creative briefing

After challenging tradition and working at home for the past 6 months, I’ve gathered a great deal of new perspectives. I’ve learned a lot about myself and what I want to do with my life. I’ve learned that being your own boss is a dream come true. I’ve also learned that there can be bitter elements to even the sweetest treats. But more importantly, I’ve learned a lot about how to make the best out of this spectacular experience.

When I wrote about the downsides of working at home (which you should read before reading this), I was amazed at the responses from everyone that shared the same sentiments. Clearly, we’ve all had a taste of a good thing going bad when served in bulk. What really hit me was that, while everybody had their own version of their rants, the majority still whole-heartedly enjoyed working at home. Good - there is hope after all!

The key to livening up the work-at-home lifestyle is to minimize the things that can turn the experience sour, and to take advantage of all the new opportunities that the cube life just doesn’t offer. I’ve combined a few things that I’ve learned to do over the last 6 months and the responses that some of you offered to put together a list of 13 ways to liven up your work-at-home routine. I hope you enjoy it!

Read the rest of this entry >

In the last 6 months, I’ve grown a new appreciation for office politics, 9-5’s, dress codes, and bad managers - at least to the extent that none of them apply to me. I have to admit, there is a pinch of joy in boasting about the flexible and autonomous lifestyle that has come with the entrepreneurial path I’ve chosen to follow. But like everything in this world, working from home has its downsides.

Here’s a list of caveats that I’ve come to discover and that you should expect to encounter if you’ve chosen to lead the work-at-home life as well.

1. You’re always at home

This may seem like an obvious observation but trust me, it’ll hit you after your first week of working at home. Consider this: your buddies wake up in the morning, get dressed, take a drive, get to the office, have some lunch, get back on the road, and then return home. Meanwhile, you’ve been there the whole time. This may seem like a sweet deal at first, but you may find yourself growing a bit tired of the environment - you are, after all, there 24/7.

No matter how great of a work environment you’ve set up for yourself, a static environment can sometimes suck the life out of you. This pain point hits home the hardest at the end of the day when you’re simply dying to get out. The problem is, your buddies are all relieved to finally be back home and don’t have the energy to head out to the bar with you. Suddenly a drive out to the gas station is a major treat.

2. You’re always at work

The opposite and often eviler side of the coin. From the moment you wake up to the moment you hit the sack, you’re at work. When you literally live at work, it makes it nearly impossible to ever escape it. Add on to it the fact that you’re a workaholic anyway, then you’ll find yourself doing a lot of overtime.

I vaguely remember the comfort of leaving the office and returning home to my personal computer and simply browsing the internet liesurely or chatting the night away on IM. Now when I’m bored, I make websites. Or I organize my finances. Or I work on some other projects. The truth is, there is always an infinite amount of things to do, and without being able to physically detach yourself from them, you’ll just keep on working. You never quite leave the office, so you never quite know when to call it quits. Great for productivity, crappy for your spirit.

3. Is anybody there?

The answer is no. Well, your mother could be home. As could your budgy named Snowy. But they’re not the people you were looking for or the people you may find you miss the most after working at home for some time. Who you’re looking for are the guys by the watercooler, the colleagues you pass in the hallways, the people you see in the cafeteria, and even the receptionist at the front desk. And unless your mother follows Lost as religiously as you do (or even if she does), you tend to miss out a bit on the personal interaction and comaraderie that comes with an office job.

4. Self-control sold separately

My guitar is always within arm’s reach. I have a collection of How I Met Your Mother, Grey’s Anatomy, and Lost episodes ready to be enjoyed. TVtropolis has made daytime television worth watching again (hoorah for reruns of classic sitcoms).

These are but a few distractions that make working from home slightly difficult sometimes. It can often be like working at a toy store (let’s ignore my action figures and pretend this is just a metaphor) - when you’re surrounded by toys, you can’t help but play with them a little. Counter-productive? Yes. But with nobody breathing down your neck, it makes it morally easy to write it off.

5. “While you’re home, can you…”

This winter, Toronto has seen 3 big snow falls already. What’s become apparent from this is that working from home does not exempt me from shoveling the snow. It also doesn’t excuse me from doing laundry, cleaning, or occasional drives out to the grocery store.

While not being able to escape household responsibilities is more likely a result of living with your parents, it is certainly magnified when you work from home. This can have a toll on your work, even if it means just taking a moment to explain that you’ll do it after you’re done work. If your parents are like mine, you’ll have to explain it again in 5 minutes. Then again, you probably don’t live with your parents.

