Recently things have changed, my partner had a little baby girl and we’ve moved. The house is bigger and I now have a room which I use almost exclusively as my office, which is a good thing because previously I’ve been working from a series of one bedroom flats and that just wouldn’t work now.

Headphones and a door that closes

I have both and think they’re infinitely important. My daughter is very young but between myself and Becca there is the policy that if the door is closed I’m busy. Unless someone is bleeding to death I don’t want to know- we treat the closed door much like we’d treat it if I was working in an office half an hours commute away, if it wouldn’t be important enough to call me away from work in the car, then it’s not important enough to call me away from work here.

Sometimes, even with the door closed there can be a fair bit of noise and things to distract me, I have a good pair of headphones which acoustically seal me off from the rest of the world.

Working Hours

I try to keep my working hours 9-5, just as I would with any job. Mostly because that’s when everyone else is working and if I need to talk to someone, or if they need to talk to me they’re most likely to try. I’m pretty flexible about it though and unless I need to deliver something I’ll sometimes take a few hours off during the day to do the dishes, go do the recycling (everyone else goes on the weekend, but it’s almost always quiet weekday mornings) or just spend some time with my daughter to give my partner a break. I make the time up evenings and weekends, but for the most part you’ll find me adhering to the same schedule as the rest of the world – I just get to stay in bed while the rest of you commute.

Works for me

Working from home works well for me, it takes discipline but to be honest it’s not as hard as some people would like to make you think. Also for those bosses out there that don’t trust staff to work from home – if you can’t trust them not to bunk off at home, you probably can’t trust them not to bunk off in the office either.

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