, then I am working, concentrating, in-the-zone or whatever, so any interruption is not welcome, but I can be interrupted if critical. If the door is open then I'm around for some social interaction.
Couple of tips when interrupted: - Make them wait a few seconds.. hold on, let me just finish this.. re-enforces the fact they are interrupting you. - Ask for errands or such like to be written on a list you keep handy.. so you can do it when you get a chance. There's a maximum length to that list before it's obvious what is being asked of you.
Obviously YMMV, but keeps my wife and kids out of my hair when needed.
Yup this is the hardest part for me.
No matter how clear I am about how I'm not to be disturbed, she can be incredibly cunning about it. The 'here's a cup of tea because you are working so hard' ends up becoming a 30 minute discussion about her current social circles interactions'.
Then there's the kids.
You can't talk to your wife? I don't have this problem.
Now the in-laws, ya, they think I'm sitting at home all day watching TV. THEY used to try to ask that things get done since I'm home (I live very close to them at the moment) but saying 'no, I'm working' and looking at them like they're idiots solved that.
This is the biggest one for me. My wife can't recognize that I am actually working. It's even gotten to the point that the neighbors would ask me to let their dog out...
I found this to be more of a problem when I was occasionally working from home than now when I'm doing it full time. If it's an unusual situation, it's easy for my wife to think of a bunch of things for me to do. But now that it's an every day thing, she more clearly sees it as "I'm at work" and draws appropriate boundaries. Sure, there's still the random "can you sign for the package I have coming" or "please have the appliance repair person come today." But being able to do that kind of thing is one of the benefits of working from home, and she recognizes that she's asking me to take time away from work for it.
It probably also helps that she works from home with some frequency, so she understands the need to actually be productive at our jobs rather than doing errands and house work all day.
I had this problem for awhile as well, particularly since my office also was where I went for gaming.
We ended up coming up with a "red, yellow, green" symbol system. Ours is a number of colored magnets on a small whiteboard, but there's plenty of options there. Red means no interruptions, short of an emergency. Yellow means brief interruptions are OK, but conversations are not. Green means I'm open for anything (usually when I'm gaming, resting, etc).
Of course, setting up this kind of restriction means that you also have to spend all of your time with your spouse with your spouse. Mentally as well as physically.
">The main problem you’ll encounter when working from home is… well, you. "
No, my kid really. She just think: He's home! Great, let's play or 'look at me! And again... and again... '
It's the main reason I need to get out of the house. Thank God they're a lot of empty office buildings in my city. A lot of them have been made into flex-work spaces for freelancers or small businesses and you can rent a place with wifi at a low cost. The only problem: They close for the evening. I haven't really found a way around that.
I have a comfortable workspace and all I need to work. The problem from Working Home is when you are stressed and have a heavy workload, you will do more than 8 hours, you will shower at 12pm, you will lunch at 4pm, breakfast at noon, and if you can't interact with someone you can easily get depressed or more stressed out.
When I worked in an office, when the clock hit the 6pm there was nothing I can do to keep working, it was not possible, I miss that mindset despite I hate the idea to come back working in an office again.
That is my problem, working from home is great but is an awful experience when you are stressed.
I've been working from home for about ten years now, and I agree with the author's points. I will also note something the younger readers here might not be thinking about yet: kids and pets. If you think your XBox is a distraction, you have an education coming on the what a real distraction is.
My routine is similar, but includes taking a 35min nap everyday. I found that napping has improved my wellbeing and productivity by a factor of 2.
I'd like to work from home. I have no problems with discipline, distractions etc.
The problem is: I don't know what to do. Making webapps in PHP, creating web design, drawing, writing - I can imagine doing these things at home.
But I am a Java developer. Who would hire a freelancer to write a server-side code?
How to start?
Working from home for 11 years. Never followed strict routine like this. I work when I have work to do (which is all the time) and usually stop after dinner, and I take rest when I feel tired. Often having long lunch with beer / wine and sometimes have rest after it. Sometimes working in the midnight.
I don't need predefined time for exercise - our homestead keeps me busy with physical work like gardening and woodworking all the time. We live in a hilly rural area with no car, so going to buy groceries is a good exercise as well.
All due respect to the author but routine like this scream "boring to death" for me. I can't imagine committing to such way of living unless I had no other choice. Like cstross said above, the output / result of your work is far more important. YMMV.
Some great tips, as someone who has dealt with the issues of at-home work.
Some nitpicks:
>It’s not possible to spend too much money on a chair and desk that prevent repetitive strain injury.
If that photo is of the author's office, I think I recognize that chair as a very inexpensive, mass market chair.
