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Ways to Beat the Telecommuting Blues?
hungryfrog writes "After a few years in a typical office environment, I began working from home full-time as an independent contractor (web programmer) a couple months ago. My former employer is throwing me enough jobs that finding work is not an issue. Many people would consider this a dream work situation, but I'm starting to have my doubts. I like the relative freedom it gives me, but I'm finding myself rather starved for human interaction. Being in the same apartment to sleep, eat, AND work every day definitely leads to cabin fever. Have other people experienced this? What have you done to deal with the situation? Does dividing working/living spaces help (my apartment's small, anyway...)? I know of a few folks who have actually rented office space just to get out of the house. Is the cost worth it?"
How about leaving home when you aren't working?
You can go places, do things, see people (assuming you know people worth seeing).
I'd rather work at home and enjoy life elsewhere, than work in some office and then come "home" and not want to do anything at all.
That's just me.
"Everything you know is wrong. (And stupid.)"
Moderation Totals: Wrong=2, Stupid=3, Total=5.
Being in the same apartment to sleep, eat, AND work every day definitely leads to cabin fever.
:-)
Nothing beats living close to the beach. The five minute walk to it is what it takes me to relax. The rest of the time I spent there are just holidays.
Now if spring would start in nsw.au, I would be completly happy
bash$
get a girlfriend. When I work at home, my girlfriend is there with me and we have a blast. She's in nursing school so I get to spend most of the day with her.
--------
Free your mind.
You get the picture.
I make it a point to get out of the house. I hang out with my friends, I take walks, I ride my bike, etc. Sometimes it's something little, like getting a cup of coffee and walking over to look at the Hudson just to get half an hour out of the house. I also make it a point to hang out with my friends, and try to meet new people.
I am a believer of momentum and curves.
I turn mad if i'm left alone in an office... so at my former job since technicians were often working out I was always taking my desktop comp with me in an office where there was light and people...
At first my boss found it annoying but after he saw that it was this circus or me chatting at the coffee machine all day long he gave up...
Wireless access points are your friend. Surprisingly easy to fool.
An infinite number of monkeys will eventually come up with the complete works of
What I do is grab my Panasonic W2 and head over to Shiodome. It's getting a bit chilly to do so now, but during the warmer months I sit at the outdoor tables in front of Caretta (near the steam fountains) and work via my Air H" PHS. As an added bonus, the view is full of cute young office ladies and shoppers passing by my table, and when a particularly attractive one catches my eye, I beckon them over and ask for their phone number. I've only been refused a few times (out of hundreds of women), because there's just something cool about a good looking gaijin writing wxWindows code on an outdoor table.
;-)
I've gotten about as much fucking as I have gotten work done since I started doing this. I do NOT miss my day job.
I've been working as a freelance web developer for about a year and a half. The first year was spent at home. The first couple months were great, but after a while I started going a bit stir crazy and it wasn't long until I was miserable. I was surprised to learn that I truly do need to be around other people once in a while. My worklife situation soon became intolerable, but I had no way out of it. I would sometimes go over a week without seeing ANYbody other than the food mart attendant across the street. I found myself going days without showering.
Eventually I realized I was slowing going mad, which I decided wasn't going to help my career. So I now share office space with a client. They're in a really cool part of town that's close enough for me to bike to. This lets me get out of the house as much as I want, plus I get some exercise, but I don't have to go to the office if something is better done at home. It's totally great. I feel so much better about work, not to mention myself.
You might get lucky if you have a good client with some extra office space. Whatever happens, try to get out of the house as much as possible. See other people often. Loneliness can really start to suck after a while.
"Molest me not with this pocket calculator stuff."
