My New Home Office
This is where I work almost 40% of my work hours, in my new home office. I don’t believe I’ve mentioned anywhere on the blog that particular change in my position. Basically, I spend about 5 hours at the office each day, drive home on my “lunch” hour and spend the evening hours (the hours where I’m supporting our West Coast offices until 5PM their time) working from home. The schedule allows me to have a quick dinner with my wife when I get home, at a somewhat normal dinner time, then retreat to the office to get back to work, and then already be home when my work day ends.
As with everything else involved with this schedule, this does provide some interesting challenges. First and foremost was creating a good work environment within our house. I think we’ve accomplished that. It’s comfortable, but also in it’s own space within the house, away from the temptations of home. So far, it’s working out well.
I’m sure, as I go forward, I’ll be blogging about some of the other challenges, especially about how working in a centralized location, for a firm with offices all over the country, and then on top of that, not being in the office a significant portion of the day, presents challenges with building an internal network. I’d be interested in hearing any ideas for handling that challenge. If you’ve been in a similar situation, please leave a comment. Or, if you have any advice for a part time, first time, telecommuter, feel free to leave a comment too. I’m always open to suggestions!
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Nice office Mike – didn’t know you were telecommuting. Were you doing that from the start or is this a new thing you have just started doing? Are you working longer hours or the same as normal.
It looks like you need a bigger desk with three laptops going on it – are they all work related?
Andy, it’s a relatively recent change. Basically, instead of being in the office by myself after 5, I work those hours from home each day.
We could always use a bigger desk, but for now this one should work. The laptop in the front is connected to the monitor on the shelf, that’s my work laptop. The netbook is basically playing podcasts while I work, and the Macbook in the back isn’t used when I’m working typically, it’s used when I’m not working, again hooked in the monitor for a second display, and the work laptop would be off the desk during those times.
And, obviously, the netbook would be what I take to other areas of the house when I want to be online, but not in the office.
Luckily, our Lit Support network is setup in such a way that I use an RDP-like program on the laptop to connect to various machines in the office, which do all the work. I believe when I took this I had 3 different machines working for me from my control console, so I have plenty of processing power available to me, despite the presence of only one laptop at home. 😉