Where do workshifters come from?  Obviously, they're dropped off by a stork. But, are they born workshifters or do they have to become workshifters?

Most workshifters were at one time or another sedentary office workers, before they took the leap to working independently.  Recently, I was preparing to make the shift from occasional workshifter to permanent workshifter.  It occurred to me when making the transition, that despite the fact that I had been working outside the office for several days at a time, the move to permanent workshifting required a lot of preparation.

And so, to help others who are just about to take the plunge, here are some tips for how to effectively prepare yourself.

Tip 1: Start preparing early.  If you stop reading here, that's fine, as long as you take this piece of advice.  It will shock you just how much prep work you have to do to transition to workshifting, especially if you hadn't been conscious of the fact that you might eventually need to.  Because you'll likely be doing this prep work at the same time as your day job, you'll need time to get it done, so start early.

Physical Documents

Tip 2: Develop digital habits. Physical documents are just a given when you work in an office, but as a workshifter, they're a pain in the neck.  No one wants to carry around manilla folders, take the risk of spilling coffee over them, having them get crumpled in your bag, or risk bringing the wrong folder to a meeting.  Instead, workshifters need to go digital, and so that means that while you're still an office worker, you should start developing digital habits: take notes with software, keep a digital calendar, scan documents, opt for electronic versions whenever possible, etc.

Tip 3: Take stock of all your hard copy files. So, all those manilla folders that you've stowed in your filing cabinets over the years, it's time to go through them and decide why you're really keeping them.  Chances are, you will find documents that you recall why you wanted to keep them in the first place.  Trash as much as you can at this point.  It's about streamlining.

Tip 4: Scan everything you need to keep. Now that you've gotten rid of the excess, get access to a scanner and scan all the documents you've decided are important.  Once you've digitized (and backed them up), you will go ahead and shred these paper documents.  They will no longer weigh you down.

Tip 5: Store everything else with colleagues. If you're leaving the office worker role, but remaining with the same company, there may be files that you don't quite need, but that you think others might, or that it would be a good idea if someone had them.  Lean on your colleagues, or your successor to take this stuff from you.  Make sure to explain what it is, and why they might need it, otherwise it will land at the bottom of a filing cabinet, never to be seen again.

Tip 6: Digitize notebooks. As much as I like to think of myself as a digital native, I still take notes in notebooks, on notepads, and on post-its.  When I went back through these notes, I found that most of the stuff was no longer useful, but was surprised to see that some notes I had taken over a year ago could still be useful today.  So, I went through my notebooks and recycled or shredded that which was unnecessary, but added all my notes that were still relevant to a text file, that I could keep at my disposal.

Tip 7: Keep your notes as simple as possible.  In the previous tip, I said put the notes in a text file.  Over the years, colleagues have laughed at me for my staunch devotion to Notepad, the hyper-basic pre-installed Windows text editor (actually I've upgraded to Notepad++, but still find myself opening Notepad out of habit).  While they laugh, I continue to use text editors for many reasons.  They are lightweight, and so I can have a ton of windows open at once and not experience any additional drag on my hardware (and for those who've worked with corporate PC's, you know this can be crucial).  They're also universally readable.  I don't need to worry about the compatibility of my text file if I move it from my office desktop, to my Macbook or to my Linux laptop.  In a pinch, I can even read my text file from a command prompt.  This flexibility will come in handy as a workshifter.

E-mail

Now that you've cleared your physical world of clutter, it's time to do the same for your electronic world, and where better to start than with every knowledge worker's biggest time suck: e-mail. Note that this is really only going to be important if, like me, you're transitioning from a local e-mail client (a la MS Outlook or Lotus Notes) on a company machine to a web-based client, or using an exchange server.  If your email has always been cloud-based, then things should be business as usual for you.

Tip 8: Pick a system and stick to it. There are as many e-mail organization systems as there are people.  I have a colleague who is the neatest most organized person I have ever met.  The consequence of this is that you need a blueprint in order to figure out the folder structure of his Outlook mailbox.  Tracking down an archived e-mail is like navigating a labyrinth.  I am a Gmail fanboy, and my e-mail classification of using only 3 folders spills over from that experience.  This can sometimes be slightly problematic because Outlook's search functionality is not as great as Gmail's, but overall, I still find I have an easier time searching for an e-mail than I do retrieving it from a labyrinth of folders.  In the end, though, which system you use, doesn't matter, as long as it's consistent.