- Deep Thought
what i've learned telecommuting for as long as i have is that you need the human interaction. no matter what you may do to make it easier, it will never substitute for human interaction.
if you must, then yes, dividing your home and designating a particular space as a work area does help. i setup fold-up screens to divide my room in half for this purpose. it makes you feel like you're at work when you're in this space, and once you step out of it, you can forget about work and live your personal life. without this distinction, you'll feel worn out, constantly feeling as if you're at work.
however, if you spend a lot of time on the computer after hours, and you only have a desktop that you also use for work, it will defeat the purpose of dividing the room because you are no longer designating it was strictly a work place, i.e. you'll be in that space also playing on the computer, and you'll feel like you're always at work. if this is the case, consider getting a laptop so you can move it between spaces.
even with the separation of spaces, staying at home all day WILL wear you out. aside from the human interaction, being stuck in one place for too long will feel like a prison! you wouldn't believe how good i feel when i have to take my car into the shop, the few hours i get out of the house to do that is so incredibly refreshing! so do try to get out during your breaks, perhaps take a walk or have lunch outside.
now going back, human interaction... you need it. you really do. without it, you really are living in a box. if you don't have a companion or friends to hang out with during the week days, consider finding some activities that will give you the interaction you need, e.g. night classes, a local sport team, etc...
Not everybody is cut out to work at home easy to go mad...Also you may lose clients because you do work at home and don't have a real office.
Something to think about, I just read an article recently where several individuals who work at home got together and rented an office to share.
Most of us in my company have been working from home since we began back in 1995. We do Linux consulting and programming, for reference.
The freedom is great, as you mention, but if done wrong it can definitely lead to problems. None of us have children around the house, which I suspect can change things drastically. I've heard others say that if you have children, you pretty much HAVE to have an office and make it well known that you can't be bothered there except for an emergency.
Anyway, back to my story. We've found that having an office can really help. With more than one person working from home, we found it was required, otherwise it was too easy to get distracted by other people. If you're home alone, this may not help as much, but some people find that "going in to the office", even if it's just down the hall, helps you concentrate.
As far as the lack of human contact... I've found several things that help this. About 2 years ago we found a coffee shop that claimed to be wired. We ended up bringing an AP with a modem to dial in to get some net. About 8 months after we started going there about once a week, they put in a high speed line and their own AP. We now go 2 to 4 times a week and call it "our office away from the office".
The coffee shop is interesting because you can develop friends there, often with much more diversity than in your office, but in general people also leave you alone because they don't know you, or they came to do something as well. Even a few high-priced beverages cost far less than a dedicated office. For a change of scene, try a different coffee shop. You can hardly throw a stone without hitting a coffee shop with an AP in it these days.
Another thing we've done is started hanging out more with our identified communities. In our case, that's largely other geeks, but you get the idea. Going to more LUG meetings, including meetings that we probably wouldn't normally drive to after a day in the office.
Also, I started a meat-space group called Hacking Society 2 years ago and we now have several regular chapters. The idea is that we meet once a week in a regular place to work on various topics. The Boulder, Colorado chapter meets in a coffee shop, we meet in an office here. It's a good way to spend some time with a bunch of good folks. You should start a chapter in your area. ;-)
As far as the question of an office. We had office space at one point. It was a nice change of pace, going to the office, but we had really nice space. My office looked out down main-street in our town and everyone walked by. It was fantastic, but cost $1400/month. We made good use of it, but it was way too expensive. I've often thought of getting some part time office space, but it's never been a high priority for me.
Also, it should be noted that we have developed rather good communication skills. We have an IRC channel open for the company which we use for a lot of the "office chatter" stuff. We also heavily use e-mail. We have phones as well, but mostly that's used for client contact. We all prefer the electronic, less intrusive mechanisms.
We did have problems with one employee we hired who quit because she couldn't "stand sending e-mail or IRC messages to someone in the same room". The rest of us couldn't stand being interrupted in mid-thought because she came up to us, for something that could wait 5 minutes until we checked IRC or e-mail. That just didn't work out.
There are all kinds of different people, and the above works well for us, but obviously didn't work well for at least one of the people we hired. It's important to find out what works for you, but those are some of the things I've found.
Sean
I know that additional work doesn't sound all that appealing, but you'll have the advantage of not actaully needing the job, so your attitude can be more focused on doing a good job to help others rather than just collecting a paycheck. You'd be surprised at the enormous sense of satisfaction you can get from being helpful to your community.
