Home Office

my workspace

Ever since we set out on this new, adventurous chapter last summer, people have been asking me “how I like teleworking.”

There are two answers:
1. It sucks.
2. It’s great.

Both of these answers are always true at the same time, but sometimes one dominates the other, and that usually dictates my response.  Now that the topic of “working from home” has become a widespread joke, thanks to last week’s hilarious viral video of the live BBC interview with the political science professor that accidentally ended up including his whole family (I won’t post a link out of sympathy– as if my failure to do so could save that poor family from additional embarrassment!), the moment seems right to clarify my thoughts on telework.

I’ve learned a few things over the past six months.  For one, you can only telework by the seat of your pants for so long.  As in, a few days maybe.  After that, it no longer seems adventurous to be hunched over a hotel desk, calling the front desk asking for another late checkout so you can finish whatever you are doing, or sidling from picnic table to picnic table in the campground, looking for the perfect wi-fi spot.

For another thing, it’s really hard to work with a small child in the house.  Poor Professor Kelly got the worst of this principle, but most teleworkers know that as soon as you have an important phone call with a boss or a customer, or are leading a web training session, that is the time when there will be a catastrophic failure in your office door lock, or a deafening crash followed by screams and sobs will emanate from the next room, or the smoke detector will go off (okay– only one of those things has actually happened to me).  Other than these dramatic examples, there is just the household noise in the background: happy kid, singing kid, whiny kid, persistent kid, kid discovering the principles of percussion instruments made from household objects.  I have big noise-reducing headphones that I requested when I worked in the office because of the talkative guy on the other side of my cubicle wall, but now I use them mostly to block out this domestic noise. But– and I suppose this is a mom thing– it took me a long time to realize that putting them on and leaving the crashing and whining for dad to deal with was really the right thing to do.

The family situation leads to another point, which is that I couldn’t do this if I didn’t have so much autonomy over my schedule due to the nature of my work and my boss and co-workers’ flexibility.  Here’s my typical schedule: start work at 6am (or earlier, if I get up earlier) and work until Maya wakes up.  Take a break to help feed and dress her and get her out the door with Bo and off to school. Return to work until 11:00, then break to swim laps, pick up Maya from school, and have lunch with the family.  Then back to work for roughly 4 hours, or however much time I have to get to 8 hours; I’m usually done at 5 or so.  But this daily schedule changes based on how early or late I wake up in the morning, how late Maya sleeps, whether I have a meeting or other event that day, and whether I feel like I have enough time to squeeze in the swim session. I post an update to my online calendar each morning so that my co-workers can see what times I am on the clock that day.  This flexibility is one of the biggest factors in making telework great– and in making it terrible. It’s nice to be able to help get Maya ready for school, to pick her up, and have lunch with the family. But I sometimes feel like I’m constantly doing the calculations in my head, on how many hours I’ve done, how many more I need. Some days the family just needs more of my time and attention, and when I’m home, I can’t just ignore this, because I’m right here.  It may overall be good that I’m home, because I can give that attention and the family benefits– or maybe it’s bad, because then I feel the stress of the conflict between giving attention to work vs. giving it to the family.

Finally, I think the best reason to get a fulltime telework gig is because there’s someplace you really, really want to be.  It’s because your beloved family farmhouse is languishing with no one to live in it, or the oceanview house of your dreams has somehow become available to you.  It should always involve a space with a wonderful office with a door you can close, which you spend the time lovingly setting up with everything you need because you know you’re going to be there for a long time.

As it turns out, we won’t be in our current location for very much longer.  I expect I will have another announcement about that in a month or so.  For now, I have it pretty good.  And I have some clear principles to think about as we plan for the next stop on the adventure.

I get occasional visitors to my office