No Fixed Office

Wow, I did not realize just how long it had been since I made a post here. This is something that I am going to have to change, in the near future.

To get things started on this change to posting more often here, I will be looking at making some theme changes, for the moment, the default theme for WordPress is going to be showing, as the theme I was using was quite dated, I think. However the the theme will not be the only thing to change here.

One of the first things that I would like to do with the website here is work towards build more of a community here. The first step in this will be looking for input in the form of guest posts from other people who are working with No Fixed Office. Because to be honest my experience in working with No Fixed Office, is a fairly closed and narrow representation of what is really out there. So I really want to get some other people’s experiences to share with everyone out there. If you would like to submit a guest post please visit the Contact Page and get in touch, to discuss your interest.

At some point this will also include adding a forum to the site however the last thing that I want to do is, add this on to quickly. I am also a little unsure at this point of the best way to implement this. So suggestions are always welcome.

I look forward to your suggestions or thoughts on the site here and hope that I can get back to providing you with some great information in the near future.

Do you find that the time that is allocated to you for your coffee break is just that little bit to short? How would you like to be spending the majority of your time on a coffee break, while getting the majority of your work done on that coffee break? What about if that coffee break lasted all afternoon.

It is really one of the quite attractive parts of working with no fixed office.  The ability to be able to take your work with you and spend the afternoon working in a coffee shop is something that I am sure many people would prefer then having to sit in a small office, be it at home or as part of your job. Trying not to get distracted by other things that could just as easily take your attention, eg coworkers, meetings, email, and the likes at work, or when in a home office things like TV, kids, games, or anything else around the home.

While taking your work to a coffee shop will not avoid all these distractions all the time, it can be sometimes easier to set the differentiation between what you are doing and what distractions you will encounter. But we will take a look at how some of the distractions can be avoided by going and working on a full time coffee break at a coffee shop.

Co-workers – This will be an easy distraction to avert, as it can come down to most of your co-workers will not be willing or able to step outside like you are. Of course if you are planning to go and work in a cafe for the afternoon, ensure you have it approve by your boss, but this often will not be overly difficult if you can prove increased productivity, and may even lead to you needing to work less hours to get the same amount of work done. As long as you can actually buckle down and get it done.

E-Mail – This distraction can be a tricky one to avoid. Everyone seems to try and work with email, to get in touch with clients, management, and other co-workers. One way to negate this distraction is to not connect to your email when out of the office, leave email to be checked in the office, and make anyone who may really need to contact you aware they will need to contact you by phone.

The distractions that you encounter when working from a home office are going to be a little easier to negate when you are working in a cafe or other remote office location, but lets look at the benefits.

TV – This is a no brainer, while you do find that many cafe’s have a TV in the store somewhere and it may be switched on, it is probably going to be rare the show is one that you are interested and often times the sound is off or turned down low anyway. Working in a cafe really does make it that much more difficult to just get up from your work work and go and sit in front of the TV to watch a football game or other show.

Kids – This is another easy one. By taking yourself out of the home, away from where children might be, it makes that definite cut between being at home, and working. Do ensure that children have proper supervision, of course. But children can be a big distraction as most of the time they do not realize or understand the differentiation between playing and working.

These are really just some of the distractions that you can face there are many different distractions which will be different for everyone, the challenge comes down to identifying these distractions and ensuring that your stepping out of the office or home, and going to get your work done in a cafe is actually going to make a difference to the distraction.

Well trip number two with my portable office, has come and gone and this time much more of a success, then previously. I have solved many of the problems, that I found when I traveled late last year to Canberra with my portable office. The trip to Melbourne went off with pretty much no problems at all.

The first change I knew I had to make was to get something better to use to carry both my laptop and my camera in. I got a backpack, which was a perfect fit for the job. It had a pocket which will hold up to a 15in notebook, Even though mine is only 12″ it still does the job. The bottom of the bag fits the footprint of my Camera bag perfectly. While it did cost a little $90, this was considerably less expensive then an equivalent, specialized camera bag, which were starting around twice the price. Good Choice all in all I think.

The second issue I had was connectivity with the 3G broadband, I suppose this is however not something that you always have a lot of control over. I know on this trip staying right in the center of the city would have made a considerably difference to staying in a suburb not so close to the town center. So this in particular will potentially more depend on where you need to stay then anything else. If you can get in closer to the city center you will probably have a better chance then if you are getting away from the city.

Finally I have found a new sort of issue in taking my office with me. In particular is that I do realize there are some limitations to the laptop that I have to travel with. I purchased it mainly for the longer battery life, and smaller lighter size. Unfortunately doing this at a reasonable price can impact the performance to some degree. I have not really had any problems when using the internet, or word processing, it is more when I have been doing some work with photos. However I suppose from a netbook, you shouldn’t expect to much really. I may try adding some more memory if it has space and see if this helps to improve performance, otherwise I can work around the speed, I just need to be more patient.

Overall though the trip worked out pretty well. There is really only one more problem to solve, to actually get a business going to make use of the portable office more efficiently when on the move. So onto the drawing board, and if you would like to read any more about the holiday to Melbourne, you can visit my other blog at www.joelbrown.com.au, for all the day to day happenings.

Well as you may remember I discussed some of the positives and negatives of traveling with my portable office, late last year, when i went for a trip to Canberra. Some of the problems I had on that trip I am hoping may be a little different when i leave for Melbourne in about a week.

