
Working from home - ingve
http://mattgemmell.com/working-from-home/
======
cstross
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.

~~~
_dark_matter_
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?

~~~
TY
Having kids (especially small ones) makes all the difference: I can't use my
wonderful home office any more because of the all noise in the house: my kids,
friends of my kids visiting, dog barking at all of them and etc.

Walking around with earplugs/headphones all day is too painful and not an
option, so now if I really want to get anything done I leave the house.

~~~
ufmace
I'm curious, how do you mean painful? I work in an office cube farm, and it's
often noisy/chatty enough that I find it hard to concentrate without
headphones or something. But I find most earbuds and cheap headphones
uncomfortable to wear for more than half an hour or so, so I bought a big set
of over-the-ear Bluetooth headphones that are great to wear all day long.
Might be worth a try if that's your problem.

~~~
marquis
There is more attention given to the sounds of your family than your work
colleagues. It's a completely different kind of distraction. And it's a little
bit heartbreaking every time to say to a kid that you are busy right now.

~~~
__abc
That last part. It's why I can't work at home. It's INCREDIBLY difficult for
me to ignore my children when in close proximity.

------
skizm
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.

~~~
weavie
The key to this was mentioned early in the article. You have to really like
your work for it to work.

~~~
skizm
Ah, yes. Key point. While I don't dislike my work now, it isn't exactly
exciting either.

------
jnbiche
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.

~~~
graeme
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.

~~~
akgerber
Note that if you're working remotely anyway, there are many cities in the US
where walkable neighborhoods with lovely cafes are nowhere near as overpriced
as in NYC/coastal CA/etc.

Pittsburgh and Milwaukee are two where I've lived; Chicago is quite affordable
for a major metropolis with 24/7 rail service; there are also many lovely
college towns out there.

------
akassover
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.

------
neals
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.

------
occam65
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.

~~~
Htsthbjig
"It's extremely difficult getting your spouse to respect the "working" part of
working from home."

No, I used to believe so, but it is actually very easy. You tell her you are
working and no you can't, and you actually mean it, you have to be really
convinced inside.

My advice is that you look yourself in the mirror, you are probably projecting
insecurity in your body language.

You don't need to get angry, quite the contrary , you need to control the
situation in a calm assertive way.

Women are like dogs, they feel insecurity(they are much better at body
language than men) y and try to get advantage of it in a subconcious way,
watch "Dog Whisperer" to understand what I mean. The worst thing is that they
disrespect those that are easy to control.

We are animals after all, and our inner chimpanzee is controlling most of what
we do, the different is that we use reason to justify what our chimpanzee
wanted afterwards.

~~~
h2s

        > Women are like dogs
    

Fuck off.

------
mariocesar
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.

------
markbnj
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.

~~~
mbrameld
I can't speak about kids but having a dog is a big part of what makes working
from home work for me. She forces me to take regular breaks to go for a walk.
Without her I would likely work for much longer stretches and get much less
exercise.

~~~
markbnj
Yes, well kids are a whole 'nother level, of course. I have two dogs, and
while I pretty much owe my life to them and their, umm, dogged instance on
long walks every night, I would probably weight them a net negative in terms
of workday productivity.

~~~
mcguire
Oh, come on. There's really nothing like being on a phone conference with the
rest of your team and a couple of important customers and having a dog run
through your office with a squeaky toy and the other dog in hot pursuit.

"Squeaksqueaksqueaksqueaksqueaksqueaksqueak...."

"Uh, excuse me. No, I'm ok. I feel better now."

~~~
markbnj
Or having them go into full-throttle alert mode because a leaf blew through
the yard.

------
gdonelli
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.

~~~
buttsex
This has worked for me too. I take a 45 min nap everyday after lunch. It helps
split the day up into two parts where I am fully refreshed for both. Some of
my friends find it odd that a grown man takes a nap during the day but it
works great for me.

~~~
gdonelli
Couldn't agree more

------
kovrik
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?

~~~
graeme
One way to get an idea of the landscape would be to browse Java projects on
Elance and Odesk. Not necessarily hire yourself there, but just get a sense of
what people are contracting for.

