Developing Perspective

00:00:00 ◼   ► Welcome to Developing Perspective. Developing Perspective is an intermittent

00:00:04 ◼   ► podcast hosted by me, David Smith. I'm an independent iOS developer based in

00:00:08 ◼   ► Herndon, Virginia. Today I'm going to be talking about working at home and more

00:00:14 ◼   ► specifically working outside of the home when you have the opportunity to

00:00:18 ◼   ► work at home. So I run my own business. I'm an independent iOS

00:00:23 ◼   ► developer. And most people I know who do similar things to what I do choose to work out of

00:00:31 ◼   ► their home. There's an office downstairs if they're so lucky, or either bedroom, or in

00:00:37 ◼   ► the living room. I've heard all kinds of things like that. And I've been doing this for about

00:00:41 ◼   ► six years. And the thing that I found, though, that that particular arrangement typically

00:00:48 ◼   ► doesn't work very well for me. And here I was going to kind of work through in this

00:00:53 ◼   ► podcast kind of why. Why I prefer to work outside of my home. So basically, I'll do

00:01:01 ◼   ► a little backstory. So I used to work out of a room in the bottom of my house and that

00:01:06 ◼   ► worked pretty well. It's nice to not have a commute. It's nice to have no additional

00:01:12 ◼   ► cost. If anything, you actually have a cost savings if you set up a home office deduction

00:01:16 ◼   ► and your taxes and things.

00:01:18 ◼   ► So it's nice from those perspectives.

00:01:21 ◼   ► I have all my things with me whenever I need them.

00:01:24 ◼   ► It's just like, oh, I forgot that thing at the office.

00:01:26 ◼   ► It's just always there.

00:01:29 ◼   ► And my office, the time I worked was typically much more

00:01:32 ◼   ► flexible.

00:01:33 ◼   ► I can go downstairs.

00:01:35 ◼   ► I can come upstairs.

00:01:36 ◼   ► If I need, oh, let me get a snack, I can go do that.

00:01:40 ◼   ► That worked pretty well for a couple of years.

00:01:43 ◼   ► However, then something happened.

00:01:45 ◼   ► We had our first child.

00:01:47 ◼   ► In our case, it was her boy, who's almost three, recently had a second child.

00:01:52 ◼   ► And what I found is, though, that it created a strange--

00:01:58 ◼   ► I guess I could almost call it attention.

00:02:01 ◼   ► And specifically, it was most magnified by when

00:02:06 ◼   ► my wife decided to be at home a lot more with the kids,

00:02:10 ◼   ► is I found that I was no longer able to be sort of splitting myself between the two places.

00:02:17 ◼   ► That I would be either always, in some ways always working, and in some ways never working,

00:02:22 ◼   ► and in some ways always at home, and in some ways never at home. Because, you know, you go downstairs,

00:02:28 ◼   ► it's like, "Hey honey, I'm gonna go to work, I'll go do some things down, I hear something happening,

00:02:33 ◼   ► you know, my son's not happy about something, whatever. And so all of a sudden I'm distracted,

00:02:40 ◼   ► I'm like, "Oh, is he okay? Is everything fine? Should I help? Can I help?" And there's part of

00:02:48 ◼   ► that sort of a distraction. But I think the thing that was really worse about it, it's not to say

00:02:53 ◼   ► that it was a distraction because it was something that I wanted to do. I liked being able to be

00:02:59 ◼   ► helpful, but what I think of it really meant though is I was always there and I

00:03:04 ◼   ► sort of felt guilty if I didn't help around and do things at home. And then on

00:03:10 ◼   ► the flip side it's like I would, because work was always there, you know, six, seven

00:03:15 ◼   ► o'clock at night, it's like, oh, I wonder how, I wonder if I got an email back from

00:03:18 ◼   ► that. I wonder if, oh, here's a thought I had, I wonder if I did this in this code

00:03:23 ◼   ► here and I could fix this problem that I've been having. And I could go and do

00:03:28 ◼   ► it. Or even worse is even if I didn't go and do it, I could think about going to do it. And in some

00:03:34 ◼   ► ways that's worse because then it's just this kind of this constant nagging on my mind of like, "Oh,

00:03:40 ◼   ► what if I tried this? What if I tried that?" You know, I don't know if you're anything like me,

00:03:44 ◼   ► but it's kind of like you get your best ideas in the shower. There's a lot of activities I do it

00:03:47 ◼   ► around the house that even if not necessarily shower, it's like doing dishes or cleaning up