I have worked at home, (with my parents and brother, we had the same company), it can lead to your company life taking over your whole social life, and if things are rough, it can be like a living hell. There is a saying that working for a family run company can be like working in hell, this is true...as problems happen, people can get really pissed-off with each other...working at a company with "strangers" means that you have to be at least proffessional and civl to each other. I have also worked a my cousins firm...that was okay as they had their owm offices/warehouse/manufacturing, but they tended to expect more because I was "family" and expected a lot of free stuff like I was a partner in the firm without the equivalent reward (I did like working there, I just wish it had paid more). I do agree that working for your self means that you can get lazy and out-of-touch with the real world..you have to be diciplined (not me, I'm afraid) to keep it together...also, a big important thing about working at a company is that you get to bounce ideas off your co-workers, likewise, they can suggest ideas to you which is important (or point out how much your latest great brain-wave is nuts). This is important in any creative endevour like high-tech where ideas drive that industry. Another important item is that humans are social animals, most of us go stir-crazy in isolation...
Working in a cafe's OK but can be kind of distracting. I also found it helpfull to make sure I didn't spend all the morning in my bathrobe - get up, get dressed, read the paper, have coffee then start work.
(this doesn' t apply so much to the consulting situation ... but ...) Working at home you basicly get to avoid most office politics ... the downside - you tend to lose most office politics - unless you have a boss who will really go to bat for you. You also have to make sure you go out of your way to introduce yourself to your coworkers. At one job many people thought I was a consultant, while I had actually designed the main product they sold - I'd go and do trade shows just to get to meet them.
While it was great to do this - going back to a 'real' job was wonderfull I found I really didn't appreciate how important the social side of work
6:30am get up, have coffee, converse with my family.
7:00am bathe
7:15am Kiss my wife goodbye
7:16am Play music, code, babysit my kids
8:30am Take my kids to scool
9:00am code my ass off, work, make calls, drive in for a few hours sometimes, once in awhile, if not wokr and enjoy the view. show that my work was done or up-to-date, take mnt bike rides from my doorstep ( I live near some sweet riding areas), never adhear to a dress code, cook good chilli whilst I work, call my friends and meet them for lunch, get bored or "blocked" and then be able to complete my work at 3am when I can't sleep... The list goes on.
WTF man? have you no sense of creativity or no ability of time management? Now, I don't have such luxeries and still work from home and am a district manager. I don't mean to be a dick but with bitches like yours I'd pull you into a cubicle in an Orange County half-breath.
My point, realize the time you have, relish it, make the best of it and enjoy it whilst you have it. Stop whining. I still work from home and now I never see home. If you want to hear bitch stories E me. You're lucky enough to get out and make your own time. Sorry to be rude but you have the proverbial keys, pinkslip and Ferrari. I envy you. Enjoy it whilst you can and be creative with your time.
At some of the slower times between clients, I've trained my dog all sorts of useless commands for fun.
One example he now knows the word kitty and runs full speed across the yard looking for the kitties, no he doesn't want to eat them, just play, not sure what the kitties think of him tho.
Dogs at least give the appearance they're intently listening to you, explaining problems to them can sometimes unjog your mind when it gets stuck on a problem. Haven't had him talk other than bark tho, YMMV
I stopped contracting about 18 months ago, and since then I've been working from home. Now my wife works full-time, and I work at home in the morning, look after the kids in the afternoon, and if I'm busy, work some more in the evening. I'm having a great life doing this, I get to spend loads of time with my kids (much more than most other dads), I decide when I take my own free time, and I can pick and choose my work.
Find funky gifts
For most of my career (I'm a programmer) I've been doing work on contract for other companies, off-premises. While it gave me an incredible amount of freedom, I found myself having exactly the same problems as you do. I'd be in my apartment, working on my laptop. Hell, some days I'd not even bother getting out of bed to work. Eventually, this sort of lifestyle, along with a natural predisposition, lead to on and off bouts of depression.
My solution? I found a shared office. I've had two different ones, but both were within a few miles from my home. I've found that being around productive people keeps me focused and motivated. The second one I've found I'm actually not paying for. They give me space in their suite in exchange for some technical help, advice, and the occasional small program. In addition, I get the advice and guidance of the owner of the company who's suite it is, who's a fantastic fellow.
Some days I don't go in, but it certainly helps keep me on track. I have my own workstation there that I use only for work. I can log in using Terminal Services from home. (TS is probably the one thing that Win32 has over my Mac. The equivalents on the Mac (VNC, Timbuktu, Apple Remote Desktop) are extremely slow. Why is that?
