Guilt is a funny thing. It's amazing how quickly that nagging voice can kick in, leading us to question our actions or feel that we have fallen short of some kind of accepted standard. Workshifting comes with its own set of guilty feelings.

First off, there's that little thing of the commute. My husband and I live in Chicago, a city that is renowned for its gridlocked highways and nightmarish commutes. While most days I have a commute of about 1.5 seconds - the time it takes me to walk from our bedroom to my office - my husband spends anywhere from an hour and a half to more than two hours commuting from our home just north of the city to his office out in the suburbs.

On most days I get up later than him and still start my work day a good 45-60 minutes before he even reaches his desk. While I jokingly tell people that he's commuting "for the both of us," there's not a day that goes by when I'm not marred with guilt about our huge discrepancies in commuting time.

Working from home can also lead to a pretty interesting mix of feelings of guilt. On the one hand, I often feel guilty about focusing exclusively on work when there are things to be done around the house. On the other hand, if I'm doing laundry or running errands, I often feel guilty about not working. 

I still find it hard to step away from my desk during the work day - even if it's for something like running to the bank or picking up milk. I know this probably doesn't make much sense. After all, I'm not taking advantage of the very things that attracts so many people to Workshifting. I guess there's just something about the 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. workday that is so ingrained in my system.

Finally, I also often feel guilty when I feel I'm not working "hard" enough. This is especially the case when my workload is low. There's just something about sitting alone, without deadlines and pressing projects that makes me feel extremely uncomfortable and almost "worthless." It's completely different than when you're in an office and everyone around you is having a slow day.

I wonder if these things will change the longer I work outside of a traditional office environment. What about you guys? Do you share similar feelings of guilt?


Photo Credit: Music2Work2

I recently wrote about a friend of mine who hosts a successful, productive workshifting collective from his home office. I'm a veteran workshifter, and to be honest, I really like working all by my lonesome in my office or studio. So I was especially curious to see how and why a group of workshifters had created a cooperative work environment. Here's what I learned during a visit to the team's HQ.

The Team
There are currently five people on the workshifting team -- four are founding members who adhere to regular work schedules and one member is a PhD candidate who occasionally uses the space to work on her dissertation. The regulars work in IT support, software programming and Web communications. Most of the gang boasts a comfortable level of technical proficiency, which is an advantage for troubleshooting glitches as a group and never leaves any one person with the responsibility of being onsite tech support.

The Scene
The group works in the master suite on the second floor of my friend's house. Garfunkel, the housecat, perches in a handmade cat tree steeped in southern exposure. Boxes of tea collect dust atop a side table (this is a group of coffee drinkers, mostly), and a Britta pitcher sits in the center of the large, multi-person worktable. The walls are painted a fresh shade of Mediterranean blue, and a red exercise ball rests in the center of the room.

Origin
With one member of the workshifting collective hailing from the UK, I wanted to know how all these remote paths had crossed. It turns out that the founding members of the group all attended the same church and had been working off and on in pairs at local coffee shops. My friend proposed that they officially set up shop in his house and see how things took from there. They've kept to a regular schedule ever since.

Balance
Opening up your house - and your work rhythm - to other workshifters certainly comes with the risk of personal and professional disruptions. Even the closest of friends may have radically different expectations and behaviors in the workplace. It shouldn't come as any surprise that workshifters absolutely must have compatible working styles to successfully share professional space. And they also need solid, straightforward communication skills to be able to say, "Hey, I'm taking an important call. Can you please turn the music down?"

Food
These folks may work outside of the traditional office, but that doesn't mean that the traditional office food culture doesn't factor in. One regular told me, "This is where I consume the best food of the day." The gang tends to eat en masse -- either cooking in the house kitchen, eating out together or bringing carryout back to the workplace. On the day I visited the group, I arrived during a lunchtime break. Food that day had been delivered courtesy of a workshifter's husband.

Benefits
According to the group, a significant advantage of workshifting as a team is being able to leverage the synergy of working together to increase personal productivity. Another biggie is creating a strong sense of community and supportive social network. For the mother in the group, having a greater work/life balance is key. Across the board, creating a space that has fewer "home" distractions (like responding to a stack of dirty dishes) is a perk of working with other workshifters in an office environment. And being able to leave workspaces intact at the end of the day without packing up every last office artifact (as one must do at a coffee shop, for example) is a huge benefit.

Recommendations
If you're considering hosting or joining a workshifting team, keep in mind the following:

•    Individual job types have a direct impact on the team. For example, if a workshifter's job requires her to spend the majority of the workday on the phone, she may not be a good fit for a group of folks who spend the majority of their time concentrating on writing code or copy.

