Let's be honest, working from home isn't always the easiest. There are a million and one things that can distract you from actually sitting down and doing the work at hand. Your dog wants attention. Dishes need to be done. You just feel lazy and want to go lay in bed. There is always something in your home that can distract you, so how do you go about staying productive and focused when working from home?
The other day I was sitting in my home office heads down getting things done. Like most days, I didn't get dressed and sat around in my PJ's all day for the sake of comfort. I was amidst a productivity session of putting out some great writing when my fiancée came home from a work meeting. She took one look at me and said, "You need to put on real clothes."
A few years ago I got hooked by the startup bug. Like many young techies and entrepreneurs, I was fascinated by the idea of building a scalable startup and someday walking away with millions. But ultimately this path lead me into one of the darkest periods of my life. It lead me into a path of trying to please others and not being true to myself. In lead me to realize that startups are becoming the new 9-5.
Building a creative agency is hard. Building a creative agency when you don't live in the same city as your partners can be even harder. Chris and Bryant at Authentic Form and Function have managed to pull this off. They share with us how they started up the agency, got their first clients and how they manage working as a remote team.
Working remotely is the new American dream. Long gone are the days of seeking a steady, safe corporate job. Now are the days of freedom, adventure, and travel. Instead of sitting in an office, our generation wants to work from a beach in Mexico, a mountaintop in Argentina, or even the couch at their own home. But why is it that so many people still conform to the traditional routines of work?
If you’re a leader of an engineering team, you’ve likely had this survey from HackerRank thrown into your inbox. And, if you’re anything like me, you’ve probably ignored it every time it’s been shared with you. I finally sat down and took a hard look at their results — data gleaned from a survey of roughly 40,000 developers. They found that developers are primarily seeking a quality of life and opportunities for continued learning in their professional endeavors. In other words, flexibility.
We’re evolving the way we work. Sure, that’s always been the case to some degree, but today the paradigm is perhaps more obviously different than in the last, say, 50 years or so. The intersection of the technology and tools required to facilitate communication paired with our collective appetite to create more meaning, balance and flexibility in our personal and professional lives has lead to the rise of the Remote Workforce. There are thousands of businesses across the world opting for some level of remote work, with varying degrees of success based of myriad factors.
You’ve likely been trapped under the water cooler for the last decade if the idea of the remote economy is new to you. But you haven't, and you're aware that entire companies are operated out of kitchens, coffee shops, and hammocks in Bali these days, and it’s not just millennials taking advantage of this new wave of location flexibility - an entire remote workforce has emerged. But what’s the incentive for companies to forgo a traditional office culture for the Great Unknown of remote work?
When it comes to changes in the way that business is structured, perhaps there has been no greater shift than in the way that people work. Hyper-connectivity, thanks to the rapid advances of mobile technology, means that the world of work has opened up to a whole new audience. If you’re feeling skeptical about the so-called gig industry, read on to find out how it is that the gig economy is changing the tech industry for the better.
Contrary to the “lone genius” trope that films and grossly overstated autobiographies would have us believe, software is the product of collaboration. In the same way that engineers need to protect their uninterrupted focus time to produce solutions, we also need unfettered access to the input and expertise of our team. You know this. You also know that the nature of our work is changing. Whether we are ready or not, the Future of Work is here, and the way we collaborate inevitably needs to adapt along with it.