Up Front: Home is Where the - Ooo, shiny!
95 Responses
First ←Older Page 1 2 3 4 Newer→ Last
-
James Butler, in reply to
I do have a semi-serious defence of Jersey Shore, but I imagine it would be rather wasted here. :)
Oh, it depends on what you consider a waste. If you'd be happy to start an off-topic dissection of Snooki's love-life as an example of the uphill struggle of modern feminism or something equally worthy and serious, then go for gold. If however you want me to start watching Jersey Shore, then I'm going to rudely prejudge your argument and say it won't work. I don't even watch good TV anymore :-/
-
Ngaire BookieMonster, in reply to
Abba-solutely. People sometimes ask me how I avoid slacking off. The reverse is more often true: that you lose track of when to goddamn stop.
This. This, this, this, this, this, this, this.
I’m slowly getting better at turning off but at times it really is a hard-fought battle.
-
Bart Janssen, in reply to
I imagine it would be rather wasted here.
Yeah 'cos Emma had such high hopes that this would be a serious discussion thread with deep meaningful emotionally complex insights into the universe with inhabit.
We haven't even started talking about dicks yet!
-
As an aside I have worked at home, for the same purpose Lucy described. For me it always had to be about balancing rewards. I can play 15 minutes of this game after I've written that section of the chapter 3. But as has been pointed out that frequently ended up with me getting into a rhythm and writing for 6 hours solid instead.
So both the distraction problem and the working too long problem.
One real plus about working at home was that since I had the whole house I really could have papers piled in stacks ALL over the dining room floor without fear that anyone would disturb them, this was before kittens obviously.
-
Isabel Hitchings, in reply to
We haven’t even started talking about dicks yet!
Seeing as half the wankers in the world have their dicks involved in the process I think we kind of have.
-
I thought of this post when reading this, from Merlin Mann, who clearly has suffered from the 'not being able to stop working' thing too.
Personally, when I was last working from home, it looked a lot like this:
-
One problem is that while I don't 'work from home' as a rule, neither do I stop work when I get home. Dealing with people in other countries means answering an email at 11pm at night, or 6am in the morning, will get things moving forward better than if you wait until 'normal working hours'. And then there's the remote technical support, that I found out can be just as demanding of your time while at work or standing at the top of the Luge in Rotorua while 'on holiday'. It's not only the working at home we have to contend with, it's working everywhere, all the time.
But, I'm not bitter, honest.
<moving away from the keyboard>
-
Rich Lock, in reply to
(I do have a semi-serious defence of Jersey Shore, but I imagine it would be rather wasted here. :) )
I just borrow Danyl's. Which gives me more time to read improving books.
-
Lilith __, in reply to
I just borrow Danyl’s.
Huh, I was just wracking my brains to think which blog I read that on. Danyl’s, of course!
ETA: also saves me the bother of ever watching it myself :-)
-
Bart Janssen, in reply to
I just borrow Danyl's. Which gives me more time to read improving books
Wow. Ya see I just thought it was some gimmick reality show that offered sex, naked bodies, violence and stupidity as a way of getting people to look at their TVs and see the advertising.
I didn't understand how wrong I was.
-
We haven't even started talking about dicks yet!
I posted a video about masturbation in the sixth post on this thread, man. Keep up.
I have episodes of working from home - I mostly work in an office, but will occasionally have the odd half-day or couple of hours at home. Agree wholeheartedly about the geographic separation if you can get it.
Since I get the impression that a lot of people working from home are doing so as contractors or are in non-traditional employment relationships, I'll just add my main tip about this: get a good accountant. They save you time, money, and hassle. Plus, they're handy for stuff like explaining how you can claim the cost of that Aeron chair as a business expense.
-
Bart Janssen, in reply to
I posted a video about masturbation in the sixth post on this thread, man. Keep [it?] up.
Yeah Isabel said the same and I have to disagree. Especially on Emma's thread we need to be specific, you can't just obliquely make the reference and expect to get credit. We can't have that kind of sloppiness here, we have standards, admittedly low but still.
Now what was I doing? oh yeah a grant to write ....
-
webweaver, in reply to
But, yes, this does also mean I utterly respect braver people who can do the whole hog and say “screw working for the man, I’m gonna spend all day wearing no pants to make my money!” I think I’d need to see more reliable remuneration on the horizon to take that step. And I guess this is for another thread – how have people made that jump, out from the salaried ‘security’ of employment to self-employment?
As someone who's been self-employed (sole trader/contractor/freelancer) for around eight out of the last 14 years (with a couple of periods of employment along the way), I would say that a number of elements are useful to have in place before you make the jump - but once you do jump, being self-employed can be waaaaay more financially advantageous than working for the Man.
The important elements (IMO) are as follows:
1) The industry you're in can make a big difference to the success or failure of going solo.
For example, the web industry and technology in general seem to lend themselves very well to contracting and freelancing, not least because as you're working in a virtual world, you can just as easily do it from a home office as from your client's place of work. Plus it's a specialised world where, if you get good at what you do, your reputation will do most of the contract-finding for you. Word of mouth recommendations are gold.
