Change of scenery can stimulate creativity | Apr 21st 2007
By Jacqueline Dooley
As a self-employed person I am breaking lots of rules by working outside of the normal 9-5 office environment. I can think of a few key things right off the bat that feel deliciously rebellious right now. These include working in jeans, working from home, making personal phone calls and getting started later than 9 a.m.
The flip side of this is I’m completely on my own and require a large amount of self-discipline and direction, which is often challenging. There can also be complications outside the office that creep up unexpectedly and it’s up to me to figure out how to overcome them. For example, yesterday I was feverishly working on two deadlines when I lost my Internet connection at about 1:30 pm.
I had only started working at noon because I’d taken my kids to the dentist, then had to drop them both off at school, which required some sophisticated navigation due to all the flooding-related detours.
Luckily my sister-in-law lives in New Paltz and her house is always empty during the day. They rarely lose power or Internet. So I drove the 10 minutes to get there and was able to complete my work (for the most part). In truth, I surprised myself by my own productivity. Even though I wasn’t working from a “traditional” office, I was able to concentrate without the temptation of multiple distractions.
Office has distractions
I called my sister-in-law to thank her for letting me work at her house and she agreed she gets a lot more accomplished when she works from home. There are lots of distractions at her office so it’s difficult to focus. She’s even going to set up an office in her basement so she can work from home occasionally. I wonder if she will find once the newness of working from home wears off, it can still be difficult to avoid distractions.
To that end, I wonder if taking yourself out of whatever work environment you’re used to can actually help with productivity. I used to think working from home 100 percent of the time was the best way for me to get my work done, but now that I’m living that dream, I’m beginning to yearn for a place to go outside of my house - at least once in a while.
I’ve lived the other extreme for many years and I know working 100 percent outside my home is also not what I want. If I do that, I’ll begin to resent the commute, the time away from my kids and the drudgery of being in the same cubicle day after day.
It all comes down to the fact that rules are made to be broken. Since (for me) a key rule of self-employment is I get to work from home, it stands to reason breaking that rule and going to work somewhere (anywhere) else can actually help me stay focused and break me out of a rut. This was certainly the case yesterday when I found myself working at someone else’s quiet house, on a nice country road where my own home-based distractions and chores couldn’t steal my focus away from work.
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This article was published in the Poughkeepsie Journal on Saturday, April 21st, 2007.