>As I mentioned, I have an exercise bike in my office that I can use whilst working on my MacBook Air
Exercise is about energy output. If you can type emails while you workout, you are likely not working hard enough, and would probably be better served, efficiency-wise, by working harder for a shorter period of time.
I've been working from home for a few months now, and have found articles like these very valuable and adjusting to the lifestyle change (previously I was a traveling consultant living in a hotel ~5 nights a week, so it's a major change for me). Setting up an office and using that space for work and work only has been very helpful. The email/distraction stuff never really bit me, but maybe I've always been a bit distracted.
Having my spouse adjust has been a challenge. Being asked to feed the cat etc. while 12 frames deep debugging is very frustrating.
I was initially concerned about discipline, but found rather that I now end up overworking - it's deceptively easy to work 10 or 11 hours a day when at home, as you tend to micro-scrutinize the time you spend not actually typing code. If I'm at the office and I spend 15 minutes chatting with a coworker, I don't feel guilty about those 15 minutes. If I'm at home and I read Facebook for 5 minutes I probably work another half an hour. Something I need to get better on, at any rate.
I love reading these submissions though, as they have already given me enough good ideas to make working from home work for me. I'm curious to see, as more and more people start adopting this lifestyle, what other tricks and strategies will emerge. (For me, a pre-dawn winter hike and a bit of skiing at first light is worth whatever other lifestyle changes I have to make to adopt to working from home!)
My personal advice, as a freelancer who worked from home for almost two years, is to use a time boxing technique such as the pomodoro technique (this is the reason why I also built http://tomato.es time tracker) or just find a nice coworking near your place (this is the reasong why I founded http://memecoworking.com).
This is a wonderful article that reflects my experience of around ~5 noncontinuous years of working from home.
I'm also finding that it helps to vary what work that you do rather than attempting to crunch out just one kind of work endlessly (spend x hours on sales, spend y hours on the project, spend z hours on marketing, spend xx hours learning new skill, spend yy on email/news/social media).
I have also tried co-working and hated it because it's like an open plan office except with strangers. Coffee shops are even worse, although they can be OK for a context switch with white noise playing on headphones. I think the best compromise is probably either a small office outbuilding on your own property or an affordable office nearby.
Another key: wake up super early in the morning every day. Becoming a morning person has made a big difference for me. Wouldn't be able to do it without eating melatonin, but it gets the job done.
More than 10 years working from home.
I really enjoy it. My advice is: find someone-partner with someone else that loves to do and is good at what you hate, and vive versa.
If you find yourself procrastinating in some area of your work, you need to do this. Is usually means finding the opposite personality of you.
E.g I love creative work but hate so much constant work doing the same thing over and over. Solution: There is people out there that loves to do the same thing over and over but hates getting out of their comfort zone.
So this way I explore a new problem, I digest it, plan it with detail, then I give this to the other person to complete the job. She loves it, because something impossible becomes very easy to do once I told her all the steps.
You can't do anything alone, you need a team. Study personality types, then go hunting for help.
I have great respect for Matt but I am very cautious about accepting articles like this as they are.
Main problem is what do we count as work? High quality output or do we count research phases too?
In my experience, working at home and honestly measuring productive time can surprise menu. While I can pull more than four hours of productive work (daily total), it is _very_ unusual to see more than four. Comparing with other professionals, when I could ask them (and I have asked menu), shows similar results. At least on realms I could check, four hours per day seems like magic boundary.
Is this unusual? Do others manage to pull six, eight or more quality work hours? Looking at Matt schedule it seems he should be publishing several books by now?
I think the main part of what it comes down to is that people are generally their own worst boss. Which makes sense, because when we are employees who work in the same office as our boss, we have become accustomed to delegating the management of our time, priorities, etc. to them. For me, the "7 Habits of Highly Effective People" has been a primary source for better self-management. While I don't currently work from home (often), I want to get to the point where I can be independent: whether that means working from home, being self-employed, or just having my employer trust me enough to let choose my own work.
I've been doing it for about four years now, and highly prefer it. I agree with everything that's here, I've made most of these discoveries myself. However, while I do have a dedicated office, I found it more comfortable to work in the living room because there's more light and a better view.
But yes, do act like a professional. I guess if you can actually do a full day's work in a bathrobe then good for you, but I find the daily routine provides valuable structure to the day. I also Skype with my coworkers at least once a day so if I look like hell all the time that would probably not look great.
I guess many folks here work from home too. It's actually hard not having many people to talk to about your experience, but we are not social pariahs; freelancing is becoming more common.
A musical instrument is a great addition to the office, but i would go to a gym instead of exercising at home, it's a good excuse to get out of the house regularly. Ditto for walking, or getting a bike.
I wonder if there are forums where home-workers hang out to talk about their days and experiences.