Don’t get me wrong, I love working at home!

From this post alone, working at home probably seems like a torturous, painful, and tiresome form of entrepreneurial hell. To be honest, it can be sometimes. But these feelings are far and few in between, and there are definitely easy remedies to cure some of these blues. I just wanted to give those considering the work-at-home lifestyle the heads up that it’s not all fun and games (or that sometimes it is, and that’s not good either).

My next post will focus on how to fend off these downers and make the most of your freedom from the corporate world. Stay tuned!

Update!
Read the follow-up: 13 ways to liven up your work-at-home routine

Once upon a time in July, I had the ambitious dream to convert the room that I had lived in for more than 10 years and had never renovated into a legendary home office (yes, legendary). It took a whole 3 months to get off my ass and make my way down to IKEA to pick out some furniture. Then it took another 2 months (that’s 5 months in total now) to actually start the renovation process and build that furniture. See kids, reach for the stars and you’ll eventually get there - half a year later.

But don’t let the sarcasm fool you - I’m stoked. My room is awesome (by my standards). On the legendary scale, we’ve long passed the le, zipped by the gen, and are excitedly partying in the da. Yes, I’m missing a few things still that will thrust my room into ry, thereby completing the legendary home office I had always dreamed of. One step at a time.

Let me give you the tour.

The before-after 360 tour

Italics represents furniture or supplies purchased for the remodelling of the home office

Before, the closet

After, still the closet (L to R):

• No mirror (but still self-absorbed): the blank space where the old vertical mirror used to be, and where a new mirror will soon be.
• A reminder of before - discolored closet doors that, when asked about, I say match the off-white of my new drawers. But they don’t.
• A sideview of my new drawers.

Before, desk 1

After, the drawers (L to R):

• IKEA Malm Chest of 6 drawers ($149)
• A row of reference books and interesting reads (behind)
• My 2 greatest achievements framed: Co-op Student of the Year Award and my girlfriend. Haha.
• Things that make me smell pretty

Before, desk 2

After, the bed (L to R):

• The Blue Wall: smothered in my agency’s brand color, it screams “See, I can be interesting too!”
• New window blinds (nothing interesting, just the fact that they’re new and match everything else)
• The new bed that looks surprisingly like my old bed (free!)
• Bed sheets and cover that no longer match anything in the room.

Before, the shelf with lots of stuff

After, the corner with lots of nothing (L to R):

•  The beautiful marriage of blue and white on my walls that screams “Okay, I get boring from herein.”

Before, the bed

After, the desk (L to R):

• IKEA Vika Amon Table Top + 4 Vika Curry Legs ($79.99)
• IKEA Global Work Lamp ($39.54)
• Sony XD200 Headphones that I bought myself for Christmas
• New Comstar 500GB hard drive that I will use to back my entire life up into
• 21.6″ LG LCD, now mounted on a wicked Ergotron Neo-Flex monitor arm ($112.99)
• IKEA Goliat Drawer Unit (underneath) ($45.19)
• Mesh Office Chair ($79.07)
• The new desk that I can actually work and be productive on (priceless)

Before, the door

After, the door (L to R):

• Bare walls = empty canvas
• Active hat and jacket roster, including my new too-gangster-for-my-own-good American Eagle Alpine Bomber Jacket (most left)
• Tuff & Tidy over the door coat hooks ($5.40) means no more jackets slung over the chair (I had a bad habit of doing that before)

Ta-da! As you can see from the before-after 360 tour, the room is actually a lot emptier than it was before. The walls, for one thing, have yet to be touched, but overall everything in the room actually has an active purpose now.

Here’s a closer look at a few cool features I’ve added to my room:

Probably the coolest new addition to my room is the aforementioned Ergotron Neo-Flex monitor arm. Here’s a better look.

Here’s a better view of it from behind - 5 pivot joints!

Best of all, here’s the view from my bed that the pivoting action lets me have while I’m kicking back and watching episodes of How I Met Your Mother (a show that shares the same legendary features as my new home office).

I even splurged to get me my own secretary to answer my phone calls (okay, Manga Spawn is just a cool action figure that needed a home).

The Bill

When I set out on this project, I actually didn’t define a budget. In fact, as I write this out, I’m calculating the sum of my expenses for the very first time. This should be fun.

