I am terrible at working at home. Really. It sounds nice, right? Pyjamas are accepted workwear, there’s tea and coffee on tap and there are no colleagues biting their nails, humming, grunting or doing any of the other things colleagues do. But, left to my own procrastinations and insanities, I am next to useless. Give me an office and its corresponding code of sane conduct any day. For me, working from home is a slow spiral into absurdity.
It starts off simply:
- When you get to the end of the page, you can make a cup of tea. Fair.
- After the first ten pages, you can make coffee. Ooh, kerr-azy!
- You can look at Twitter once every five pages.
- Potato goes in the oven at 11.30am, not before, and then you come back here and do another half hour while it bakes.
Gets sillier:
- Finish page 12, and you can put on Boombastic and dance around pretending to be Shaggy.
- No Irish Rover until page 15.
- Yes, you can take a five-minute break to pluck your eyebrows, seeing as it’s clearly urgent. But two more pages first.
- No Lambada until page 20.
- What’s that? You have a pressing urge to look up Delia’s gnocchi recipe? Well it’ll have to wait until page 23.
- Write a blog post about it all? Oh yes, excellent use of your time. Inspired, really.
Then slowly descends into madness:
- Freezing, are you? Well you’d better finish that document then. Because the heating’s not going on until you have. But finish that page and you can have a scarf.
- Period pains? Ha! A thousand small demons scratching at your womb with their claws of broken glass? Tough. You can’t have any more painkillers until you get to page 27. Oh, don’t give me that “I’d work better if I wasn’t in agony” crap.
- Dinner? Dinner? Ha, like you deserve dinner! WORK FOR IT THEN, SOLDIER. HUP! There’s nothing like a bit of low blood sugar-induced trembling to help you get a wiggle on.
As I write, I am wearing fleece polka-dot trousers (tucked into my socks) with, for reasons I’m not entirely sure of, a woollen skirt over the top. Then, a stripy jumper, an aqua dressing gown over that, and – for the pièce de résistance – I have used the dressing gown belt to strap a hot-water bottle to my belly. The glamour of the overall look is quite simply astounding.
On the plus side, there’s the view from my desk.
I feel your pain (not the period ones though)
My solutions:
1] Get too much work in. Then you are ALWAYS on deadline and cannot stop working for a MINUTE or your working reputation will be in SHREDS.
2] Get a dog. Her routine is my routine, and I have to fit in work around her. This is an excellent technique for self-discipline.
3] Turn off Tweetdeck (insert own favourite distraction here).
4] Work in a less-than comfortable and homely room. My kitchen is kind of meh, so I work fine there. My sofa is kind of nice, so I doze off, surf the web, or turn on the TV.
Comment by Freelance Unbound — December 15, 2011 @ 11:49 am |
Excellent! When I was freelancing my self-bribe was that I was “allowed” to watch Buffy and Angel repeats on the Sci-Fi channel mid-afternoon if I worked all morning without distraction. It was harsh but it worked!
Comment by Aidan Fortune — December 15, 2011 @ 11:53 am |
hah! yes, I generally wear my leopard print leggings when I’m working from home. I’m a 27 yo straight man. wierd isn’t it?
Comment by Tim — December 15, 2011 @ 10:51 pm |
Loving the tactics! My kitchen is my lounge is my study, so there’s not a lot of choice of rooms – or, for that matter, space for a dog. Lack of TV cuts down on the Buffy possibilities. So I’m left with turning off Tweetdeck, and wearing leopardprint leggings. I can do that. Bet I can still procrastinate at the same time, though.
Comment by substuff — December 16, 2011 @ 10:20 am |
When I was starting out as a freelancer, I emptied a walk-in wardrobe by the front door of the flat, put in a tiny Ikea table and borrowed a chair from the kitchen. I then had a new phone line put in and installed a PC, Mac, printer and (ha ha) modem. It got pretty warm in there quickly. During the summer, wearing clothing could be oppressive, and I would save up my most important calls for those days when I’d be sitting in my little office stark bollock naked. But then there was that time when my wife had unexpectedly invited her friends round for tea… Ah, the stuff of sitcoms.
Comment by Alistair Dabbs — December 20, 2011 @ 4:35 pm |
This is halarious! Well done.
Comment by Stephen Humphries — January 7, 2012 @ 12:56 am |