Tip 9: E-mails that you think will be important, save on your company Exchange server. Remember that when you archive e-mails, by definition they're coming off your company's server and being saved elsewhere (by default, that's on your PC).  If you're leaving behind your old machine when you turn workshifter, saving those important e-mails to its hard drive won't be helpful, so instead, make sure important e-mails stay on the server, so that they can be accessed from webmail, your Blackberry, or other e-mail client.

Tip 10: Locally archive things that you probably won't ever need. Like with physical documents, there are many e-mails you will likely never need.  If you are sure you'll never need them, delete them.  If you doubt that you'll ever need them, but aren't sure, archive them.  After all, most companies give you limited space to save e-mail on the server and require you to archive.

Tip 11: Create a copy of your archive. Now, if you're leaving your old computer behind, archiving files that you think you might possibly need some day isn't going to do you any good, so go ahead and create a copy of your archive.  In fact, create multiple copies, because data can easily be lost on something as fragile as a CD/DVD or a web server.

Tip 12: Get used to using webmail services.  I actually spent my last month as an office worker accessing e-mail through webmail.  Partially by necessity (I'll get to that later), but also because it was a good habit to create for when i would be accessing e-mail this way all the time.

Electronic Files

Tip 13: Organize your files. Are you starting to see a theme here?  When making the switch from office worker to workshifter, organizing yourself is a great way to make sure nothing gets missed.  In terms of organizing your files, there are actually software programs that will do this for you (Belvedere for PC, Hazel for Mac).  Or, you can do what I did and take this opportunity to go through your hard drive and see just what all the files that you've saved since you started working for your current employer are.  You can then triage, organize, and delete to your heart's cotent.

Tip 14: Store everything in a specific folder.  For ease of back-up, and to make the next step painless, it's a good idea to save all the files that you will want to keep to the same folder.  That folder can have as many subfolders as you'd like, but it's important that everything be in one place.

Tip 15: Sync that folder to the cloud using Dropbox. As a workshifter, there are tons of applications out there that will promise to make your life easier.  For me, Dropbox wins the crown of favourite workshifting app.  Its potential uses are nearly limitless, but in this case, you'll be doing something very simple.  You'll install Dropbox (Dropbox referral link) on your machine that you're about to abandon (if you follow the above link, you'll get an additional 250 megs on top of the basic 2 gigs - I will also get an additional 250 megs - win win!).  Once that's done, you will take your folder that you've organized all of your files in and move it into your Dropbox folder.  Now, you can do two things with this folder.  First, you can install Dropbox on the machine you will be using from here on out so that you have access to those files indefinitely.  Second, you can share this folder with another user, so that if you want to leave your boss all your old files so he's not lost without you in the office, he'll have access to them too!

Tip 16: Backup to an external hard drive.  Honestly, this tip is mainly for those who work with large files that may be too large for Dropbox's free basic 2 gig limit.  In my case, the vast majority of my files were excel reports, databases, power point presentations and word documents.  Nothing too heavy.  But if you do video editing, or heavy design work, you may want to invest in an external hard drive to bring your old files with you.

Software & Hardware

Tip 17: Make a list of what kinds of files you use. As mentioned above, in my case, the majority of my files were spreadsheets, databases, power point presentations, word documents (and of course text files).  By doing this exercise, I know exactly what medium I spend my time working in.  That's important for the next tip.

Tip 18: Determine what the ideal tools for you would be. Here's where you get to have some fun and create your wishlist of tools you want.  Based on the file types you saw that you used, what tools would you ideally like to have?  Word?  Excel?  MS Project?  Photoshop?  Adobe Premiere?  Write this list down.

Tip 19:  Determine what on that list will be provided for you.  If you're workshifting, but are still an employee of a company, you may still get all the tools and comforts you're used to having at the office on the road, and it's just a matter of asking.  So, see what you can get your workshifting laptop set up with from your IT department.

Tip 20: Find open source alternatives.  If you're not workshifting on the company dime, or you prefer to use your own tools, shelling out for things like corporate editions of MS Office and Photoshop may be cost prohibitive, so find alternatives.  For starters, open source software is awesome.  I have been running Open Office on my home PC for years, and NeoOffice on my MacBook Pro with great success.  To find other open source alternatives for traditioinal software, check out osalt.com.  

