I’ve been working from home for six and a half years now.  This past week I’ve stumbled across a few articles about working at home and I always get a chuckle out of them, so I thought I’d post my “rules” as a bit of a counterpoint.

The caveat with alot of the articles I’ve read is that they were written by (I think and hope anyway) people who are working at home, but not self-employed.  I understand I might do some things differently if that were the case for me, but it’s not, so here goes.

My main umbrella point is there simply are no rules.  No one workstyle is going to work for everyone. You need to find an office setup, work hours, and dress that works for you.  Be fearless with experimentation.  Try taking afternoons off and working mornings and evenings.  Try working in PJs or fully dressed.  Try a dedicated office, or a laptop in the living room.  One of the hardest things for me to remember - even after 6 years - is that no one is making me do any of this.  If I’m feeling like work is becoming a rut, it’s my fault and my responsibility to do something to change that.

Office Setup
Maybe there is a rule or two—and this is speaking as a soon-to-be 41 year old who has been working in front of screens for over 15 years.  For desk work, make sure you have an ergonomically correct setup.  Get a real office chair that’s height adjustable, pair that up with a a keyboard tray that is height adjustable, and make sure your pointing device is at the same height as your keyboard.  I’m lucky because I live in office-furniture-central, so was able to score a really sweet setup with an Aeron Chair in front of a hydraulically-height adjustable corner desk with a full-width keyboard/mouse tray for pennies on the dollar.

With laptops, I find that the only comfortable place for any length of time is having it actually on my lap.  Coffee shops are great for getting out, but I never work at a table because they are always too high.  I look for places that have good couches or armchairs instead where I can slink back with the laptop on my lap.  I also have a couch in my office, and some days will grab the laptop and sit there for the day - just to mix things up and have a different perspective.

Seriously - make sure you’re working with things arranged correctly or in a few years you’ll be looking at carpel tunnel or back/neck issues.  With my setup I only feel it in my right shoulder after really long - like 12-14 hour days - and after all these years I can only attribute that to having good furniture.

Lighting is another place you can improve over most offices.  I’ve always disliked overhead florescent lighting - but my office has a lower ceiling being in the basement and fluorescent fixtures were the only way to get a decent distributed light level that didn’t singe your hair to stand under.  Recently however I added indirect lighting to my office with a couple of the Japanese style paper lantern type lamps from Target.  It makes for a nice mood change - most days I’ll work with the overheads on until noon then switch to the indirect lights for the afternoon.  Over the years I’ve done a fair amount of audio and video production and those environments are always low-light, and with the indirect lighting on in the office it feels closer to that control room vibe.

And then there’s music - I’ve just always worked better with music going.  The minute you get in a shared office space music generally becomes impossible due to differing tastes - but working at home it’s a no-brainer.  I pump my PC’s audio output through a small mixing board (purchased for screecasting) then into a home receiver to speakers mounted at the corners in the ceiling. 

Dress Code
This is where I differ with much of the common advice that says to get fully dressed before starting work.  I’m not consistent - there are days I wander down with a bowl of breakfast cereal still in PJ’s and the next thing I know I’m being called up for lunch.  I don’t mind this—it means I found “the zone” early on and I probably got a lot done.  Other days I seem to stumble around until I make myself go shower/dress before coming back and digging in.

Either way—when it’s just me working at home I certainly don’t feel the need to dress “business corporate” just to feel like I can be professional.  Jeans and a t-shirt is fine. Shoes in the winter otherwise bare feet.  For meetings I’ll dress up a bit if the situation seems to call for it - but even then it’s just dress pants and a button up shirt.  I haven’t worn a tie in years.

