Work From Home - Switch Conference 2011

hi, I
WORK AT
HOME
my name is Zé. I have no clue.

terça-feira, 19 de Abril de 2011

Hi and welcome to this talk on working at home.

My name is Zé, I work at home and have been for the last 7 years. Chances are that many of you in this room also
work from home or will probably do so in the near future.

So, what qualifies me to talk on working at home? Am I a specialist on ergonomics? on business workflows? on
diets? on physical exercise? On anything, really?

I am none of those, nor am I an expert at much of anything. What I am is someone who has made every imaginable
mistake there is to be made and who has learned the hard way how to be more productive once I had to work in
less formal work environments.

I work for a company called Automattic, better known for a little piece of software that you may have heard of,
called WordPress. In this company of nearly 80 people, everyone works at home, all over the world, and no two
people work the same way.

In that spirit, I’ll divide this presentation in two:

- First, I’ll talk about that which I have learned from others, either from reading about it or from talking to other
people. It’s the part about the basics.

- After that, I’ll talk about those parts nobody ever told me about, and that apply to my specific experience.

the
BASICS
self-help books are for sissies


Ok, let’s talk about the basics, as a reminder

the
ZONE
where the magic happens. and it smells of lavender.


Deﬁne your workspace, separate from your living-space. Ideally it’s an area physically separate from the rest of
your house, or at least where clear boundaries are visible. You should have speciﬁc place to work, one to live,
another to live, and so on.

If none are visible, create them. Use a bookshelf, curtains, anything. You don’t have to become invisible to the rest
of the house, just make the boundaries clear.

For me, it’s also crucial to have a clean and organized house (and that smells good :) ). It has to made be clear, for
you and those who live with you or visit, that there is a separation between working and living.

gear
PR0N
you don’t need half of all that crap


Treat yourself to the top of the line gear. For me that means the best laptop, external monitor, keyboard, mouse
and internet connection my cash will allow.

Change it when it ages, which means, for the previous example, at least every two years or so. All the rest is ﬂuff.
Yes, your iPad, and your iPhone, and obviously your Xbox and your TV.

You may need them for other things, but I doubt that it’s work. And no, Angry Birds does not count as work.
Backing up your work does, however. Don’t forget that external drive.

routine
ROUTINE
apply, rinse, repeat


I need a routine. Something that after a time of being forced and conscious, will simply become what I do without
thinking. I have a time for breakfast, for working, for eating, for being with my family, for doing nothing and for
many other things.

I don’t always respect the routine, it’s true, but at least I have found that it is what I return to naturally. The rest
are very clear exceptions, from which I am usually in a rush to end.

I could go on and make a whole separate point about distractions like Facebook or Twitter, but the point is moot if
you speciﬁcally include distraction-only time in that routine. Plus I’m sure you all know what distractions are...

co
WORK
annoy your friends. repeatedly.


Also cowork if you can. Either go to some friend’s place or invite him over. I am lucky enough that a good friend
of mine works in the same company and hence in much the same way as I do, and we try to work in the same
space whenever we can. Recently we have been nagging everyone we know to work at their offices or spaces
whenever we can. Some of my best work is done this way because the temptation to distract yourself is minimal.

In the same spirit, socialize. Talk to human beings who are not online. Go out for drinks once in a while, talk to
the waiter at the café, invite friends over. Better yet, maneuver your friends into inviting you. This, by the way,
should be part of the routine mentioned above.

MOVE
walking that jungle in Call of Duty? doesn’t count.


This one was the hard for me: move. I’m not saying to necessarily spend hours on end at the gym (although that’s
probably a good thing) but at least walk for half an hour, outside, especially when it’s sunny.

It’s been said that the best ideas come to you at the speed of walking, but it’ll also do wonders for your breathing,
for your digestion and for most of your body. The whole internet will still be there when you come back, trust me.

remember
FOOD?
it’s like... fuel for your body, man.


I try not to eat lunch at home, if I can. Yes, even if you have a family. This can mean going to some restaurant, or
simply going to a park or similar with food you take from home.

Trust me, long before you go crazy from seeing your family/roommate/partner/dog or whatever the whole day,
they’ll go crazy from seeing you sitting at your desk. It’ll make communal dinner all the more enjoyable.

all the other
LIFE
HACKS let me google that for you


Those are obviously only some of the practical aspects of working at home. I’m sure a lot more can be said,
especially in what concerns the millions of “life hacks” everyone develops with time.

