Welcome to “The Life“. This week, I’m taking a vacation from my day job and spending it working on WebnoteHappy full-time. I’ve done all the development on WebnoteHappy in my spare time, on weekends, nights, holidays, but never have dedicated a full workday to it until today.
I thought it would be interesting to take you behind the scenes of the development of WebnoteHappy and talk about lessons learned. I’ve already started giving away the freeware version, WebnoteHappy Lite, so go check that out for a taste of what will soon appear.
So the first order of business was to manage myself. When you’re an employee, you sort of live in a structure. Same thing goes if you’re a student. But when you’re an entrepreneur, you have to create your own structure.
So I went out to lunch today with a friend and ended up spending 3 hours at lunch. Yes it was nice to chat and talk about technology and business, but I had “long lunch remorse” afterwards. I realized that I probably that even though I could take a lunch for 3 hours, I probably shouldn’t. Instead I should spend an hour at lunch and the other 2 hours programming or marketing. Lesson 1: Create some structure for yourself when working alone.
Later on, I had some pretty good hours “in the zone”, partly a result of drinking a bunch of Coke at lunch. Lesson 2: Caffeine = good for programming.
Then I smelled something. And it was bad, like the sewer. Yuck. The glamour was gone. Sure, when you watch the Evening at the Adler video, it all looks so easy and glamorous. But really, when you’ve got a home office, things are different. When you’re at an office, you find something wrong and you call the building engineer. But at home, you don’t really have that luxury. So I had to get out of the zone and do some handy work around the house. Lesson 3: Home offices aren’t maintenance-free.
Welcome to the life. It’s a great life if you can support it, despite the hard work. Don’t fret about spending 3 hours at lunch. In 2 days, you’ll be so productive programming, that the net result will still be far more than you ever got done in a week working for the man. Trust me on this one.
I’m down to working only one day a week. I’ve gone way off course. I make myself sit in front of the computer, but I just surf the net. Yesterday I wrote up a schedule. So far only lunch has been on-time. I’ve got to get myself back into it before I go bankrupt.
PS, don’t forget about taxes. I have 10k to pay, and I only had 3k in the bank. Procrastination is not helping.
This is probably the worse it’s ever been for me. I used to crank out whole programs in a few weeks. Don’t let it get you!
I just want to wish you the best of luck in this venture. I’ve certainly considered a similiar scenario myself.
It does take a bit of practice and discipline, but being efficient while working remotely can be done.
One good way to get that discipline is to schedule something work related at the time you first want to be in the office. Make sure that it is visible from the outside, and that it is time stamped. Schedule a second, publicly visible, something when you intend to be back from lunch. If you do this, you cannot fool yourself about when you are and are not at work.
For example, I type up (and send) any outstanding email starting when my workday does. Since this tells outsiders when I am there, I feel pressured to actually get in at a reasonable time. It works well.
Blog updates, sending a schedule to a client, all are reasonable, as long as they are sent outside, and are time stamped. It is an eye opener when you first begin, but it eventually helps you understand how your time is being spent.
I have been working mostly remotely since 1999. It is very efficient, as long as you stay focussed, and like what you do.
Scott
Thanks for posting this series of articles — very informative! It just so happens that I start my own journey on “The Life” on Tuesday! Today is my last day working for The Man. :) So I shall be taking your lessons to heart.
Lesson 15: The wife thinks that, since you’re spending all day sitting around the house (hah, I wish!), you’ll have time to do all the washing and cleaning while she’s out at the office.
[…] That’s sort of how I feel about going Indie (which I wrote up a bit on my other blog.) That’s correct – you heard right, I went Indie! So now I’m living The Life. I had tried it out earlier during my vacations and enjoyed it. And this time, it’s for real. […]