•    Work styles must mesh well, period. Music in the background could be a delight for some and a distraction for others.

•    Create a designated workspace that doesn't interrupt the flow of the underlying household. The flipside is that a messy house won't negatively impact a designated workspace.

•    Build a workshifting community that feeds your own productivity and reduces any feelings of isolation that you might have.

•    Be wary of (and quick to weed out) candidates who treat the occasional remote workday as a day off. This type of energy can easily erode the productivity of the entire group.

When I asked if the group had a disaster plan - we live in Minnesota, the land of 10,000 types of weather - my question was met with uproarious laughter. OK, no disaster plan. Obviously not a deal breaker. But it's clear that this team of consummate professionals has discovered and implemented a healthy, productive workshifting cooperative. I'll leave you with the wise words of one of the regulars: Workshifting allows you to fit "work into life, not life into work."

What do you think?

Just recently, I found myself lying in bed at 1:30 am with my iPhone in hand answering emails and responding to people who I missed on twitter and Facebook that day. After switching off the device I realized that I was then spending another hour laying there thinking about the next day and how I might be able to work on the issues, problems or ideas presented in the emails. This sounds somewhat absurd doesn't it? I mean it wasn't more than a few years ago that you shut down the computer and that was the end of your day. Now we have mobile devices following us around and I know that I am not the only one perpetuating this issue!

I suppose you think that the rest of the article is going to be tips on how to find balance. Well, maybe a bit of it will be but I would really love to poll the readers of the workshifting blog on how you find balance! As remote workers and workshifters it feels second nature to pick up your phone during dinner to check your email. It feels natural to want to check the status on a project when you're really supposed to be focused on your kids school play. So what gives? Do we need to start setting up rules for ourselves? Here are two things that I am trying to reclaim a bit of sanity and hopefully make me more efficient with the time I am spending working.

1. Morning and Evening Email Redux - I remember hearing advice years ago saying that the worst thing you can do to yourself is watch the news first thing in the morning and just before you turn in at night. After all there is rarely anything good or uplifting on the news so why inundate yourself with that energy to start and end your day. I am going to apply this advise to email and social networks for now on. My advise would be to spend 15 minutes in silence each morning. Maybe visualize your day and set your wheels on the right track to move forward. Maybe it is talking a brisk walk before the morning shower. Either way I recommend clearing the mind every morning to get aligned. For those evening email and social media stints I recommend a good book. Read something enjoyable that settles the mind and leaves you with positive feelings. If you find yourself grumbling about the world forces around you each day, change the forces!

2. Reclaim the Weekend - Ok, so not all of us can afford to ignore our work life all weekend and maybe some of us are even scheduled to be actively working on the weekends. For those of you in that situation this should be called Reclaim a Day. I love my job and I love what I do. That being said it's important to disconnect and recharge for a day a week. I find this helps me immensely. Every Sunday i turn off the computers and leave the mobile devices to play sweet tunes in my ears rather than being a email machine or work device. I can't give you specific to do's here as we are all different but after chatting with a friend recently about this topic I told him to rekindle a passion. We grew up together golfing and fishing on the weekends as kids. Why not revisit some of those things? There is always time for yard work and chores. Go rekindle a passion.

These are two of the things I am doing to keep me fresh and creative. I would love to hear your thoughts. Are you able to put away the technology for a bit or are you checking your email at 1:30 am each night? What rules or habits have you created to help you stay fresh?


Photo Credit: Jorge Quinteros

I came across this thought-provoking article on BNET the other day about the impact of gender on how men's brains and women's brains function--and the impact this has on how we work.

The article cites Sally Helgesen, co-author of The Female Vision: Women's Real Power at Work, who says that women are more skilled multitaskers while men are great at single-mindedly focusing on one thing for a long period of time. According to Helgesen, this tendency to multitask well is one reason women often over-commit.

Another difference:

One major difference between the sexes that really impacts managers is that women are (in general) more likely to speak up if they're unhappy about their immediate circumstances and environment, while men tend to suffer in silence. (Helgesen's term for it is "men will suck it up and tolerate a lot more for a lot longer.")

As a longtime workshifter, I've never really thought about the question of how gender might impact workshifting - who is likely to take to it, and what that means for teams of workshifters and those who manage them. But as more people shift out of office settings, it seems that figuring out some of this stuff will be very useful.

So I turn it to you. What's been your experience? Have you noticed any differences in work styles or approaches between the men and women you workshift with? If yes, what's your takeaway?