The first thing that I quickly realized was an issue was the carry on luggage that I had. When you are carrying a Laptop and a Digital SLR camera, you want to try and avoid damage to them anyway possible. So rather then taking them in two separate bags, I improvised with a carry bag, it was really to big and impractical really. So this time I am going to go shopping tomorrow looking for a single bag which will hold both the camera, and laptop and accessories. This is going to cost a bit of money, i think. However it will be a good investment for future travel. Preferably I will be looking for a backpack style bag, however if there is something else just as convenient I will consider that as well.

The other problem I encountered was that even in Australia’s Capital Mobile reception is not that great everywhere. This time being that I am going to be staying in the center or pretty close to center of the city, that i will be able to expect close to the best coverage. If I find poor reception this time traveling I think that it will be time to look at a different mobile broadband provider, with better reception and coverage areas.

These were really the only two challenges that I had before, the only other issue was getting through security checks, however i think that this will be more then solved with the new carry bag/backpack bag that I am looking to buy.

So it is going to be an interesting week come 20th March, to see just how I go at getting through the week away with my portable office. This could be an interesting turning point, maybe. If it all works well I can be sure that I will definitely be looking for a career that allows me to do more traveling.

As a business owner, you have more than likely found it difficult to get away from your business to have a holiday. The case will often be that to leave your business even for a day can often be a bit to much, and sees you spending most of the day on the phone keeping things going.

This is where the concept of having No Fixed Office can really come into it’s own. It makes it easy to keep the business running no matter where you are. However this does not mean that when you go away on holidays that you are going to be working all the time because you are just taking your business with you. No if you set the business up correctly it can be much the opposite, the business continuing with a minimal involvement from yourself.

Decrease work levels – The first thing if you are planning a holiday is to lower the work your are scheduling for that period. The last thing you want is to be working on a large project while you are suppose to be enjoying yourself on vacation. This could mean cutting back your advertising for a period leading up to your time off. Or working a little harder to get things finished before your holiday, if they are going to be due while away or not long after your return.

Ensure staff have procedures – If you employee staff, be sure they have a set framework they can work in. Even give them a little control of what they need to do. Giving them a little more control can mean less interruptions for you. For example, maybe you find that you get about 10 instances a day where a member of your staff needs to ask you what to. You could set a procedure that staff can make the decision what to do if it is going to cost the business less then $20 or take less then 15 minutes to complete. For the most part staff often know what they should do, and the time spent confirming this with you is often not needed.

Let Customers Know – Depending on your customer base just getting in touch and letting your customers know that you are going to be away on leave for a certain time. Can be enough to lower your work load for the time. You can still be available in emergencies, but it can slow down all the little things that just crop up.

Depending upon how you choose to set up your business and how you approach the leave that you want to take will be a very big factor in just how your business will survive when you take a holiday. It is often something that is not even thought about until you want to take your holiday and by that time you often find it to be quite difficult to do without spending a huge effort just to make it possible.

For the past three days i have been on a short trip to Canberra. Which i originally thought would be a fantastic time to try out my mobile office. I mean what better way to try it out then put it in a bag and take it 1200km from home. Well this was I thought a great idea, except for a couple of small problems i found which not having actually traveled with my portable office on a plane before, i had not thought of.

• The Carrybag – It seems that the carry bag which I own, that will fit pretty much all my gear in, is actually to large for carry on luggage. However all i really needed was my newest laptop (Samsung NC20) Which is no issue to fit in as carry on. However i also needed to take my Camera (Canon DSLR EOS 450D). Had to find something to fit them both into for next time, i made use of a half measure this time. More so to keep them together and minimize the chance of either getting moved around to much. But very much a to do item, to find a good in between bag which will fit both.
• Security Checks – This sort of goes along with the need for a better solution for a carry bag for traveling. As it seems that getting a laptop out of it’s carry bag, which is inside another bag, and has a camera bag on top of it inside that, is not that easy. Getting it back in means almost repacking this bag entirely. Which I have no problem with, security is the top priority, just something you learn from.
• Connectivity – Of course with maintaining blogs, having internet connectivity is important. I had thought going to the Capital of Australia, would have had better mobile reception. However I was a little wrong. While, there may be good reception in the City Center, the purpose of my trip did not bring me to the city center except for one morning. The hotel I stayed in Hawker, i was lucky to get a connection, on GPRS, and this was slow, Additionally the connections I achieved at Nicholls, was similar. While I was able to connect at 3G speeds at Latham, however this was still slower then i was used to achieving in Brisbane’s outer suburbs. Maybe I was in a bad area or who knows, not something though that it is easy to find out about before hand though. As Coverage maps can only go so far.

There were some good points however in this experience, I have a better understanding of what i personally need to make travel and a portable office work now. Additionally, I was glad to have made my acquisition of this smaller and lighter laptop (Samsung NC20) as even this with my Camera, felt a lot heavier by the time i boarded the plane. The longer battery life was also a good bonus, it meant charging was only required at night and one time during the day (on Monday when i used it a lot more).

All in all I can see that traveling and working with a mobile office is something much more then doable, it is a habit for many people (you just need to look at the number of people using their laptop sitting in the airport. But more then this it is going to be something that i will do a lot more of.