Tip 21: Find cloud-based alternatives. Cloud-based software has come a long way in the past year or two, and many cloud-based apps are more than enough for most people.   Cloud-based alternatives can even be more convenient than traditional software because for a workshifter, it allows you to work from any machine with internet access.  Good starting points for cloud-based software are Google Docs, Zoho Docs, and the 37Signals suite of collaboration applications. There are tons more with price tags varying from free to pricey. Explore them all.

Tip 22: Determine your hardware needs.  I firmly believe that it is only once you've decided what software you need that you should decide on what hardware to purchase.  If every piece of software you need is Windows-based, buying a Mac is nonsensical, even if you can dual boot Windows on it.  (Although, it should be said that since having made the switch to Mac, the only file I have had issues with is MS Visio .vsd files, so perhaps I'm overstating the importance of picking the right hardware.)

Now, install your software, access your dropbox and your webmail, and it's like you never left the office!  The transition from office desktop to mobile workstation is complete.  If you've gone with cloud-based apps and webmail, your freedom is virtually unlimited.

Habits to Keep

Tip 23: Take digital notes. I'm horrible at following my own advice on taking notes one way.  In addition to text files, I use Evernote, moleskines, sticky notes and voice memos on my phone.  Don't be me.

Tip 24: Keep all your files in the cloud.  Whether you use Dropbox to keep all your files in the cloud, or Google Docs so that they're just cloud-based documents to begin with, keeping this habit means that you could drop your laptop in a river, and never miss a beat.

Tip 25: Save things in standard file formats. This is especially important if you start using some of the open source software I mentioned earlier.  Open source software generally allows you to save files in about 1,000 different formats.  Always pick the format that most closely resembles the standard file format for industries.  So, while I use Open Office and Neo Office, both of which have a .odf standard file extension, I save everything in MS Office XP format.  That way, I know just about anyone can open my file.

Bonus

Not so much a tip, but an anecdote that illustrates a bonus that comes with this kind of preparedness. I started preparing to transition to full-time workshifter about one month before my planned transition.  About two weeks before the move, my company laptop (an IBM Thinkpad T43 - a tank of a machine) died.  Had this happened to me two weeks earlier, I would have lost about two years worth of work that had been saved on my local hard drive, and that I had not been very diligent about backing up to company servers.  Because of my preparation to move to full-time workshifter, I lost nothing. All my most important files were already in my Dropbox, and ready and waiting for me when I booted up my MacBook Pro.

Being a workshifter is all about planning for eventualities, so planning to become one, has the fortunate byproduct of just plain making you better prepared.

What do you think?


Photo Credit: Matthileo

There has long been a great debate among workshifters.  The magnitude of this debate has people from either camp bitterly divided, fiercely loyal, and ready to do battle to defend their side.  I speak, of course, of the great workshifting debate of coffee shop versus home office.

In order to take a stance on the topic, I'm going to make a good ol' fashioned pros & cons list of the two options, and by the end, hopefully, you'll be able to decide for yourself which of these two options makes the most sense for your workshifting lifestyle.

PROS

Home office

1. Quiet.  There is no question that when you work from a home office, you can generally get as much or as little quiet as you want.  Close the door, take a deep breath and start hammering away at your tasks.  If you need absolute peace to get anything done, there are few other settings that will provide this level of tranquility (unless of course you have kids at home... in which case, this point's moot).

2. Uninterrupted privacy.  Sometimes, workshifters work on sensitive projects.  If you're working on design or copy for a big client who wants to make a big splash, you can't afford to have someone catch a glimpse of your sketches.  In a home office, you can be sure that there is no corporate espionnage going on.  Unless your significant other works for the competition.  In which case, you may want to stay with friends until your assignment wraps up.

3. Work in your pajamas.  The holy grail of frustrated cubicle workers is to be able to work from home in their pajamas (or less, if that's how you roll).  While most successful workshifters have long ago learned that the key to good performance is to treat every day as if they were going into the office, having the option of working on a quarterly report in your boxers is certainly a perk.

4. Minimal expenses.  Sure, you have to get an internet connection, and you have to brew your own coffee, but chances are, even if you were working in an office, you'd still have those expenses.  What you can save on is expensive cafeteria lunches, the cost of a dozen grande lattes, and commuting costs.

5. Making phone calls is easy.  If you work with clients or colleagues, you need to make at least a handful of phone calls a day.  Being able to speak on the phone in a closed door office is a lot more comfortable than making that same call with chattery background noise, or loud colleagues having their own calls.