So, my advice? Try to find a company with an office from somebody you know, or a company you've dealt with. Either rent some space from them, or try to trade services.
I, for one, would welcome these new cliche-hating overlords.
He he. Sure, the cliche quantities are limited, but the combinations of applications are virtually unlimited. What was that Trek saying again?....
Table-ized A.I.
despite my personal experience wasn't about the computer field, I had to spend two years at home working for appliance to one of the French "grande ecole". The work rythm was exhausting, and I couldn't afford to work at home.
My first logical reaction was to go study at one of the Paris public library. This is a great place for socializing, for people in there are all in the same state of mind, ie working hard, but willing to take some enjoyable breaks. So at some point you *have* to meet some people, because this is bound to happen. I met some of my best friends there.
Furthermore, there is such a crazy atmosphere created by all these people working, just like a huge bubble of thoughts and reflexions (the feeling also relies on the physical disposition of people inside the library : in my example, there were 3000 people in each room, with a 10 m tall ceiling, plenty of space and light, and 50 people tables : amazing). It gave me a tremendous incentive to study hard.
Obviously, the prerequesites is that the library be quite large, and quite enjoyable, and that you have a laptop (but this is affordable, compared to the alternative of renting a work place). If you live in a populated area, it should be OK.
I now remind this time as one of the most exciting period of my life.
You should give it a try : it's free, enticing to work, full of exciting people. And of course nothing prevents you from having a break for lunch with your friends, girlfriend, dog, real doll, water puppet :)
Regards,
Jdif
Let's overcome our weakness.
I have been telecomuting for 9 months now... I setup an audio/video webcam portal that I, and several other past and present co-workers will sign into and interact during the day, or throw out coding questions to each other with.
I have also hooked up with a local user group of developers (in my case ColdFusion), we meet once a month for our regular meetings, and will occasionally IM or go grab lunch.
Previous to my telecomutting I was working out of a client's office that was about 20 minutes from my company's office, I would try and meet my co-workers for lunch every other week at least. If I lived near my home office, I would still do the same.
...get a life. Or at least find a geeky way to socialize with your peers. To that end, I'd suggest that you find and join a LUG or two. If you live in a decent-sized city, you can probably find at least five or six within easy travelling distance.
:)
During my telecommuting periods I generally haven't been starved for human contact, but I've been in a comparable situation during periods of unemployment...stuck in the apartment all day, sitting around at the computer working (on job applications, in my case)...and those periods tended to coincide with the times when I haven't had much of a life outside of my profession.
Going to LUG meetings helped keep me sane. Plus I met some cool fellow-geeks, helped a few newbies, and occasionally defended the honor of the One True OS (FreeBSD) against the onslaught of Linux nerds.
Do go out to a local cafe for lunch. It at least forces you to get dressed, as opposed the sitting around in your dressing gown all day.
need a free COBOL editor for Windows?
I was a freelance consultant for a year, and worked out of my apartment. I had a spare bedroom that was my office, and I figured that separating the areas would help. It didn't.
I had tried "dressing up" in the morning just to get into the attitude. That didn't last long either. I felt sorta silly changing into a suit and necktie in the morning, only to sit through till midnight working, then change back into my pajamas, even though I never left the house.
There was a serious lack of human interaction. I still met with friends on a regular basis, pretty much the same as when I worked at an office, but it turned out that I really needed more human contact. That may just be a personality thing.
My hours became really, really weird. I was living 30hour days, meaning my days and nights would get inverted all the time, and when I needed to meet the client I often had to do the equivalent of a 3:00AM meeting... even though in reality it was noon.
Since I was at home, but at work, all day and every day, I would get distracted. I would go off and do something totally non-work related, but feel guilty the whole time. I have mild symptoms of ADD, which may have been the culprit and may not affect other people. Not sure.
The worst, and I mean WORST part of it all was that even when I was home, I was at work. I never felt quite comfortable, and sorta felt guilty for not working, even though I was averaging 16 hours a day working. That probably was one of the reasons for the 30 hour days.
