0:00:00Welcome to Developing Perspective. Developing Perspective is an intermittent
0:00:04podcast hosted by me, David Smith. I'm an independent iOS developer based in
0:00:08Herndon, Virginia. Today I'm going to be talking about working at home and more
0:00:14specifically working outside of the home when you have the opportunity to
0:00:18work at home. So I run my own business. I'm an independent iOS
0:00:23developer. And most people I know who do similar things to what I do choose to work out of
0:00:31their home. There's an office downstairs if they're so lucky, or either bedroom, or in
0:00:37the living room. I've heard all kinds of things like that. And I've been doing this for about
0:00:41six years. And the thing that I found, though, that that particular arrangement typically
0:00:48doesn't work very well for me. And here I was going to kind of work through in this
0:00:53podcast kind of why. Why I prefer to work outside of my home. So basically, I'll do
0:01:01a little backstory. So I used to work out of a room in the bottom of my house and that
0:01:06worked pretty well. It's nice to not have a commute. It's nice to have no additional
0:01:12cost. If anything, you actually have a cost savings if you set up a home office deduction
0:01:16and your taxes and things.
0:01:18So it's nice from those perspectives.
0:01:21I have all my things with me whenever I need them.
0:01:24It's just like, oh, I forgot that thing at the office.
0:01:26It's just always there.
0:01:29And my office, the time I worked was typically much more
0:01:32flexible.
0:01:33I can go downstairs.
0:01:35I can come upstairs.
0:01:36If I need, oh, let me get a snack, I can go do that.
0:01:40That worked pretty well for a couple of years.
0:01:43However, then something happened.
0:01:45We had our first child.
0:01:47In our case, it was her boy, who's almost three, recently had a second child.
0:01:52And what I found is, though, that it created a strange--
0:01:58I guess I could almost call it attention.
0:02:01And specifically, it was most magnified by when
0:02:06my wife decided to be at home a lot more with the kids,
0:02:10is I found that I was no longer able to be sort of splitting myself between the two places.
0:02:17That I would be either always, in some ways always working, and in some ways never working,
0:02:22and in some ways always at home, and in some ways never at home. Because, you know, you go downstairs,
0:02:28it's like, "Hey honey, I'm gonna go to work, I'll go do some things down, I hear something happening,
0:02:33you know, my son's not happy about something, whatever. And so all of a sudden I'm distracted,
0:02:40I'm like, "Oh, is he okay? Is everything fine? Should I help? Can I help?" And there's part of
0:02:48that sort of a distraction. But I think the thing that was really worse about it, it's not to say
0:02:53that it was a distraction because it was something that I wanted to do. I liked being able to be
0:02:59helpful, but what I think of it really meant though is I was always there and I
0:03:04sort of felt guilty if I didn't help around and do things at home. And then on
0:03:10the flip side it's like I would, because work was always there, you know, six, seven
0:03:15o'clock at night, it's like, oh, I wonder how, I wonder if I got an email back from
0:03:18that. I wonder if, oh, here's a thought I had, I wonder if I did this in this code
0:03:23here and I could fix this problem that I've been having. And I could go and do
0:03:28it. Or even worse is even if I didn't go and do it, I could think about going to do it. And in some
0:03:34ways that's worse because then it's just this kind of this constant nagging on my mind of like, "Oh,
0:03:40what if I tried this? What if I tried that?" You know, I don't know if you're anything like me,
0:03:44but it's kind of like you get your best ideas in the shower. There's a lot of activities I do it
0:03:47around the house that even if not necessarily shower, it's like doing dishes or cleaning up
0:03:53or those types of activities where it's just, you know, it's like I have this
0:03:57latent mental ability that I can be like, "Oh, I wonder about this, oh, I wonder about that,"
0:04:02and it was always kind of distracting. So what I did is I went and got a,
0:04:06looked around for office space, and about a year ago I moved into an office just about a mile from
0:04:13my house, just normal regular office, and it was actually worked out pretty well. The office space
0:04:19itself I'll talk about it in a little bit but the thing that I found that was
0:04:23really great is now I would get up in the morning and take a shower which
0:04:29sometimes was a unique thing if you're still working from home you'll often
0:04:32find that suddenly your pajamas wear out far more quickly than they ever did
0:04:37before and what I would find is you know if I get a shower have breakfast kiss my
0:04:42wife goodbye say goodbye to my son and go to work and I was at work I knew that
0:04:48And if my wife needed me, she would call me.
0:04:51And if I didn't get a call, things were okay.
0:04:54Sometimes she'd have bad days, sometimes she'd have great days.
0:04:57But I was able to, when I was at work, to be at work.
0:05:00And I would leave everything about work at the office so that I would not feel compelled
0:05:06or tempted or in any way encouraged to do stuff.
0:05:11And so when I'm at home, it meant that I was at home.
0:05:13I remember talking to my wife a couple months after I started this and asking her, "Well,
0:05:19how's it going?
0:05:20What do you think this process is doing?"
0:05:23And she said, "What you liked is when I was at home, I really was at home.
0:05:28I was present, I can almost say, not just sort of in body, but also in mind and focus."
