I’m 20 days into roobasoft 2.0 and am already adjusting things as needed. The first major adjustment is switching from the co-working space I was using to a shared private office at a different location.

There was one major show stopper for the shared space: I wasn’t able to keep an external monitor, power supply, external hard drive, keyboard, mouse, etc at the office. Of course, I knew this when I signed up, but I underestimated how much I’d miss that.

As soon as I realized it wasn’t going to work out I hit craigslist. Within a week I found a potential alternative. It’s a similar style setup to where I was, but the new place will rent out 1/3 of a private office and provide a dedicated desk and all. I signed up for that and am giving that a go. The other 2/3rds of the office aren’t yet occupied, so there’s a concern with that unknown, but it seemed worth the risk.

Unexpected benefits

When planning to move out to an office, I really wasn’t looking forward to having to get in a car and drive daily. For my first year working at home (2006) my wife and I shared one vehicle, I just never went anywhere. Well, turns out the 15-20 minute commute is a hidden gem. Why? Forced detachment from whatever I’ve been working on. I didn’t really notice it at the time, but when working a full day at home, whenever I would come out to hang with the family, I was constantly thinking about what I was working on. I could have been working on nothing, but I still felt like I was in the middle of something and would always wander back to my office to check on things. It’s stupid and it sucked.

Now by the time I get home I’ve had 15-20 minutes of fully disconnected time to let me brain rest and I know I wasn’t in the middle of anything important. Not only that, but there’s a barrier to reentry. I have to take my laptop out of my bag. This sounds like a small barrier, but it’s enough to make sure I don’t open my laptop until I have a purpose and some time for that purpose. It also works well for me to just get out of my car and move right into any necessary yard work. That’s a much easier transition than having to get out of your pajamas at 4pm because the lawn needs mowing.

Of course all of that is mental and I could have fixed it with some solid discipline. I guess the point is I didn’t even see the situation clearly until I was working outside of the home regularly. Also, I lack solid discipline.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, May 20th, 2009 at 8:07 am and is filed under Personal, roobasoft, roobasoft 2.0. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.