In the end, I stopped working at home and got a job. A job where I had to clock in by 9:00AM, and got off work during a reasonable hour. I have now returned to commuting during rush hour, I have a boss to deal with, and I have annoying co-workers. Best of all, I can actually bitch about it! When I worked at home, I only had myself to blame.
I'm sure there are people that can cope with the situation better than I did, and people that just LOVE working at home. Power to them. I couldn't handle it, and don't want to do it again.
I almost forgot one of the best things that happened after returning to an office. I got a girlfriend again (broke up with the last GF after freelancing and living odd hours that didn't work out) and got married to her one year later.
I've had jobs where I didn't integrate into the local culture. I'd always go read a book during lunch, and didn't go out afterwork with my coworkers. Ended up leaving in about 2 months.
;), so its important to develop a strong relationship with your office family.
Starving for human interaction is a problem not just from working home.
My next job was ultra moronic, but I made an effort to meet and great everybody around me. I grew quite attached to them, and I even looked forward to going to work. People spend 1/3 of our time working, 1/3 sleeping and 1/3 recreating
I also find computers to be a giant vacuum for my social skills(and my libido too) When I have to code heavy for weeks, I find myself uninterested in socializing, which in turn leadsd to me having boring conversations, which leads me to be even more uninterested in socializing. A cycle that feedbacks very quickly.(and my gf gets grumpy with me)
I guess what I'm trying to say is working in front of a computer is very destructive towards you social life, and working at home is also harmful there(Never doing it again) And the less human interaction I have, the less happy I am. Even though I hate talking to morons!, the simple action of talking about the weather, lunch and football in the end makes me much happier.
Wireless account at starbucks is very cheap.
Many starbucks are very comfortable.
Starbucks has an excellent hiring policy. They hire bright, cheerful, culturally diverse young people. Most of the jerks buying coffee treat these naturally friendly, outgoing people as furniture. Be even just a little bit friendly & take just a little bit of time to get to know them, and voila, you now have a working environment with lots of pleasant human interaction that is all the better because it is free of work-related stress. And you will often get your coffee for free : )
Spend enough money on your laptop (think Apple), and you will also have other customers start conversations with you about it and what your doing, which will also lead to job offers. I would estimate that to date each 8-10 hours of work in a Starbucks has led to 1 work lead.
Also excellent are the big book store chains that have made a policy of being reader-friendly (Chapters, Barnes & Noble, etc.) They WANT you to sit in the store for hours with a laptop with a pile of books beside you. You're helping them create the atmosphere they want. And you will meet lots of people.
All of this works only if you're able to be productive in such environments. I personally find myself more productive in this environment then at home or in a cubicle. Just bring headphones for when you need to drown out someone whose conversation you find annoying.
Even though I currently I have a job, I made an agreement to work 1 day/week at home, so that I can spend a few hours a week working in a Starbucks with my tibook.
Try to do projects with friends, or at least some kind of colleagues. Do one day at their place, on day at yours. Only working at home, constantly, although it seems like a dream initially, will really get you down and depressed, even before you notice it yourself. I love being able to work from home a lot of the time, but always sitting home really gets under your skin after a while.
Even when you are quite social and know many people, you won't meet new people easily if you sit at home most of the time, and although that also means you don't have to see people you rather dislike, or get stuck in traffic or whatever, you miss the kind of small 'adventures' like fights, near-accidents on the road, hot women wandering by, dissing the boss and mocking management at work, etc, anything that could give you some laughs or adrenaline.
I predict that when telecommuting gets even more popular, you will see local telecommuting offices where people get together to work, even though they work at different companies. In fact, there are already business spaces and some companies have 'satellite offices' where their employees can work during the traffic peak hours.
Cybercafes, coffee houses with Internet/wireless fun, etc. If they get antsy about you sitting there all day sucking their bandwidth, but not much coffee, down, offer to set up a web page for them in exchange of continuing to sit there (or move to a more laid-back coffee house...)
Lots of interaction with a surprisingly regular set of people who work there at that shift and/or come in for their coffee/newspaper/pastry/snack/etc.
Try to support a local business, instead of a starbucks, with this, tho.
Returned Peace Corps IT Volunteer
I agree about working too hard when telecommuting. How ever I do not agree with the bits about the office tyrants.
