You may be thinking, what does a gap year have to do with having No Fixed Office. To be honest that is a question that has two answers. The first answer is nothing, and the second answer is everything.
To quell you initial fears that i have gone absolutely made, the idea of combining a gap year and having no fixed office, in reality could be an absolutely crazy idea. Why would you need to think about working with out an office, if you have never had an office before. What does a working holiday even have to do with having no office.
Well to move to the second answer, i think it has a lot to do with it. However i am not speaking entirely from experience. I personally did not complete high school, and went straight into a fairly low paying job(well kind of after 6 months looking). Anyway that isn’t the point. The point i am trying to make is more of a what do you have to lose point.
At this point if you are considering a gap year, then you are not committed to a job, you are maybe thinking about some travel, and you really have open ended possibilities. The thought of just getting started in a business or an online project, that could make some money, while working on it from coffee shops, and the like. I think could be a great introduction to the world of business, as it offers many valuable lessons.
LESSON 1 – Think outside the box
In working from No Fixed Office, you have to think outside the box, different marketing, how to stay in touch with customers more effectively, and putting in a different perspective of achieving your desired outcomes.
LESSON 2 – Marketing without a location to market
Learning how to market a business can be a very different thing when you are working with a Portable office as opposed to a fixed retail or office space. The focus and purpose of advertising in both cases is to create interest in the product, however for those working with a Portable office the main key needs to be on getting the customer motivated to contact you right now, not visit you later in the week, but while they have that marketing material in their hand.
LESSON 3 – Discipline
When you work in an office or a retail store, be it your own business or not, you have a set framework that you generally need to work in which ensure to some extent a result is achieved. Often if you are working for someone else the motivation to achieve this result is not that strong. In working for yourself without this structure, you generally find that you need to develop a greater level of discipline, because at the end of the day your success or failure depends upon one person and one person only, YOU.
What ever you choose to do after you finish high school, make a choice to try working on a business or a project online, that you can work on whereever, whenever or whatever you may be doing. Maybe it is selling something you make in your spare time, or maybe it is creating a blog and building it up, about your travels through Europe. Whatever it is make the decision to make your gap year experience different, and it may just lead into an extended gap year that last forever.
good one!
can you explain more about what a gap year is?
Hi, just moving this conversation to your blog from Twitter:
“@axelator A gap year, a year between school and other education/work where you travel or something easy before future study or work”
Interesting.. never heard of this term, and thought it was maybe a more deliberate part of having no fixed office.
This info may be directed at students, however, these ideas apply just as much to people who may be between jobs or just need a change anyway.
In any case, I agree it takes time to arrange all the parts of a mobile office (like VoIP, email, online collaboration software, etc.), test them, and then convince customers to trust you via this Web 2.0 business model.
Thanks for the comment Axelator,
It is true that this is very often something that students follow, when they finish school they may go on a extended trip overseas, or work for a while between finishing grade school and graduate school. But the concept can be just as easily applied to someone between jobs, who wants a change of career, or anything really.
I think the primary point in this is to try a few things and see what direction you really want to take. which again is something that i good for anyone at any stage of their career life, if they are feeling a change is needed. Where it actually really comes into a good place for working with No Fixed Office, is it is something that you can absolutely adapt to whatever you are doing, all you really need is a laptop, access to the internet and there are few limits. Of course some options are not open, but you have a very very good range of options still which can lead to not just a gap year, but potentially living a much more free life to work from wherever you want.