Coffee Shop

1. Action keeps you awake.  No matter how much you love what you do for a living, there are definitely times when you have to slog through tasks that put you to sleep.  Working in a coffee shop can perk you up not only through the caffeine, but also through the action going on around you.  For better or worse, being around people forces you to keep up certain appearances.  Passing out on your laptop in a Starbucks just wouldn't do.

2. Benefit from someone else's wifi connection.  A lot of coffee houses offer free wifi connections, which make them the ideal place if you're out of town, or if your own home internet connection is down, or if you haven't gotten around to setting up your own home internet connection.

3. Serendipitous encounters.  Chances are, if you're working from home, you're not going to be having too many adventures.  There is no chance to be interrupted, but there is also no chance to have serendipitous encounters with possible business contacts (or other).  Part of the beauty of coffee shop workshifting is that you will run into other workshifters, and while most can offer only their camaraderie - not a terrible thing to have in and of itself - others may surprise you by turning out to be important business contacts.

4. Entertainment.  Sometimes, when working from a coffee shop, I like to point and laugh at all the people running away from the office for 10-15 minute coffee breaks, only to scurry back with their treats.  This behavior should be practiced discretely and only when you're having a rough day.

5. Inspiration.  If you do any kind of remotely creative work, chances are you're always looking for inspiration.  In my experience, there's little more inspirational than people watching, and coffee shops, after parks, are probably the best people watching spots in any city.

CONS

Home Office

1. Loneliness.  As much as it sometimes feels like a relief that you no longer have to hide from Bob from accounting when he stops by "for a quick chat," it is easy to forget that we're social creatures and sooner or later, the water cooler chatting will be missed.  When you work from home, there's no one to chat with (except for maybe the cat).

2. Must have your own internet connection.  It stands to reason that if you're going to workshift in the modern age, you need an internet connection.  For most people this isn't an issue, but for a handful of people who have still been getting by without internet at home, working from home will force you to bite the bullet and shell out for a decent connection.

3. Risk of never changing scenery.  When you work from home, you enter a weird time warp where you lose track of the outside world, and it becomes all too easy to become a complete shut-in.  I've heard tales of workshifters who haven't left their homes for three or more days at a time, because they've fallen into the trap of laziness.  This isn't good for your mental well-being, or for your happiness.

4. Possibility of procrastination is huge.  Every office worker's biggest enemy is procrastination.  Whether it's wasting time surfing the web, checking facebook, twitter, or anything else.  This is easiest to do at home.  Not to mention you could also procrastinate with a myriad of other activities, like television, doing laundry, tidying up the den, re-arranging photo albums, building a birdhouse...  the possibilities are endless.

Coffee Shop

1. Intimidation.  While many coffee shops have gotten used to the idea of workshifters buying an overpriced caffeinated beverage and installing themselves at a small table for a few hours, some still aren't particularly fond of the practice.  Getting dirty stares from a frustrated barrista who is waiting for you to order another $6 cappuccino to replace the one you finished 20 minutes ago is not conducive to productivity.

2. Risk of crappy connections.  In a coffee shop, you have no control over the quality of the internet connection.  You will eventually get to know which shops have good internet service, and which are flaky, but at the beginning, you may find yourself getting your cup of joe, setting yourself up for a day of work, only to be frustrated by constantly dropping wifi signals.

3. The unexpected run-in.  Unless you drive to a coffee shop 100 miles outside of your hometown (maybe more), there is always the risk that you will have an unexpected run-in with acquaintances.  These run-ins are made awkward by the fact that most people you run into don't realize that you're actually working.  It's often difficult to back away from these conversations.  Especially when you're in the middle of a real creative flow, these run-ins can be a serious deflater.

Conclusion

In the end, there is no right answer. Some people will prefer the calm of working from home, while others will prefer the hustle and bustle of working from crowded cafes.  For most people, however, switching between the two common modes of workshifting from time to time is a good idea.  It keeps things interesting.  After all, workshifting is about increasing freedom, so might as well take advantage of that freedom and explore all the possibilities.

What do you think?


