It’s been a few weeks since I started working-from-home on a regular basis, so I thought tonight would be a good time to stop and think about how it is going.<\/p>\n
When my daughter<\/a> was born, my wife took a year off work to stay at home with her. For the second year, she started working part-time, so we started Grace at a local nursery Monday to Wednesday while my wife worked. After Grace turned two last month, my wife went back to work full-time. We didn’t feel the time was right for Grace to be in full-time childcare, so as an intermediate step I started working from home on Thursday and Fridays. <\/p>\n I was nervous about whether I’d get any work done with a two-year old in the house, and whether Grace would be able to cope without the level of attention that she gets in full-time childcare. But so far, it’s working. <\/p>\n To start with, a confession: I cheat. Grace is at her most energetic and demanding in the mornings – so she goes to nursery on Thursday and Friday mornings, and I go to the office. She can get the attention she needs, and I can show my face in the office and see anyone that I need to talk to face-to-face. <\/p>\n At lunchtime, I take her home. In the afternoons, she often has a nap. When she is awake, she can play with her toys on the floor by my desk – like her play kitchen or dolls, or sit at the table by desk and do drawings or paintings. She chats away while she does her thing, and I often ‘think out loud’ about whatever I’m working on. <\/p>\n In every hour, I aim to do 45 minutes work, then stop and give Grace undivided attention for 15 minutes – read a book to her or play with her. This way, I’m hoping that she wont get into the habit that making a fuss is the way to get attention – that I will spend time with her even if she plays quietly. (Not sure if my amateur-behavioural-psychology has any basis in fact, but it feels sensible!)<\/p>\n Grace seems happy with this so far. But a more interesting revelation to me is that I’ve been able to cope with it, too. I’m getting more done than I thought I would. I think there’s a few reasons for this.<\/p>\n Firstly, regular breaks<\/strong> – articles I’ve read on productivity often talk about limited attention spans, and that regular breaks where you shift activities are beneficial. Although I started the 45\/15 minute thing so Grace got enough attention, I think it helps me focus. It encourages me to break up work into more manageable chunks, with a ‘treat’ to look forward to afterwards. Left to my own devices, I often sit fighting with code for hours at a time! <\/p>\n Secondly, being able to think out loud<\/strong>. Not really an option in an open-plan office – but at home with only a two-year old who wont laugh at my stupid ideas, I’m free to talk myself through a problem. I actually end up explaining whatever bit of WebSphere MQ I’m working on to her – she might not understand a word I’m saying, but trying to describe it helps me clarify it in my own mind. Again, something that I started to make sure that Grace wasn’t sat in a lonely silence has helped me to be more productive. <\/p>\n Finally, there’s the usual cliches of being away from the usual office distractions – being away from the office does reduce interruptions.<\/p>\n So, it looks like we’ve got a system that works, for the time being at least. I heard a lot about IBM’s flexible working<\/a> when I was applying, and saw the sort of ‘case study’ about IBMers who tailor their job to suit their personal life<\/a> but as a Uni student with no commitments, it was all a bit abstract. Now that I need to do it myself, I appreciate it a lot more. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" It’s been a few weeks since I started working-from-home on a regular basis, so I thought tonight would be a good time to stop and think about how it is going. When my daughter was born, my wife took a year off work to stay at home with her. For the second year, she started […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-49","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ibm"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dalelane.co.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dalelane.co.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dalelane.co.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dalelane.co.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dalelane.co.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=49"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dalelane.co.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dalelane.co.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=49"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dalelane.co.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=49"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dalelane.co.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=49"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}