Another snowy day, another hour lost to the possibly-eternal struggle to keep the driveway clear, and another post. The way this winter's been going, if I only post on snow days, I'm sure to get a dozen entries done by the end of February...
Snow days are a bit strange for me. As a software engineer armed with a laptop and a VPN connection, snow just means I get to work from home (in my pajamas, win!) for the day and deal with the snow at my leisure. But it's also a totally different dynamic from being in the office. Many people have written about the challenges of working from home, the importance of maintaining focus and self-discipline, and so forth, so I'm not going to go into that. I thought I'd share a bit about the way my mindset and motivation vary through the day.
I start out strong, focused on work and raring to go. I usually start early, since I didn't have to drive to the office, and I manage to be productive for a few hours. During the middle of the day, my attention tends to wander away from work. I try to stay focused on work and even tell myself again and again that this time, I will, but I invariably find myself distracted by something shiny -- which is to say, anything not the work I get paid to do. I repeatedly check my personal email, frequently refresh my facebook page, run to the kitchen for yet another glass of water. I'm never completely away from work, but I'm not completely focused on it either.
Then, around mid-afternoon, my mindset shifts again, and suddenly I'm focused and cranking through stuff at work once more. Before I know it, my wife is in my office reminding me that it's way past quitting time. I look up to discover that several more hours have gone by, and I have somehow managed to do a full day's work. If not for my wife, I might have just continued working into the night. So, unlike some people who say that they have a hard time getting work done at home, I can get a lot done -- I just have to do it in chunks, with periods of personal goofing off in the middle. Sometimes I fluctuate between work and personal focus more frequently, but today had just a couple of major swings.
What I spent today's personal time doing -- apart from clearing the driveway and contributing to some amusing discussion threads on facebook -- has me pretty psyched for the weeks ahead. Still feeling the doldrums of the end of Into the Woods, I decided that the cure was more of the same, kind of like the way a drink is supposed to help with a hangover. More details on that next time.
Your description of the way by which you get your work done at home belies the ideal way to go about it. While it is true that some work must be done within particular time constraints, the computer industry in particular demonstrates that those time constraints can be quite artificial and may even detract from efficiency and productivity. There is no biological imperative for all of us to work from 9 in the morning to 5 in the evening. In fact there seems to be some solid evidence here to the contrary!
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