0:05:33And I think the exact opposite was also true when I was at the office.
0:05:37And that separation created a lot of, I think, reduced a lot of anxiety for me.
0:05:43I didn't feel guilty, like, "Oh, am I doing something wrong?"
0:05:46I was like, "No, I'm at the office.
0:05:47That's a normal, typical thing that people do."
0:05:51And when I was at home, I'm at home.
0:05:53So that was a huge plus for me.
0:05:56I think it was also nice to be able to set up my work environment just like how I like
0:06:01it, and nothing would disturb that.
0:06:03Because inevitably with a home office, things just kind of get moved around and just sort
0:06:09of your life takes over.
0:06:10Whereas it was much nicer at the office.
0:06:13Another benefit of having a separate office space is it made it much easier for me to
0:06:17be able to bring people in who are colleagues.
0:06:21I started a thing called Office Hours where once a week any local developer could come
0:06:26in and just hang out at the office and work.
0:06:29And it was kind of a nice thing.
0:06:30it to kind of that water cooler discussion, going out for lunch, kind of pulling a bit
0:06:34of that, what would you miss by working from home versus having a traditional office environment.
0:06:39You know, that was great.
0:06:41And then I've even moreover been able to establish more long-running relationships with people
0:06:46who come into the office on a regular basis.
0:06:49And we collaborate and we work together and we talk about what's going on.
0:06:56And that kind of sparks thoughts, sparks creativity.
0:07:00If I'm having stuck with something, I have someone to bounce that off.
0:07:03And it helps a lot with the isolation part of working from home, where if normally your
0:07:08only kind of interaction with the outside world is email, Twitter, maybe some campfire
0:07:12chats, some RSS readers, like it's very isolating that in some people say, oh, go to a coffee
0:07:19shop.
0:07:20I never found that because I mean, I'm around people, but I'm not talking to these people.
0:07:24I'm not interacting with them in a way that I would when I'm, you know, used to work in
0:07:27an office.
0:07:29And so that was a great sort of adjustment.
0:07:32The thing that was difficult with my first office, though, is that it was a bit bigger
0:07:36than I needed.
0:07:38And if you ever look for office space, it's kind of a complicated thing because you need--
0:07:44office space typically doesn't come in very small amounts of space if you're actually
0:07:49leasing it directly from a landlord.
0:07:51I think I had to lease 818 square feet of office space, which is quite a lot.
0:07:56And so the cost of it was a bit more than I really needed.
0:07:58I mean, the office itself was great.
0:08:00I mean, I could put up, I think at most we had like 12 people in there sometimes.
0:08:04And that's kind of cool, but I'm an independent developer, so I need 12 people in there very often.
0:08:10So recently I moved into a new office, and this is the inaugural podcast from that new office.
0:08:16I'm actually releasing an office through a company called Regis, which is kind of...
0:08:21they do these small micro office leases where, you know, I have this nice big suite,
0:08:25as a receptionist, a kitchen, all that kind of stuff. And I now have a room within that office
0:08:31suite. That's mine. And so far, so good. It's been working pretty well. No real complaints,
0:08:37but like I said, I've only been here for, let's see, about two hours now. But I mean,
0:08:42I definitely decided that after doing an office for the first, you know, for all of last year,
0:08:47it's like, this is what I need to continue to do. I thought about when my lease was up,
0:08:50oh, maybe I'll go home.
0:08:52And I did a little bit of that, but I
0:08:54missed being able to leave work at work.
0:08:57I missed being able to be at work when I'm at work.
0:09:03And it's kind of a subtle thing.
0:09:05It's a weird kind of a productivity,
0:09:09work-life balance kind of thing.
0:09:11But I would just encourage anybody
0:09:13who is struggling with that to try it out.
0:09:15I mean, a lot of these places let
0:09:17you do it on an ad hoc basis.
0:09:19You can even try it for, you know, like just rent it for a month for a couple hundred bucks
0:09:24and see if you feel like, see if you do better work, see if you work harder, see if you are
0:09:30able to focus more.
0:09:31Because I mean, if you're any kind of consultant, if it adds a couple of hours of productive
0:09:36work to your week, then it's more than paid for itself.
0:09:40So something to think about, something I'd encourage sort of other independents to think
0:09:44about.
0:09:45And it's, you know, I never really used to thought about it for the first couple of years.
0:09:50I never even thought of getting an office.
0:09:52I mean, I'm an Indian.
0:09:53It's me.
0:09:54It's just one person.
0:09:56But if your mindset or mentality or home life is anything like mine, it's definitely something
0:10:01that I would consider.
0:10:02So anyway, that's kind of the thoughts for today.
0:10:05Just kind of a short post today, but hope you enjoy it.
0:10:08Anyway, this is Developing Perspective.
0:10:10If you have any thoughts, comments, concerns, the best place to hit me up is on Twitter.
0:10:15I'm @_davidsmith.
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0:10:30It's developingperspective.com.
0:10:32And otherwise, have a great Thursday.
0:10:35And I will talk to you later.
0:10:37Bye.
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