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Going to an industry conference is another good opportunity for team bonding. You’ll learn something new together, and you usually have the evenings free to socialize.
But as with much of intuitive knowledge, this too is simply wrong. From the operating system Linux to the MySQL database to the PHP language to Ruby on Rails, open source has spanked such behemoth commercial competitors as Microsoft, Oracle, and others.
It’s everyone’s job to be on the lookout for coworkers who are overworking themselves, but ultimately the responsibility lies with the managers and business owners to set the tone.
Face-to-face conversations, and their first cousin, the meeting, can be great. When there’s a complicated matter to discuss, one requiring a lot of interaction to sort through, few things beat a face-to-face meeting.
Working from home offers you far greater freedom and flexibility.
If you don’t have to be anywhere at a certain time, you can easily end up lying in bed until close to noon, just casually working away on the laptop.
Or you can let work drift into that evening you’re supposed to share with your spouse and kids. “Daaad, why aren’t you watching the show with us?”
Finally, you can use the layout of your house as a switch. Make sure that real work only happens when you’re in your dedicated home office. No checking work email or just getting a little more done in the living room or your bedroom.
Flexibility is your friend here. Remote isn’t binary. It’s not here or there, this or that.
A more plausible, human strategy is to separate the two completely by using different devices: simply reserve one computer for work and another for fun.
Getting away from the office is great for your productivity because nobody can disturb you in person.
It sounds counterintuitive, but the presence of other people, even if you don’t know them, can fool your mind into thinking that being productive is the only proper thing to do.
Motivation is the fuel of intellectual work. You can get several days’ worth of work completed in one motivation-turboed afternoon. Or, when you’re motivation starved, you can waste a week getting a day’s worth of work done.
Motivation is pivotal to healthy lives and healthy companies. Make sure you’re minding it.
Creative work that can be done remotely generally only requires a computer and an Internet connection.
The computer you can bring with you, and nearly anywhere in the world you’ll be hard-pressed not to find an Internet connection.
The nomadic lifestyle can be cheaper than you think too.
Having family close and available is a good way to counterbalance the loss of daily in-person contact with coworkers.
There is a wealth of options available to anyone looking for an office away from the office. The simplest, as we discuss in “Working alone in a crowd,” is to use cafés. Plenty of people work full-time from an array of coffee shops.
Finally, you can simply rent a plain-vanilla single suite in an office building somewhere.
There are two fundamental ways not to be ignored at work. One is to make noise. The other is to make progress, to do exceptional work. Fortunately for remote workers, “the work” is the measure that matters.
Between now and the remote work–dominated future, the debate is likely to get more intense and the battle lines more sharply drawn.