Excellent piece. I have been working from home roughly for the past 4 years. Have worked on my own product alongside working on client projects.
I am not very disciplined by nature. If I am able to put in 4-5 hours of concentrated code in a day, then I am extremely satisfied.
Below are some highlights of my experience.
Exercise replaces commute:
In Indian metros these days, commute to work is a curse. And people suffer from it. On an average (anecdotal) people commute 1.5 hours a day. I am really really thankful, I don't have to do that. Rather I use that time for exercise, alternating between Cardio and Strength exercises on adjacent days.
Routine:
Wake up at 7:30. Go for exercise at 8:30. Breakfast at 10/10:30. Start work by 11/11:30 AM. But once I start work (which includes communication, sysadmin work, tax etc. work and of course coding), I am at it till roughly around 6 or 7 PM.
Distractions:
Social media is a modern day curse. And people who are able to conquer it, will rule the world. I have had my weak phases. But I have mastered it to a reasonable extent.
A simple rule 'No Facebook till 5 PM' has served me very well. I may check twitter some times during the day, but unless there is some true breaking news, or I am in my weak-easy-to-get-distracted phase, I am not much affected by it. One reason could be I post less on twitter. So have less post posting anxiety of counting RTs and reactions to it :-)
And BTW the rule for FB applies to HN as well. But somehow HN is far less addictive (and not at all in that bad way) than FB. Typically my evenings are for HN. And of course, I am so thankful I have it. As it offsets the effects of not being in the know of the tech Industry, because of not going to a place to work.
Family:
I don't have a very strict rules. So my family keeps on walking in all the time. Particulatly its summer now and kids have vacations. I don't mind it, if I am doing some communication kind of work, or (ironically) if I am too deep into my code. The way, I interact with family, does not put any pressure on me, when compared to say communicating very formally. So I could be answering them, while I am in the deepest recesses inside my mind, solving a coding problem.
On the other hand, If I am frustrated, by failed efforts of not being able to concentrate hard enough then that's another matter. Then I am quite irritable, and I share that with my family as well, and ask them not to disturb me.
I am very thankful to my wife here. Who has almost mastered the art of communicating with me during work with minimal impact :-)
Advantages:
Advantages are many. Main thing is that, your time is yours. You love the freedom. And would never want to trade it with commute-to-work if possible. All the ones which the Matt's essay mentions apply, e.g. afternoon show movies, kids can walk in with their codecademy.com doubts (that's one of their summer tasks BTW :-)), easily able to attend to a need by a family person (e.g. medical need, which happened last month).
Also the main thing i.e. work, also gets done very well. And if you can focus, you will be very very productive. As I said above, I am very satisfied if I have had a day of 4-5 hours of coding.
Disadvantages:
Self doubt - Occasionally I have doubts, if I am missing on something by not going to work. Especially was a bit concerned about my business communication skills suffering because of it. Written word over emails is fine. But was worried about the verbal discussions part. This was true for the initial year of working from home.
But now with the passage of time, I am more assured. I do have once in a few months face to face meeting with my co-founder. Also there are other business face to face meetings, with an approximate average of once a month.
I do socialize with people in the park, where I go for my runs. And I discovered some of them, also work in the same mode.
So if you can manage to be productive and are able to work, the disadvantages are not many. Even philosophically speaking, why should the information age workers work in the same way as that of industrial age workers?
Edit: Format. HN text area input does not deal with new-lines in an intuitive way - some times you have to give two.
While working for my previous employer I always ended up working more hours when I worked from home. I just don't know why ? In office, I at least get up for lunch, coffee but when worked from home I developed habit of working while having lunch and not putting away laptop.
I guess it requires a lot of discipline to work from home and manage yourself as if its actual office.
Author mentions SelfControl [1], which is great, but a bit rough.
I'd recommend Focus [2] instead -- much nicer experience, and I believe it's made by a fellow HNer.
I both work from home and keep (almost) the same guitar next to my desk. ^5
Distractions are everywhere, but overall more work gets done over the open-office environment I was coming from. I don't really have too much ADD during work hours anyway, I can focus in. Probably not for everyone, but definitely is for me.
> I [...] find my Twitter app mysteriously appearing in front of me, having been launched by my treacherous hands during a moment of thought
This is pure gold. I was beginning to think I had a pretty serious concentration problem, but it seems it's actually more normal. Good to know.
I think commute time is another important consideration here. For me, the commute some days can be 3 hours round trip. Which means that by working from home, I can afford distractions, and being a little less disciplined, and still being overall much more productive!
I've been a full time dev from home for 6 years. I leave the house and go to the gym or meet with friends for a few hours every day. If I don't, I get stir crazy.
i work better after i shower. so, showering is important.