Photo Credit: Earl G

When I first started workshifting, I believed it was the best thing since sliced bread.  It gave me freedom, and it gave me flexibility.  Overall, I loved it.  Then, a funny thing started happening. Even though my total number of hours at the office were less, my total number of hours working were more.  A lot more.  I caught myself responding to e-mail on evenings and weekends.  I got sick, and while I didn't go into the office, I was still working from my sickbed.  I started answering my cell phone while out of the country.  In short, workshifting was taking away my freedom.

The worst part about all this was that no one had ever said to me, "We need you to be on call all day, everyday."  I had started doing this all by myself, simply because I could.  It started off innocently enough.  "Well, if I reply to this e-mail now, I won't need to reply when I get to work in the morning."  Every workshifter knows that train of thought.

But once that starts happening, workshifting becomes a cage.  It takes away freedom, and it makes you a prisoner of your own work habits.  Shouldn't the goal of workshifting be to do the exact opposite?

I understand that there are certain hours that need to be maintained.  Most people have jobs that require them to be available during the middle part of a day to take client calls, or troubleshoot with colleagues, etc.  However, very few of us have jobs that require us to be available all the time, and that's why workshifters need to learn how to fight the urge to work at any time, because more often that not, the prison is of our own making.

Once you start answering e-mails at 11pm or on a Sunday, it becomes expected that you will always be available.  The best way to avoid this is to never start, but if you're like most of us, and have already developed that bad habit, begin scaling it down.  I used to check work e-mails every day and on weekends.  Now I cut that back to checking e-mail only during work hours, and even then only at pre-determined times.  A few ways I've done this:

Separate work e-mail from personal e-mail.  I used to have all e-mail forwarded to one inbox. That was the easiest way to go from dropping a note to a buddy, to responding to a 2-page e-mail from a client or sales rep.

Realize that most e-mails are not urgent.  I believe that my work is important and that I'm helping people run their businesses successfully, but I also recognize that I'm not saving lives.  In my line of work, there is nothing that needs to get done right now.  Everything can wait a few hours, so there's no need to reply to every e-mail the moment it hits the inbox.  That's inefficient, and an easy way to start spiraling out of control.

Unplug damn it.  You know that blackberry that's sitting in your pocket dinging every thirty seconds?  Turn it off.  Everything will be okay, and the world will not end.  If you're worried about missing a call from your family because you turned your 'Berry off, just turn off the e-mail alerts, and leave the phone on. Or, better yet, have two numbers and two phones: one for work, and one personal.

Now that you've set your colleagues' and clients' expectations, there are a few more things you can do to make sure you work on your schedule, not a schedule that's been defined for you.

1. Less real-time meetings.  If you enjoy meetings, either there's something wrong with you, or you don't really have much real work to do.  Meetings are a the biggest productivity sink in the corporate world, and the bane of most knowledge workers' existence.  Luckily, there are alternatives.  Most meetings can be avoided by sending concise, well-written e-mails to the right people and asking for specific responses by a specific time.  Alternatively, there is software that allows people to post notes to a communal board, and you're free to respond when you can.  Google Wave can be used for this purpose (for all its over-hype, the tool works), or 37Signals' Basecamp, or a company Wiki could work.

2. Have something you'd rather be doing, and enjoy doing it.  Oftentimes, we check in with work because we're bored.  Well, if you have the freedom of a workshifter, you have the freedom to do whatever you want.  Pick something you'd rather be doing than working, and do it.  It doesn't matter if you're going for a 10-mile run, writing a manuscript, or whittling furniture.  If you're doing something you love, you won't be tempted to check in at work.

3. Go some place you can't possibly be disturbed.  If all else fails, find a place where you can't be disturbed.  Believe it or not, the whole world isn't connected... yet.  Usually, this is an issue for workshifters who can't find good wifi, but use it to your advantage.  Find a place with no wifi and no cell phone reception and shack up there.  Extreme?  Perhaps.  Effective?  Definitely.

4. Remember why you wanted to workshift in the first place. All workshifters turn to workshifting for one reason: freedom. When workshifting is imprisoning us rather than liberating us, we're doing something wrong. Take the hint, look at what you're doing and fix what's broken.  Reclaim your freedom.

What do you think? What have you done to make sure workshifting hasn't taken over your life?


Photo Credit: Rosh PR

Workshifting is about more than just working from anywhere.  It's about a certain way to work.  Seasoned workshifters work differently than most other knowledge workers.  Many of the behaviours of workshifters are learned by necessity, but once learned, are found to be more effective than traditional methods.  Workshifting is not only positive for the freedom it gives to the worker, but the skills and lessons learned while workshifting can benefit almost all businesses and workers.  As such, the corporate world should take a good look at successful workshifters and see what it can learn from them. Here are just a few lessons that the corporate world can learn.