Hours
Work at home advice articles always seem to recommend a fixed schedule and I always want to ask: What planet are you people from?  Between client meetings and projects to do and family commitments I not only can’t see how you could work a set schedule, but why you would want to?  Life is fluid, and I love to be able to keep my work fluid in response.  Is it a sunny/warm day now with rain/cold moving in tonight?  Get outside - work on a house project or take a bike ride.  The work will be there after dark or when the weather turns again.  Got a project on a schedule?  Put in the long hours now - get it out the door then work a couple of short days once it’s launched.  Lawn need mowing?  Get out and do it now - call it a noon workout. 

I do work more hours being self-employed than I did in the corporate world.  But - other than billable hours - I don’t track them.  I don’t try to separate work-life and home-life, it’s just life.  It helps that we got rid of cable TV a couple of years ago - I’d rather do a bit of blogging or work-related learning than sit in front of a TV every night.  You might call it working, but at least I’m not giving my life away to the advertisers.

Kids
“If you have kids teach them to not interrupt if your door is closed.”  Yea, I’ve read that one a few times in different articles.  It always makes me sad - because it’s telling your kids that your work is more important than they are.  I have two kids who are 10 and 11 - and while clients and projects will come and go these two will always be my kids.  We homeschool - so it’s all of us together in our house most of the time.  My office is in the basement and has a door, and if it’s closed my kids will knock.  But I certainly don’t want to tell them to never bother me during the workday - being around them and being actively involved with them throughout the entire day is one of the absolute joys of working at home.  We never have to have the big “so what did you do today” conversations around the dinner table because I was there for it all - I know what they did.

I always warn new clients that if they call me unscheduled they are likely to get one of my “assistants”—and I think to a person when that’s happened my clients have enjoyed it. They get to see more of me than just “work-Mike”.

On the flip side, I do recommend good closed-back headphones.  There are times when I need to be able to block out the noise that schooling (including guitar and piano practice) creates and headphones are the only way I can do that.

Staying Productive
I know this is a common struggle for many people.  For me, while I’m not big on formal mission statements I do have one cardinal rule for being in business, and that’s to “Be reliable”.  I absolutely will do what I said I would do when I said I would do it - and I make sure I tap into this rule by always setting due dates for my tasks on a project. I know myself well enough to know that if I told someone I’d have a quote to them by the end of the day then no matter how strongly the call of discussion forums, twitter, etc I will get the quote done.  Days where I don’t have hard deadlines for things are tougher - for those days a 3x5 next to the keyboard with the tasks I need to get done seems to work best.  I cross things off as I go with the goal of being able to throw away the card at the end of the day —which ties into the next point for me which is..

Keeping my office organized.  I visited a client today and walked into an office that probably 4x the desk surface I have and every inch was covered with computer hardware in various states of assembly.  It gave me the heebie-jeebies to the point where I just about couldn’t stay in the room….I tend to keep everything in folders and only have the folder out for the project I’m working on that moment.  A messy office just distracts me to no end, and one of the best ways for me to get focused in the morning is to go through and re-organize, getting stuff put away and cleaninng off my white boards.

The other big productivity-killer for me is the phone.  I really don’t like how phone calls can interrupt writing or programming that requires concentration.  I struggled with this for a while - wanting to be available if a call was from a potential client, but getting frustrated when calls were either junk or cold-calls from places wanting me to outsource my programming work to them.  What I started doing about a year ago was keeping the phone turned off most of the time, and checking it once or twice a day. I changed my voicemail to tell callers that if they want a more immediate response to email me instead.  I’ve had a number of comments on my “I’m a bad cell phone user” outgoing message - and only one of them negative.  Most people just appreciate the honesty and having their expectations set.  These days I average probably 2 calls a week - and most often those are scheduled in advance so I can plan for them vs. being caught while working on something else.

Rock Out
If you’re lucky enough to be able to work at home, don’t make it just a little mini office away from the office.  Life’s too short to replicate the creativity and soul-sucking office environment in your own home.  Work in your PJ’s, work odd hours, play music at high-volume, have a movie on while you work—do anything just to remind yourself that by being at home your life is a little less like Dilbert everyday.

Otherwise what’s the point?