Then maybe contact some business that use the kind of code you make, and ask
if you can chat over coffee about whether and how they use contractors.

Doing those two things will give you some idea of the landscape. I'm sure
there are contractors doing what you do – there are in almost all fields.

~~~
bentcorner
I'm in the same boat. I currently work for a bigco and am frankly tired of it.
I have no idea where to start. How do freelancers bootstrap?

~~~
graeme

      * Save as much money as you possible can, and lower your expenses
      * Start looking for a client or two on the side
      * Think about what skills you can productize (e.g. an e-book guide to some sub speciality you're good at, in a niche who use that speciality to make money, and for which no good guide exists)

~~~
bentcorner
I'm interested in this second point. In your previous post you mention "Then
maybe contact some business that use the kind of code you make, and ask if you
can chat over coffee about whether and how they use contractors.". Sorry for
being... naive about this, but I frankly don't know how this is done. Would
you mind if I ask you a few more questions over email?

~~~
graeme
Sure. My email's in my profile.

The gist is that people love to talk, and will rarely turn down a sincere
request to give information. As I'm doing right now.

My brother got a job this way, and build a professional network at the same
time. And almost everything I started in business came from a (well-targeted)
cold email or phone call.

------
handzhiev
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.

------
hnnewguy
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.

------
mbillie1
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!)

------
potomak
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](http://tomato.es) time tracker) or
just find a nice coworking near your place (this is the reasong why I founded
[http://memecoworking.com](http://memecoworking.com)).

~~~
gdubs
I stuck to pomodoro years ago while working for myself, and found it to be
incredibly effective. One caveat: it doesn't work very well for more free form
aspects of projects, the creative phase, etc.

I no longer follow it, but the rhythm is somewhat ingrained, and I take
regular breaks for context switching, etc. biggest difference is that I allow
for longer stretches of productivity while being more conscious of passing the
burnout point.

------
hagbardgroup
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.

------
Htsthbjig
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.

------
binaryapparatus
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?

------
lliamander
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.

------
badman_ting
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.

------
return0
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.

------
rehack
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.

~~~
donniezazen
How is work-from-home scenario in India? Are there Indian companies that make
you do interesting work and allow you to work from home? Or do you work for
western companies? Or is it more like freelancing? If yes, how is freelancing
working for you in India.

~~~
rehack
If I look at some of the people I know and my own experience, can say that
consulting folks get a better deal, when working for Western companies. Also
it works out better, from a work from home perspective. As local companies,
even if pay as well, have the the mindset of asking you to work from their
facilities.

But local Startups typically are more flexible, with sites like HasGeek[1]
showcasing some of the more suitable jobs from a work-from-home/free lancing
perspective.

Now to answer the question of interesting work. That depends of course. One
tends to pick up consulting work on some overall factors like rate etc. In my
case consulting work was mainly to support my product. (Thankfully now product
is in a shape, that it can support itself. So past few months I've had the
luxury of working on my own stuff). And so the work I do, thankfully, looks
very interesting to me.

Thanks for asking.

[1] [https://hasjob.co/](https://hasjob.co/)

edit: minor

~~~
donniezazen
If someone were looking into freelancer/indie-developer/consulting work in
India, where do you think one might find such culture in India. Where do these
folks hang out online?

~~~
rehack
I have noticed some good postings on that hasgeek link I gave in the above
comment.

Also I think, HN itself draws a lot of India based programmers.

At college level you also have things like topcoder.com and hackerrank.com

------
skkbits
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.

------
sync
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.

[1] [http://selfcontrolapp.com/](http://selfcontrolapp.com/) [2]
[http://heyfocus.com/](http://heyfocus.com/)

~~~
taylorlapeyre
I don't think it needs to be anything that complicated.

[https://github.com/taylorlapeyre/gsd](https://github.com/taylorlapeyre/gsd)

------
fideloper
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.

------
lucb1e
> 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.

------
jmzbond
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!

------
mattdanger
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.

------
ciganoyer
i work better after i shower. so, showering is important.

~~~
mcguire
Food can substitute for sleep. A shower can substitute for sleep. But food
cannot substitute for a shower.

