Finding a remote-working/home-based contract

[psychocandy]

I went from 100% working hard, log in earlier cause I don't have to travel, not logging off until I had to eat etc (was a young buck trying to climb the ladder at the time) to absolutely zero as my motivation gave up and died. I even found out that if I taped a key down whilst in MS Word letting it fill the page with that letter it would show my Lotus messenger as 'at keyboard' but after about 2 hours my laptop would crash so had to keep closing the document, re-open and repeat. That was my daily routine for the last few months.

It's hard enough ignoring distractions at home at best let alone when there is no pressure or direction from your manager, colleagues and over time focus will suffer.

NLUK - you are one sneaky git. MS Office communicator here and you just need to set your status to BUSY. :-)

But seriously, I tend not to work from home. Unless wife/kid is not there otherwise all they do is hassle me to do other things that'll 'just take 5 minutes!'.

[jamesbrown]

question: for those who do/have WFH for an extended period, how do you find your productivity?

having only done it the occasional day here and there my experience is mixed, some days when i've had specific stuff to do (docs to write etc) it can be fruitful, but run of the mill days are too easy to be distracted from

It depends on two things: 1) personality and motivation; and 2) well-defined deliverables with clear deadlines. I guess there are techniques to improve motivation and help with home-working, but if you have a boring contract with ill-defined deliverables or loose timeframes, you probably won't be bothered to get up in the morning. You need to have as many days with specific things to do as possible and a degree of stress helps. Tight deliverables are a good thing, but don't make them so tight that you end up blurring the boundary between work and life. For the same reason, you must have a dedicated office.

[DaveB]

NLUK - you are one sneaky git. MS Office communicator here and you just need to set your status to BUSY. :-)

But seriously, I tend not to work from home. Unless wife/kid is not there otherwise all they do is hassle me to do other things that'll 'just take 5 minutes!'.

And remember to turn off the timeout on messenger as well otherwise it shows you as away automatically after 30 minutes of inactivity.

[NorthWestPerm2Contr]

NLUK - you are one sneaky git. MS Office communicator here and you just need to set your status to BUSY. :-)

But seriously, I tend not to work from home. Unless wife/kid is not there otherwise all they do is hassle me to do other things that'll 'just take 5 minutes!'.

Totally know the feeling there!

[NorthWestPerm2Contr]

Cheers for responses.

The problem I have in current gig is I am technical lead and nobody to report to at current site - I can WFH whenever I want but I feel I have to be in as that is what a "lead" should do...

Maybe I just need to take a month off at the end of current gig to recharge - I haven't taken any time off in a very long time......

[northernladuk]

And remember to turn off the timeout on messenger as well otherwise it shows you as away automatically after 30 minutes of inactivity.

Busy all day? They will see through that in an instant. Last 2 clients I have been at you couldn't change the timeout due to the build.... but you can run a small program that fools your PC into thinkig it is active so never shows inactivity <cough>

[formant]

Really appreciate my team lead at ClientCo. Said on the first day that he doesn't believe in people using Sametime to show they're 'at work' - only wants me to show as available if it's actually a good time to contact me. Says he wouldn't have taken me on if he didn't have faith that I'll be doing my job.

Big change to my permie days, where WFH was frowned upon (although perfectly doable) and not being on Sametime seen as 'not working'. Urgh.

[tvr450]

I work from home some days and the office have set up Office Communicator to go idle after 5 mins and they have disabled changing the setting. I tried changing it via the registry (which worked) but after a reboot the setting was put back.

Now I use this little bit of software. Keeps OC happy and also stops the screen saver/lock coming on.

Caffeine

Works by pressing F15 every 59 seconds (you can change that to shift if you prefer).

[d000hg]

I work from home some days and the office have set up Office Communicator to go idle after 5 mins and they have disabled changing the setting. I tried changing it via the registry (which worked) but after a reboot the setting was put back.

Now I use this little bit of software. Keeps OC happy and also stops the screen saver/lock coming on.

Caffeine

Works by pressing F15 every 59 seconds (you can change that to shift if you prefer).

Or you could actually do some work.

[eek]

Or you could actually do some work.

That would never do.