I’m more than happy to discuss mine either during questions time or else just grab me if you see me pass by.
Much more important to me are those aspects of working at home that nobody told me about and that to this day
surprise me when I listen friends who are just starting.

a life of
LEISURE
talk to the hand


Two of the most common things I hear when someone asks me what I do, are first of all “Ah, right…” where you
can literally see that what they’re thinking is “Poor guy. That’s not really working. He probably hangs around in
pajamas all day, playing Modern Warfare and eating bowls of cereal”. The other, completely opposite, is “You’re
soooo lucky. You get to choose when you work”.

They used to puzzle me and drag me down. They are equally dangerous if you’re the kind of person for whom this
is important. Either to defend what you do in the first case, or to become all proud and smug in the second case. I
know I was that person.

I felt a need to either correct the first statement or to gloat about the second. The sad news is that I never got
anywhere. Nobody ever changed opinions because of anything I could say. So, I stopped saying things and
focused on this very simple fact: crucial is only that I know what I do. No amount of explaining is going to make
me do it better. My advice? Politely ignore. Change subjects. Talk to someone else. About something else.

don’t plan it
BE IT
from the day it was born, it was trouble


During the first months of working alone, and especially because I was my own boss, I felt the need to reassure
myself with plans and more plans for the next semester, the next year, the next five years.

You know what? Cool down. Right now, you might be exploring the idea that will revolutionize the way the world
works. It’s unlikely, but hey, it’s possible. However, and to state the obvious, every journey starts with the first
step. Every day. Focus on what you need to do this week, today, this minute. Don’t waste your time planning for a
future you cannot predict or anticipate. Make that code work today.

I have a friend, who is a scholar of ancient greek dialects, who claims that the original etymology of the word
“future” in greek is “that which is behind us”. This gives a whole knew perspective to our standard view of us
walking forward towards the future. We’re walking forward, alright, but the only thing we can actually see is
actually, well, the past. Relax.

staplers &
THINGS
I’ll have my people call your people


This next one took me a while to understand.

I had convinced myself that in order to be “working”, I needed “working accessories” around me, like those office
supplies you’d see on a “serious” desk. Staplers, Post-it blocks, paper clips, folders, you know what I’m taking
about. But ﬁnally, I had a revelation:

- That stuff is mostly decoration, in reality you don’t use most of it. I, for one, used none of it. Except of course
when…
- Indulging in this “office atmosphere” lead me down a very dangerous path. Soon you will move to “needing” all
kinds of business-y equipment, but most of all processes and routines that will justify all that junk.

So, I got used to throwing or putting things away, regularly. I remembered that I am a person who has lived at
more than 40 different addresses to this day, and that throwing stuff away was something I was good at.

36 hours on
COFFEE!
someone give me a medal already


I also worked, for many years, through whole nights, the famous “directa” in Portuguese. And I was kind of proud
of it. Sometimes I even bragged about it. And be honest, aren’t you actually proud of it most of the time? Of
making that deadline? Of rewriting the code in a 36 hour marathon? Don’t you feel like giving yourself a medal
sometimes? Doesn’t going to bed after a marathon like that fell extra-special?

If it does, you need to look at yourself in the mirror, and repeat after me:

“I am an idiot”


“I am an idiot”.

It’s not a sprint, it’s long-distance. Maybe you feel you absolutely have to make that deadline. Maybe you get
pulled by those lines of code singing at you in their siren voices (“come to me, come to me”). Trust me, the world
is not going to end because you go to bed. The world around you, your family, your friends, even your body will
only put up with so much of it, and if you keep on doing it you will inevitably find that they are gone.

The trick is knowing this beforehand. The trick is, in your head, to exclude time to rest as time available for work.
It goes back to the beginning of this talk: plan for a day, a few days at most. Define and respect your routine.
Otherwise, pulling all-nighters is what the routine will become. And you’ll find yourself being the only one pulling
them.

the lessons of
FAILURE
#fails are not #winning


And ﬁnally, I can hear some of you thinking, “oh, so one must learn from one’s and other’s mistakes”. How often
have we heard that “you should fail often and gloriously”? All the time, right?

Let me set the tone straight of the bat. Bullshit. (I’m older than most of you, I’m allowed to say these things)

The only thing I’ve learned from my mistakes, is that what you should pay very close attention to, are not the
mistakes, but rather your successes. In other words, learning from “wins” is incredibly richer in information than
learning from “fails”.

I’m not saying that learning from mistakes is not important, I’m just saying that it is an horribly overrated meme.
When you do something right, you know that it worked and you can do it again, and who knows, even better.
There is nothing wrong in cultivating failure, as long as there is a quest for success. What we seem do to these
days however, is cultivate failure as statistic, like a 4square badge.

KTHXBYE
@zedejose
bit.ly/TheDryMartini


Thank you!

Work From Home - Switch Conference 2011

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