1) Not every e-mail is life and death

As a workshifter, you often have to contend with intermittent internet access. People who fly often know this feeling well. WiFi is not yet ubiquitous in the air, and as such, a long flight can often leave a road warrior without access to the internet or his emails for hours at a time. Strangely, this doesn't actually cause the world to end.

Office workers are all too aware of the familiar MS Outlook notification, or the buzz of the Blackberry.  The pressure to respond immediately means a break in the flow of whatever else you were doing, so that you can answer that e-mail instantly.

The workshifter, instead, will download his e-mails, and then while disconnected, take the opportunity to respond to all of them, and queue them into his outbox. Upon connectivity, the e-mail responses go out.  

A mandatory disconnection from the e-mail server would do office workers a world of good in both productivity and stress reduction.  The majority of us don't have jobs where an e-mail going without answer for 3 hours will make a difference.  If the subject of an e-mail were that important, then the sender would pick up the phone.  Also, by self-imposing e-mail blackouts, a worker trains his co-workers as to which medium to use for contacting him.  E-mail for regular communication, but a phone call for something that is urgent.

2) Employees do well with flexibility

Workshifting employees are generally more productive than their office-bound counterparts because they can do things according to their own rhythms.  Every individual has his own peaks and valleys of productivity throughout a day, and so, imposing the same schedule on everyone doesn't make sense. People perform better when they're given the opportunity to operate in an environment that best suits them.

In the coporate world, this manifests itself in a few ways.  Giving employees flex hours means that they can work when they're most efficient, instead of forcing both Tina, the mom with two kids who's up at 6 am, and Jim, the 20-something night owl to both come in to work at 9 am.

Opening up network firewalls also gives employees the flexibility to do what needs to get done.  If employees are getting the work done, recharging their creative batteries by checking Facebook for ten minutes will not harm the company.

Likewise, computer admin access for those who request it, can go a long way in an employee's productivity.  More and more people are becoming computer savvy, and those people develop their own preferences for the tools that they are most productive with.  Forcing them to use the tools that the company imposes upon them is handicapping them for no reason.

3) Focus on results

The workshifter doesn't count hours.  He can't because, oftentimes, he's working in between other commitments, at strange times, or in odd places.  Despite this, the workshifter still gets his work done.  This is because he focuses on results and not on how many hours were put in.  Workshifters work with tasks and projects, not with punch cards, and for that reason, they're more likely to get the job done, because instead of saying, "I'll work from X to Y," they say, "This needs to get done."

Similarly, the corporate world that is often predicated on a work schedule, and has the backwards habit of rewarding those who put in extra hours, could stand to learn a thing or two from the workshifter.  

By focusing on results, companies may see work get done quicker because employees don't have to fill up their days.  Instead, they get their work done, and that's all.  Just because one employee leaves at 4 pm, and the other leaves at 7 pm, it doesn't necessarily mean the one staying later is working harder.  More likely, the employee leaving earlier is working smarter.  However, there is no incentive for an employee to work smart if the company doesn't focus on results.

4) Work in any environment

Workshifters are used to working in any environment.  They work from offices, home, cafes, co-working spaces, trains, planes, hotels, and anywhere that they can set up.  Location independence is what makes them workshifters after all.  However, this kind of flexibility to work anywhere can benefit the corporate world as well.

By empowering employees to work from places other than their desks, productivity is maintained when they simply can't be there.  One example is employees who have to attend training seminars or conferences.  By allowing them the flexibility and tools to work from anywhere, they will still be able to be productive in between sessions.  Employees will not feel like they're falling behind, and employers get additional productivity.

In addition, giving the employee location flexibility can help to drastically reduce the loss of productivity from sick days.  When someone is feeling under the weather, they can choose to work from home.  That same person would either have not worked at all that day, or would have come in to work, and possibly gotten other people in the office sick, contributing to future productivity losses.

5) Push decision-making power down the chain of command

Another great trait of workshifters is their ability to get tough problems solved quickly and efficiently.  Because of their remoteness, they don't have the luxury of seeking advice, or waiting for someone else to make the call for them, and so they are forced to make quick decisions.

