After a few weeks of working from home I’m wondering why I didn’t consider it years ago. I’m fortunate to work for a company where pretty much everyone works from home, so we’re all operating in the same environment, and I’m fortunate to be working with a fun bunch of people. Most of my observations from the previous working from home post still hold, this post reiterates them.

Without the usual office distractions it pretty rapidly becomes obvious when I’m doing something silly, and I can observe my lapses of concentration and discipline knowing that they are not caused by other people. That lets me see that when I use the Pomodoro technique consistently I do get more done; and I am getting a feel for situations where less structured time is more productive.

I make a conscious effort to keep up human contact, Skype-ing the team in the morning to do a virtual “stand-up” meeting, staying in a “conversation” Skype chat, and finding an excuse to get out of the house most days – maybe to do some errand to the local shops at lunch time – so that I don’t feel isolated. Skype, openssh, tmux for sharing terminal sessions are tools I find useful for socializing and collaborating.

I’m trying to move all the work-related stuff I used to keep in notebooks into on-line tools, so that the information’s available everywhere. The only use for paper is for personal information, diaries, journals and the like which I want to protect from the insidious nosiness of pernicious and pervasive organizations like Google. The tools I’m currently using are:

• Dayone for journalling, using Dropbox to store the data. It is more useful that I though it would be because it is searchable. This makes me try and put good keyword in entries to make them easier to find later. The tool’s simplicity is wonderful.
• Workflowy for planning – I’m still in the early stages of figuring this out.
• Pomodoro for structureing time – this I find especially useful because its Skype integration means that the useful/annoying Skype alerts are turned off for a work session.

Now I need to work on my self discipline…

Now I’m a couple of weeks into working from home for Whamcloud, having spent three weeks in Bristol getting to know my other team member. I find it interesting to work from home for such a distributed company, after thirty years of being an office-dweller who enjoyed the social aspect of working (sometimes more than the work itself.)

My commute these days is up a couple of flights of stairs and then up a spiral staircase, so my coffee runs should give me some reasonable exercise! At the moment the attic, my new office, is pleasantly warm. It will be interesting to see what it is like in the summer and winter.

The main tools I use at the moment are: Skype to keep in touch with my coworkers, vim to write code for a Ruby on Rails application, a pomodoro app to structure my time, the Day One app to keep notes (and have them available on my personal laptop and phone via Dropbox), and tmux and ssh to do remote code reviews and pairing. I’m trying to keep paper and other clutter to a minimum.

The most interesting discovery was how well the pomodoro app and Skype work together. The app’s Skype integration means that during my working sessions all the Skype notification noises are off, and I get to concentrate on the work. In the interstitial five minute periods the pops remind me there is life out there and I can socialize a bit. During my pomodoros my Skype mood message is set to what I’m doing (either text or a Jira bug number), so people can see what I’m up to.

At lunch times I make an effort to get out of the house, to run an errand or just go for a walk. It’s interesting to see what goes on in the neighbourhood during the day.

So far, so good. I’m getting lots of work done and I get to see more of my wife!