• Paint… free (it’s great to have family in the renovation business)
• New Bed… free (handed down from my brother who used the bed for a mere 4 months during his brief move downtown)
• IKEA Malm Chest of 6 drawers… $149.00
• IKEA Vika Amon Table Top + 4 Vika Curry Legs… $79.99
• IKEA Global Work Lamp… $39.54
• Ergotron Neo-Flex monitor arm… $112.99
• IKEA Goliat Drawer Unit… $45.19
• Mesh Office Chair… $79.07
• Tuff & Tidy over the door coat hooks… $5.40

Grand total: $511.18

Not too shabby considering no piece of furniture from the old room remains!

To-do’s

• Shelves! There’s still too many things lingering on my desk (like my action figures) that need to be on a shelf somewhere. The plan is to have a headboard shelf installed above my bed, and two rows of shelves above the desk.
• Pictures, certificates, and a giant whiteboard: I have a few things that I want to hang and display and there’s a really cool giant whiteboard waiting to be put up.

But one step at a time. It may take me another 5 months to get the above 2 items up, but even then, it’ll be a pretty damn good 5 months!

Hope you enjoyed the tour!

It seems like I’ve been on holiday duty with dinners, socials, gatherings, reunions, get togethers and what not since the very first day the holidays started. And even though holidays are mostly a myth in an entrepreneur’s world, I’ve been so busy with festivities that work has sort of been pushed to the backseat during the last 2 weeks (both a blessing and a nightmare). 

But I’m back and boy am I happy to see 2008. It’s going to be an exciting year, I can feel it. We’re only a week in, but I’m already off to a great start. I’ve fulfilled all my resolutions!

Okay, so I only made one. But that’s because I wanted to be realistic this year. And what is this one special resolution? It’s something that I’ve been putting off for far too long - no, it’s not getting in shape or eating more healthily (though those were strong contenders for resolutions - but again, I wanted to be realistic). Nope, my one and only resolution this year was actually to finally remodel my room into my home office.

I’m psyched to say that I did it! Well, I’m 90% of the way there, but as I sit at my new Ikea desk in my blue and white room that is equally Ikea-branded, I can’t help but feel the satisfaction of accomplishment. There are still a few things lying around but I’ll have pictures up in the next few days. Stay tuned!

For now, I just wanted to give everyone a heads up on what’s coming around the corner:

• Back to work, back to life, and back to regular blogging!
• I’m polishing up the last bits of my WP tutorial based on the cantwaitforchristmas.com project, so you should see that post go up tomorrow or Tuesday.
• As mentioned, the after-shots of my home office will be going up shortly too.
• This site has been running for just about 6 months now, is it time for a new look? Whether you said yes or no, I’ve got something in the works!
• A lot of subtle How I Met Your Mother references - I’ve been getting a healthy dose of episodes from all 3 seasons this holiday, and it’s just been the most awesomest experience (thanks John!).

I hope all your 2008’s are off to a great start as well! Looking forward to another great year ahead.

I’ve been trying my best to keep up with my RSS reading lately, and I have to admit, my recent switch to Google Reader has made the process a bit more productive. Ironically, RSS reading can be anything but productive sometimes (thank you/curse you Satish). What Google Reader has done though, is let me “star” posts that are interesting so that I can reference them later. Brilliant. It’s like my Outlook inbox for RSS feeds (because who doesn’t need another Outlook inbox to live by?).

Anyway, here are a few posts that really stuck out this past week.

• Who remembers the periodic table of elements? Well for all those who thought you left it behind for a career in marketing, think again! The folks at Kolbrener have put together this awesome table of brand evolution terms. It’s time to love chemistry again. (Courtesy of Mish’s Playground and Satish, the RSS monster)
   
• For those racking up consultancy hours, Freelance Switch has posted a list of 6 cool online tools to track your time and help you figure out how many hours to bill. Shweeet.
   
• Starting your own design agency? Here are 20 questions to ask yourself first to ensure you’re ready. Hell, even if you already have a design agency, you should answer these questions. It’s never too late to change!
   
• Your pipeline is your business’ lifeline. How healthy is yours? Shane & Peter get intimate with math and show you how you can measure your sales pipeline in 15 minutes… or it’s free. Their blog post, that is.
   
• If you run a virtual office, check out the Notes from the virtual office series over at #comments. There are only 3 posts in the category, but they’re all worth a read!

I don’t plan on making this a regular thing, I just thought these links in particular were useful to share. Enjoy!