While this may be scary for some managers, at the end of the day, allowing employees to take more responsibility is more efficient and leads to more confident employees and a quicker more agile team.  When all decisions need to be approved by a manager, things bottleneck, and response time slows.  Employees often know exactly what the course of action to take is, but are afraid to do so, because they have never been empowered to do so.  Therefore, giving the employees the responsibility doesn't materially change the decision that's made, it just allows it to be reached faster.

The corporate world is constantly fighting against the ankle biters.  Those small firms that seem to steal away business simply because they're quicker and more agile.  By empowering employees, large firms can emulate the ankle biters and preserve their domain, while at the same time providing employees valuable leadership and decision-making experience which will allow them to grow within the company.

Conclusion

Workshifters, whether by necessity or ingenuity, have created a new way to work.  That way of working is faster and more efficient than many traditional ways of doing the same work.  There is no reason why traditional companies shouldn't learn from this new wave, and embrace some of the lessons that have come from it.


Photo Credit: mccun934

"If only I had that netbook/iPhone/Blackberry/miFi/VoIP/Macbook/digicam/other-cool-gadget, then I would be able to work from anywhere."

I used to believe that I was comfortable working from anywhere, because I grew up in an era where the tools to do so were readily available to me. But then, I started noticing that there were people around me, who had access to the same tools, but that were not using them to achieve location independence.  This led me to a realization. Tools don't make a workshifter.  Giving a man a hammer and a saw does not make him a carpenter. Similarly, giving him a smartphone and a laptop does not make him a workshifter.

Workshifters are a special breed.  While many romanticize the idea of telecommuting and location independence, a small minority actually take advantage of the opportunity.  Perhaps this is because not everyone has that luxury.  Maybe some people would like to workshift, but don't have the tools.

I don't buy it.  Look back through history and you will find workshifters in every era.  Do you think Plato wrote the Republic from the office?  Da Vinci may have painted the Mona Lisa in a studio, but his sketchbook was filled with sights from all over.  Workshifting.com's own AJ Leon talked about how Winston Churchill was the greatest workshifter of all time.

None of these men had access to the internet, Blackberries or Basecamp.  The workshifter's greatest tools are his own personal traits.  Here are just a few of the traits that a workshifter needs to be successful:

1) Flexible
Workshifting means being able to work anywhere under any circumstances.  If you need rigid routines and structure to accomplish work, then you need to work on your flexibility before you can consider the workshifting lifestyle.

2) Ability to deal with uncertainty
The challenges of working from outside an office usually aren't obvious until they arise.  Dead batteries, spotty internet connections, sudden mobs of teenagers invading the Starbucks you're working from, bumping into old or new friends.  Any of these can happen at a moment's notice while workshifting, so workshifters need to be able to deal.

3) Being on the cutting edge
Plato may not have been a big technologist, but I bet he knew exactly which inks and papers travelled best.  A minimum amount of tech savvy is required for being a workshifter, because you need to be able to solve tech problems when they arise, and also because being at the cutting edge gives you an advantage, and lets you stay competitive.

4) Being comfortable with solitude
The typical workshifter doesn't enjoy the camaraderie of a packed office. Instead, he works alone. Even when he is surrounded by others in a cafe, or other public place, the people around him are usually strangers, and while being surrounded by them might be comforting to some, the work of a workshifter is generally solitary. This means fewer people to bounce things off of. Less moral support on a particularly difficult day. A true workshifter needs to be comfortable in his solitude

5) Self-motivated
Workshifters are self-starters by nature, or they learn to become self-starters.  If you depend on the 9-5 clock to get work done, you'll be in for a nasty drop in productivity once the clock no longer holds any real power.

6) Creative
Workshifters are generally creative people, because they often work in creative industries, but the creativity goes beyond the subject of their work.  They also need to be creative in problem-solving, find creative ways to motivate themselves, and generally just need constant creative stimulation to keep them fueled.

Anyone who has worked in an office has seen the legions of workers with their laptops and Blackberries, all of whom come in at 8, and leave at 6, and who essentially use these devices as ways to not pay attention during meetings.  Give someone who's not a workshifter by nature the tools to workshift, and s/he will use them from the office.

There's nothing wrong with this, in and of itself. But it's important to realize that those tools, while they may help in the workshifting process are not essential to it. Having the tools, does not a workshifter make!

What are your thoughts?


Photo Credit: Orionlee