I was driving for an hour to an hour and a half each day to get to a small shop, where each day the owner's dog received better treatment than I did. It looked to be a dream job for a while, as I was the geek for small machine shop. Then I became the whipping boy, and I realized the the boss had a serious coke problem. Things became worse, degrading daily.
There was nothing slack or relaxed about my work environment. I was gradually shifted from the things I loved doing to a set of menial tasks that made me little more than a glorified grease monkey. By the end of it even checking my email, let alone verifying log files on the server, or checking the router was cause for disciplinary action.
I quit this job in frustration. I was contacted a week later by one of my coworkers, to see if I was willing to contract back to the company to deal with the computers for which I was originally hired. I told them to give me a week to write a contract. Now I have to go on site twice a month, for less than an hour each time.
To iterate, it is true that some times I work too hard.
It is true that this leads to isolation, and depression, and I guess this could be called cabin fever. However I am still getting paid in what is a terrible job market, and nothing I am dealing with now, can hold a candle to any of the abuse I used to have to put up with.
In this circumstance I feel that despite any of the personal problems I may have, telecommuting is the lesser of the two evils.
Ironically two months ago I would not have believed that there would be any problems with telecommuting.
That's what I did. I work from home. My home happens to be 4 blocks from beautifully blue Carribean waters. I live in a town called Playa del Carmen. It's a resort-type town with a good deal of tourism. My rent is $750/month (two bedroom, two floor house, so room for a roommate if I wanted). I have plenty of work, and the money goes a LOT further down here. Not to mention, there's plenty to do.
I don't get cabin fever here. If I need to get out, I can go to the beach, or I can go to a party (someone's ALWAYS having a party here), or I can go scuba diving, or kite boarding. I can go deep sea fishing. You name it. If you don't mind lots of heat (I love it), and you enjoy the beach, this place is definitely a cure for cabin fever for us telecommuters.
I've worked every possibility over the sun, including:
- 100% at the office.
- 100% at home (now)
- 1/2 days at the office.
- 2 days at the office, 3 at home.
- 3 days at the office, 2 at home.
Of all of those, by far the best choice was #4. 3 days at home let me be very productive and then I spent the other 2 days interacting. Specifically, the Tue/Thur in the office combination was the best. We'd talk about stuff one day, and I'd go home and blast away at it the next and then return the day after with whatever new problems/thoughts/ideas that arose. It was the most productive and just fine at a social level.The next site to slashdot will be ready soon, but subscribers can beat the rush and start slashdotting it early!
My variety of getting out there is to go to local rock shows in small venues. They cost less than a movie, you get to meet all kinds of people into the same kind of music and the setting is different than any kind of home or office.
Another thing to do is WALK to a friends house. Part of the problem of working at home is not being able to focus your eyes on anything farther than a few meters away. I have friends who live 2 or 3 miles away that I walk to all the time so my eyes can focus on something far and I can breathe outdoor air for a while.
"Let him go, Ralph. He knows what he's doing." --Otto Mann (simpsons)
- i've been freelancing for many years, but have been full-time from the house since 1997 (kinda forced to, as a military pension only affords one the ability to eat dogfood casseroles)... - it took me about three years, but i finally got the 'stir crazies' (and developed severe apnea along the way)... - my solution was to start teaching Linux several nights a week at a local business college... - human interaction, a chance to get out of the house, sharpen personal communication skills, and make new friends among peers... - working from the house is fine... but not for everyone...
I pretty much live, work, and sleep all in the same room, sometimes I don't even go outside for a week. But I don't get cabin fever. The several days a month I spend hundreds of miles away from here for recreational purposes and hanging with friends are enough for me.
Maybe it's just me, but while I'm not shy or particularly anti-social, I can only stand to be the hyper-socialite for a few days a month. The rest of the time has to be me-time.
mogorific carpentry experiments
Sounds like you could use a bike, good sir. Since I traded in my bus pas for a bicycle, I'm finding I'm getting to most places almost as fast (or faster), and don't need to worry about checking the schedules, etc., etc.
It's also nice because it forces you to take smallish loads from the grocery store...which means you have to go more often and can keep perishables in stock.
And I damn well agree with checking out the small local shows. There's fewer silly kids there as well.