00:03:53 ◼   ► or those types of activities where it's just, you know, it's like I have this

00:03:57 ◼   ► latent mental ability that I can be like, "Oh, I wonder about this, oh, I wonder about that,"

00:04:02 ◼   ► and it was always kind of distracting. So what I did is I went and got a,

00:04:06 ◼   ► looked around for office space, and about a year ago I moved into an office just about a mile from

00:04:13 ◼   ► my house, just normal regular office, and it was actually worked out pretty well. The office space

00:04:19 ◼   ► itself I'll talk about it in a little bit but the thing that I found that was

00:04:23 ◼   ► really great is now I would get up in the morning and take a shower which

00:04:29 ◼   ► sometimes was a unique thing if you're still working from home you'll often

00:04:32 ◼   ► find that suddenly your pajamas wear out far more quickly than they ever did

00:04:37 ◼   ► before and what I would find is you know if I get a shower have breakfast kiss my

00:04:42 ◼   ► wife goodbye say goodbye to my son and go to work and I was at work I knew that

00:04:48 ◼   ► And if my wife needed me, she would call me.

00:04:51 ◼   ► And if I didn't get a call, things were okay.

00:04:54 ◼   ► Sometimes she'd have bad days, sometimes she'd have great days.

00:04:57 ◼   ► But I was able to, when I was at work, to be at work.

00:05:00 ◼   ► And I would leave everything about work at the office so that I would not feel compelled

00:05:06 ◼   ► or tempted or in any way encouraged to do stuff.

00:05:11 ◼   ► And so when I'm at home, it meant that I was at home.

00:05:13 ◼   ► I remember talking to my wife a couple months after I started this and asking her, "Well,

00:05:19 ◼   ► how's it going?

00:05:20 ◼   ► What do you think this process is doing?"

00:05:23 ◼   ► And she said, "What you liked is when I was at home, I really was at home.

00:05:28 ◼   ► I was present, I can almost say, not just sort of in body, but also in mind and focus."

00:05:33 ◼   ► And I think the exact opposite was also true when I was at the office.

00:05:37 ◼   ► And that separation created a lot of, I think, reduced a lot of anxiety for me.

00:05:43 ◼   ► I didn't feel guilty, like, "Oh, am I doing something wrong?"

00:05:46 ◼   ► I was like, "No, I'm at the office.

00:05:47 ◼   ► That's a normal, typical thing that people do."

00:05:51 ◼   ► And when I was at home, I'm at home.

00:05:53 ◼   ► So that was a huge plus for me.

00:05:56 ◼   ► I think it was also nice to be able to set up my work environment just like how I like

00:06:01 ◼   ► it, and nothing would disturb that.

00:06:03 ◼   ► Because inevitably with a home office, things just kind of get moved around and just sort

00:06:09 ◼   ► of your life takes over.

00:06:10 ◼   ► Whereas it was much nicer at the office.

00:06:13 ◼   ► Another benefit of having a separate office space is it made it much easier for me to

00:06:17 ◼   ► be able to bring people in who are colleagues.

00:06:21 ◼   ► I started a thing called Office Hours where once a week any local developer could come

00:06:26 ◼   ► in and just hang out at the office and work.

00:06:29 ◼   ► And it was kind of a nice thing.

00:06:30 ◼   ► it to kind of that water cooler discussion, going out for lunch, kind of pulling a bit

00:06:34 ◼   ► of that, what would you miss by working from home versus having a traditional office environment.

00:06:39 ◼   ► You know, that was great.

00:06:41 ◼   ► And then I've even moreover been able to establish more long-running relationships with people

00:06:46 ◼   ► who come into the office on a regular basis.

00:06:49 ◼   ► And we collaborate and we work together and we talk about what's going on.

00:06:56 ◼   ► And that kind of sparks thoughts, sparks creativity.

00:07:00 ◼   ► If I'm having stuck with something, I have someone to bounce that off.

00:07:03 ◼   ► And it helps a lot with the isolation part of working from home, where if normally your

00:07:08 ◼   ► only kind of interaction with the outside world is email, Twitter, maybe some campfire

00:07:12 ◼   ► chats, some RSS readers, like it's very isolating that in some people say, oh, go to a coffee

00:07:19 ◼   ► shop.

00:07:20 ◼   ► I never found that because I mean, I'm around people, but I'm not talking to these people.

