Many freelancers are starting to invest substantial amounts of money in setting up remote offices at home. This involves buying and installing the necessary equipment and allocating the space, in order to facilitate comfortable, yet productive working conditions. This is proving to be a popular working environment, as freelancers are saving time on the commute, costs on travel—but more importantly—the alleviated grind in hustle and bustle of the unforgiving underground, being ever attractive.
The down side to this is always going to be lack of face-2-face contact, the experience of a new environment and culture, and in-situ learning (some of which cannot be recreated in an isolated environment from ones home).
Many people work remotely for years without any issues or problems, but I have noticed working offsite can lead to a back log of multiple jobs and client requests, occasionally leading to one job being compromised over another (never a good thing). If you have too much on your plate, you should get into the good habit of saying ‘no’ to more jobs.
Here are my key findings to working offsite:
• Set your station up on a table or desk, rather than be slumped on the sofa with your laptop in hand.
• Turn the TV off. The drone of humdrum daytime TV in the background can be distracting (or if you’re like me, it will drive you mad).
• Remember to allocate time away from your desk as you would in an office i.e. an hour for lunch for and two 15 min breaks (this can be especially valuable when looking after children at home).
• Get some clothes on – the dressing gown just won’t get you in the right frame of mind.
• Make sure you are in a location where you can make and receive calls or Skype.
• If working on more than one job, be fair and allocate 100% of your time to each job – it’s never going to be right for you to give anything less than 100% to your any of your clients / projects.
• Don’t risk the internet café. It’s a fast connection, but you don’t want to be making conference calls with a group of teenagers playing Quake team death match next to you. Also, if any of your work is of a sensitive nature, don’t run the risk of hackers catching sight of it.
The down side to this is always going to be lack of face-2-face contact, the experience of a new environment and culture, and in-situ learning (some of which cannot be recreated in an isolated environment from ones home).
Many people work remotely for years without any issues or problems, but I have noticed working offsite can lead to a back log of multiple jobs and client requests, occasionally leading to one job being compromised over another (never a good thing). If you have too much on your plate, you should get into the good habit of saying ‘no’ to more jobs.
Here are my key findings to working offsite:
• Set your station up on a table or desk, rather than be slumped on the sofa with your laptop in hand.
• Turn the TV off. The drone of humdrum daytime TV in the background can be distracting (or if you’re like me, it will drive you mad).
• Remember to allocate time away from your desk as you would in an office i.e. an hour for lunch for and two 15 min breaks (this can be especially valuable when looking after children at home).
• Get some clothes on – the dressing gown just won’t get you in the right frame of mind.
• Make sure you are in a location where you can make and receive calls or Skype.
• If working on more than one job, be fair and allocate 100% of your time to each job – it’s never going to be right for you to give anything less than 100% to your any of your clients / projects.
• Don’t risk the internet café. It’s a fast connection, but you don’t want to be making conference calls with a group of teenagers playing Quake team death match next to you. Also, if any of your work is of a sensitive nature, don’t run the risk of hackers catching sight of it.
Ultimately it is up to you – good luck!
I was just accidentally reading your blog and this article got my attention .
ReplyDeleteAbsolutely agree on everything you say here!
I would also recommend having some nicely made coffee and also the brain needs 'sugar' it's a good relationship between those 2. The brain needs a steady supply of energy that will last until more energy comes along.
Obviously there is 'good' and 'bad' kind of sugar, so better have some fruit rather than refined sugars. Hope this helps :)
I read your post with interest and believe the subject is particularly noteworthy at a time when many professionals are working from home to avoid the anticipated gridlock caused by the Olympics. I agree with much of what you say although it's not only freelancers who can benefit from working remotely. It is certainly true that there are conversations that you need to conduct in person, particularly when it concerns creative direction as the information that forms the essence of a brief is quite often subtle and sometimes it's the things that are not said that inform you as a designer. There are nuances in such an exchange that are lost in an email or text document for sure. Skype is good but if you've never met the correspondent before you still need a shakedown before you truly start to communicate. A lot of the common sense recommendations that you make should be instinctive to seasoned freelancers but are worth setting out for those embarking on a remote project for the first time.
ReplyDeleteThe benefit to the client is that they don't have to provide a desk and a workstation and you're already set up with access to the internet as well as a scanner and printer if you take your business seriously. I've also noticed an increase in the number of clients who now expect freelancers to provide both the hardware and the software to embark on a project even when they're onsite. As you point out there is an obvious expense to doing this and that outlay is not reflected in the rate that the client is prepared to pay. Their position might well be that you were given the work partly because you were able to provide those resources whilst another freelancer was not but it's not a sustainable strategy during a recession.
An issue that I think is a particular problem in the UK is that of trust - clients start out from the position that you will not work as hard as you would if someone was looking over your shoulder when, in fact, the opposite is more likely. If a client is only prepared to pay a freelancer an hourly rate they must accept that he or she might not be able to respond to fresh instructions until they have concluded other work. If they commit to a daily rate then they should provide the freelancer with a day's work - I don't see why project managers cannot monitor and manage workflows as successfully offsite as they do on. Ultimately, clients will attract the kind of service that they deserve - if their budgets are too low, if they expect contractors to work unreasonable hours and if they under-resource a project they will struggle to hold on to the talent in the long term.
Thanks for all the posts and feedback. Keep em coming!
ReplyDelete