I imagine there are other fields equally well-suited to contracting - film-making and media in general also come to mind. But if you're in an industry where you need something only an employer can provide - like I dunno, heavy machinery or something, I guess it's not going to be as easy to be a freelancer.
2) I think these days you probably need some fairly heavy-duty work experience on your CV before you become self-employed.
I've been in the web industry for over 14 years now, and I actually started off as self-employed, basically because the break I got into the industry in the first place was a contract position. However, I think jumping straight into a new career as a contractor would be much harder to do these days, so I would recommend you get a few years as an employee under your belt first.
As a contractor I am expected to be an expert in my field, be pretty much entirely self-motivated and self-managing, and not need any training or hand-holding. I'm often contracted to join a team at some random stage in the web dev process, grasp the essentials of my task(s) with very little input from the project manager, and then I'm expected to get on with it. Hit the ground running, plug-and-play, all that kind of stuff. And when I'm done, I'm outta there.
My job is to make everything I'm involved in as easy as possible for the rest of the team, and to deliver my part of the project on-time, on-budget, pixel-perfectly and without any fuss. You'd need to have quite a bit of experience before you would feel confident enough to agree to that, I reckon.
3) The third element I think you need is a decent network. Like I said, word-of-mouth recommendations are what keep many of us going, and you need to have the contacts in order to do that. I haven't ever advertised my services (apart from via my website) and yet I'm pretty much booked solid all the time. You'd be amazed at how many contract jobs there are that are never even advertised - they just get handed out to people who know people...
Again, the web industry is a good one for that - it's not that big, and most of us know and have worked with lots of others of us, which means you come across the same people more than once over the years - and if you've worked with someone before and your name comes up as a possible contractor, and you've done good work, then they're quite likely to recommend you.
As a result, one of the biggest and most important aspects of working in a small industry like mine is never EVER burn your bridges. Someone you work alongside this year might have moved jobs and become someone who maybe wants to pay you to do a contract for them a few years later. Always be nice, always do your best, and if the time comes for you to leave somewhere because it's not working out for you, quit in a respectful and good-spirited manner. You never know who you're gonna cross paths again with in the future!
I reckon if you've got those three elements in place, you're well on your way to being able to successfully make the leap into self-employment.
It's definitely useful to have a few thou tucked away to tide you over until you get your first contract, and also for the occasional slow days in between contracts, but once you get the word out across your networks you should hopefully find opportunities coming your way.
I think the biggest and scariest step is the first one. Once you've done that, the rest is easy, in my experience. And if it works out as it should, you'll probably find yourself earning a lot more than you did when you were an employee, you'll be doing more varied work, and yes, you'll be able to work from home sans pants if that's what floats your boat.
-
We haven’t even started talking about dicks yet!
[Except in the context of masturbation, as noted already...]
We can't have that kind of sloppiness here
But we can have many contributors describing in loving detail why they're sticking to their chosen seats.
-
Islander, in reply to
Heh!
-
recordari, in reply to
Sticky wicket, cricket. The circle is complete.
-
giovanni tiso, in reply to
I have such a weird job. Ducking between Twitter, here and other forums is actually part of the description. At the least, it fills in the time between my short, intense spells of creative productivity.
At a school event not long ago a friend was giving me a hard time because I seem to be on Facebook a lot. Basically, I need the background chatter. With PAS too I'm on it when I have work - up to a point. Sometimes the work is just too much and takes all available time, but when deadlines aren't too crazy it actually helps my productivity (ugh) to have that focussed distraction.
Plus, I like people I guess. And that's the other side of working from home - it can get bloody lonely.
-
Sacha, in reply to
it actually helps my productivity (ugh) to have that focussed distraction.
Plus, I like people I guess.+1
-
Lara,
Heehee I am the Goddess of Procrastination. Last year I didn't even get around to opening a word doc before I was on te interwebs (Train of thought: 'Oh good, I'm nice and early starting today. I'll just check my emails.... Oh look, it's 4pm, and I haven't done anything! Oh well, there's always tomorrow.). Except of course, when deadlines could see the whites of my eyes. THEN I worked. Overnight.
My favourite procrastination chart is: http://hyperboleandahalf.blogspot.com/2010/03/procrastinator.html
But I also do the other extreme - no breakfast, no breaks, eat at my desk. Obsessively note how much time I've wasted on each distraction and make it up.
Is there no middle way?
-
Except of course, when deadlines could see the whites of my eyes. THEN I worked. Overnight.
Yeah, ditto.
I like the term "focused distraction" too, that's quite a useful description of how I work when I'm actually fingers on keyboard. Because of course, I'm also "writing" when I'm walking, or gardening, or (sometimes disastrously) cooking.
Last night was games night, and we were discussing what various companies are doing re: office space. And while everyone's been drawing up their wonderful plans for the future of the CBD, those businesses have been forced into signing fixed-term leases in the suburbs of at least two years. Even if the best guess is that the building needs maybe six months' repair work, they had to function in the meantime, so...
Those workers won't be back in a hurry, if at all. What we're going to have is distributed businessing suburbs, in Merivale and Riccarton and Papanui, unconnected by a currently pretty much basket-case public transport system. This makes me rather sad.
Post your response…
This topic is closed.