Starting Out Adventure

One of the biggest hurdles that I had to overcome when I started working at home, was how to manage my time. With the noticeable lack of authority figures looking over my shoulder, and no network restrictions, you can imagine just how much time a person can spend just browsing the web. Then add to that the blossoming needs of a (at the time) 1 year old daughter. Then you can just sit back and watch those deadlines fly away (as well as your livelihood).

I must admit, at first I had fallen into the trap of thinking, "I'm working from home! I'll have tons of time to take on other projects and hobbies." That mindset didn't last long.

I had pretty much jumped, without a break, from my old company into my new lifestyle. That wasn't without it's bumps though. As the sole employee tasked with everything web-based in my old company, there wasn't really anyone who could readily take over my responsibilities. Even if we were able to hire someone new, just getting them familiar with the system would have taken longer than I had left with the company.

Being the nice guy that I am, I worked out an arrangement with my boss. I'd stay on retainer for a reasonable amount of time after I leave. Since they're a US company, I could commit my evening hours to their projects. I naively volunteered to set aside 20 hours a week for them for the first month. By the second week, I was about ready to hook myself up to a caffeine drip.

The following month saw a decrease in the number of hours, but even then, my performance suffered. We finally settled on my billing them for whatever hours I spend working on their projects, instead of just being paid for a set number of hours. Around that time, they had also hired someone local to do part time work.

The moral of that little adventure is, just because you have a stay-at-home gig, doesn't mean you'll have all the time in the world as you might think you would. Sure you'll probably lose the time wasted in the morning and evening commutes, but in my case, that was replaced by my daughter's morning rituals and other household chores. It's as time-consuming and draining as a regular 9-5 office job. There are undeniable perks (working in shirts and shorts in the middle of summer for instance), but bottom-line, it's still a job and you have to deliver.

Since then, to help me keep focused, I've taken to keeping near office-like hours when I work. There are days when I end up being almost completely free, and there are days when I'd be completely involved with work. But either way, keeping a schedule helps not only myself, but also my teammates in other locations.

An average day would have me up by around 7 AM. Breakfast and seeing to my daughter's needs should be done by 8:30 or so. Around that time, I'd be logging in to check work e-mail and see what the objectives for the day would be. Depending on the project, around 10am, I'd be in an online conference with my colleagues to give updates on whatever I'm working on. Lunch is pretty much always a full hour. After the dishes are kept, work is a marathon til 5, 6 pm, or until I hit my targets, after which, I start logging out and turning my servers off.

Tools @ Home

Now I know I promised more of an introduction for this post. Insipration took me down a different route however. :)

One of the things I need to keep in mind since I work from home, is that I have to be a little more organized with my planning and scheduling that I would normally be if I were in an office environment. One consideration is that in an office, I'd pretty much have an unlimited supply of post-it notes, pencils, notebooks, and other stuff* that would make my daily organization tasks much easier.

*yes, even if I am in IT, I am still old school when it comes to my organizational skills. Pen and paper are never too far away when I work.

Working from home kinda limits my resources in the office supply department. Another challenge that faced me was that I'd have to coordinate and work with people that I'd only be meeting in an online setting most of the time. So to face these challenges, I've come to rely on the following set of tools to help me through my day-to-day activities.

Chat Clients

Most basic, but also, one of my most important tools. I mostly use Yahoo Messenger and Skype to chat and touch base with my colleagues at work.

Time Management

1DayLater - Early on in my career as a work from home person (from here on in called a localhoster^tm), I still had to finish off some work from my previous employer. Since I was no longer a regular employee, I had to bill them for the time I spent on their projects. That's when I discovered 1DayLater. It's evolved a bit since I first started using it, but the basic tools are there. A timer that lets you be as accurate as you need to be, mapping and graphs to give you a visual idea how much time you're actually spending on a project, and, though you have to pay for it, tools for billing.

The free version is more than enough for my needs.

Document Management

Google Docs and Open Office - One of the biggest losses I had when I left my previous job was that I no longer had a working copy of Microsoft Office. Say what you want about MS, but the Office tools are pretty much a standard. My initial solution was to turn to Google Docs. Aside from keeping my local hard drive free of work documents, Google Docs also had the advantage of facilating document sharing between my colleagues and myself.

Pretty soon however, I had to succumb and admit to myself that i needed an offline document suite, and that's when I turned to OpenOffice.org. So far, it's been able to handle all the MS Office documents that I've received and it hasn't really given me any headaches. My one complaint is that it still can't handle Visio files. :p

Project Management

BasecampHQ - This one was set-up by the office. It's enabled a handful of us developers to coordinate and work with our project managers and superiors and keeps a nice time log of our activites.

GitHub - Another tool selected by the office. I'd been using the basic git tool with our senior dev for the past year. Recently, the company adopted git as a whole to facilitate code sharing. All I can say is, this would have made my life so much easier in my old companies. Sigh.

That wraps it up for me for now. Those are the top aids that I use daily. There probably are better alternatives out there, but so far, these haven't failed me yet. I've rarely touched a pen and paper to help organize my work since I started using these. :) That says something about how useful they are.