00:07:24 ◼   ► I'm not interacting with them in a way that I would when I'm, you know, used to work in

00:07:27 ◼   ► an office.

00:07:29 ◼   ► And so that was a great sort of adjustment.

00:07:32 ◼   ► The thing that was difficult with my first office, though, is that it was a bit bigger

00:07:36 ◼   ► than I needed.

00:07:38 ◼   ► And if you ever look for office space, it's kind of a complicated thing because you need--

00:07:44 ◼   ► office space typically doesn't come in very small amounts of space if you're actually

00:07:49 ◼   ► leasing it directly from a landlord.

00:07:51 ◼   ► I think I had to lease 818 square feet of office space, which is quite a lot.

00:07:56 ◼   ► And so the cost of it was a bit more than I really needed.

00:07:58 ◼   ► I mean, the office itself was great.

00:08:00 ◼   ► I mean, I could put up, I think at most we had like 12 people in there sometimes.

00:08:04 ◼   ► And that's kind of cool, but I'm an independent developer, so I need 12 people in there very often.

00:08:10 ◼   ► So recently I moved into a new office, and this is the inaugural podcast from that new office.

00:08:16 ◼   ► I'm actually releasing an office through a company called Regis, which is kind of...

00:08:21 ◼   ► they do these small micro office leases where, you know, I have this nice big suite,

00:08:25 ◼   ► as a receptionist, a kitchen, all that kind of stuff. And I now have a room within that office

00:08:31 ◼   ► suite. That's mine. And so far, so good. It's been working pretty well. No real complaints,

00:08:37 ◼   ► but like I said, I've only been here for, let's see, about two hours now. But I mean,

00:08:42 ◼   ► I definitely decided that after doing an office for the first, you know, for all of last year,

00:08:47 ◼   ► it's like, this is what I need to continue to do. I thought about when my lease was up,

00:08:50 ◼   ► oh, maybe I'll go home.

00:08:52 ◼   ► And I did a little bit of that, but I

00:08:54 ◼   ► missed being able to leave work at work.

00:08:57 ◼   ► I missed being able to be at work when I'm at work.

00:09:03 ◼   ► And it's kind of a subtle thing.

00:09:05 ◼   ► It's a weird kind of a productivity,

00:09:09 ◼   ► work-life balance kind of thing.

00:09:11 ◼   ► But I would just encourage anybody

00:09:13 ◼   ► who is struggling with that to try it out.

00:09:15 ◼   ► I mean, a lot of these places let

00:09:17 ◼   ► you do it on an ad hoc basis.

00:09:19 ◼   ► You can even try it for, you know, like just rent it for a month for a couple hundred bucks

00:09:24 ◼   ► and see if you feel like, see if you do better work, see if you work harder, see if you are

00:09:30 ◼   ► able to focus more.

00:09:31 ◼   ► Because I mean, if you're any kind of consultant, if it adds a couple of hours of productive

00:09:36 ◼   ► work to your week, then it's more than paid for itself.

00:09:40 ◼   ► So something to think about, something I'd encourage sort of other independents to think

00:09:44 ◼   ► about.

00:09:45 ◼   ► And it's, you know, I never really used to thought about it for the first couple of years.

00:09:50 ◼   ► I never even thought of getting an office.

00:09:52 ◼   ► I mean, I'm an Indian.

00:09:53 ◼   ► It's me.

00:09:54 ◼   ► It's just one person.

00:09:56 ◼   ► But if your mindset or mentality or home life is anything like mine, it's definitely something

00:10:01 ◼   ► that I would consider.

00:10:02 ◼   ► So anyway, that's kind of the thoughts for today.

00:10:05 ◼   ► Just kind of a short post today, but hope you enjoy it.

00:10:08 ◼   ► Anyway, this is Developing Perspective.

00:10:10 ◼   ► If you have any thoughts, comments, concerns, the best place to hit me up is on Twitter.

00:10:15 ◼   ► I'm @_davidsmith.

00:10:18 ◼   ► If you enjoy the show, please tell your friends.

00:10:20 ◼   ► Please tell somebody.

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00:10:25 ◼   ► give back.

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00:10:28 ◼   ► then please just tell someone about the link.

00:10:30 ◼   ► It's developingperspective.com.

00:10:32 ◼   ► And otherwise, have a great Thursday.

00:10:35 ◼   ► And I will talk to you later.

00:10:37 ◼   ► Bye.

00:10:38 ◼   ► [ Silence ]

00:10:56 ◼   ► [ Silence ]