Photo Credit: OtisArchives2

My husband and I both work at non-profit companies and don't make a lot of money. When our daughter was born, we knew there was no way we could afford daycare, so I convinced my boss to allow me to work part-time in the office and part-time from home. To my surprise, she agreed, and everyone thought I was incredibly lucky. My friends and family thought I had it made. I had visions of happily-working-away-in-my-pajamas dancing in my head.

Unfortunately, my romantic notions of working from home were short-lived. In my experience, working from home was a lot harder than working in the office. This is especially true when you have a demanding toddler fighting for your attention day in and day out. There were many days working at home when I yearned to be back in the office again to actually get some work done.

Somehow I survived the year through a lot of trial and error. Then my husband got promoted. His promotion meant a change in our schedules when turned me into the main caregiver for our daughter. I thought I would have to resign from my job, until my boss surprised me again and agreed to allow me to work from home full-time. Although I knew I was lucky to have a boss that valued my work and trusted me enough to let me work from home--and full-time, no less--I knew that double the hours could mean double the trouble for me in terms of juggling full-time workshifting with full-time motherhood. However, three simple lessons I have learned from working at home over the past year will be a strong foundation for my success in this upcoming year...and beyond.


Working in your pajamas is overrated. Showering and brushing your teeth are not.

Don't get me wrong, working in my pajamas felt extremely luxurious the first couple of weeks. Then slacking off on showering and brushing my teeth came next. Working in bed was the natural progression, followed by falling asleep next to my laptop in bed. Working in your pajamas may work for some people, but I had to accept that it did not work for me. It made me feel lazy and unfocused. I needed to start my day getting ready as if I were going to the office--on a casual Friday, of course. This act of getting ready prepared my mind and body for work. At my desk. With clean teeth and hair.


Having a set routine is imperative, no matter what your friends and family think.

A friend once said to me, "So, how does it feel to be a lady of leisure?" It goes without saying that that friend doesn't have kids. Many people think I just lounge around all day because I "work from home"--wink, wink--when, in fact, I have to create a very detailed and exact schedule for my days in order to be productive, and efficient in that productivity. I stick to a set routine so that I can get my work done and still have time for the other aspects of my life, including a little leisure, yes. So, when a friend calls to hang out during a time that I'm supposed to be working, I politely decline.


There's a time for work and a time for play.

This is probably the hardest lesson learned because it involves that tricky little monster. No, not my toddler! I'm talking about guilt--guilt about working while my daughter whines for my attention. This was the single biggest hindrance to my productivity when I first started workshifting. I couldn't handle the guilt! To make matters worse, often times my daughter merely wanted me to sit on the floor next to her while she played. I finally learned that I had to draw a line for both our good. So, I break up my day, alternating work and play. When we play, we play hard. But when it's time to work, I work hard and let her learn to play on her own. This is still a lesson we're both learning each day.

Of course, there were many other lessons I learned over the past year, and I'm sure many more lessons are waiting to be learned over the coming year. I look forward to sharing more with you here.

If you had to narrow it down, what are the three single most important lessons you've learned while workshifting?


Photo Credit: Bright Star

I recently spent a week in bed. No, not in the John Lennon-Yoko Ono love-in kind of way; rather, the "I feel like crap and don't want to move" model. I forsook Twitter and became strangely obsessed instead with the details of a murder trial on TruTV.

The problem is that, when you're a solo workshifter, the work doesn't end when you're not there. And there is a big distinction between planned absences (whether a vacation or a hospitalization) and those of the unplanned variety.

The challenge with unplanned work stoppages is to manage expectations as well as you typically manage the tasks on your to-do list.

From my experience, there are five actions you must take to avoid a workshifting meltdown:

1.    Check Your Calendar. Seriously, check it. I thought I knew what was on my schedule, but I would have missed a conference call on Day One if I hadn't double-checked and found it there. (It was instead rescheduled.)

2.    Triage. It's important to figure out what has to be done, and what you can reasonably knock out during the odd hour of lucidity. Either because of luck or sheer determination, I got sick three days after a major client conference--which saved me from pretending to function when I was actually quite useless. It's also important to figure out what's going to have to wait--and then take action to make sure everyone else is on the same page.

3.    Contact Everyone. Whether it's clients, colleagues, or co-workers, it's important to reach out and let people know that you won't be reachable for a few days.

4.    Renegotiate Deadlines. Most deadlines are negotiable in an emergency--and being unable to process a coherent thought certainly qualified in my case.

5.    Check Your Email at least Once a Day. I know some people will disagree, but business doesn't stop just because you're not there. Don't miss out on queries from colleagues or prospects. You don't necessarily have to answer their questions; but you probably do want to acknowledge their emails.

Of course, sometimes you just have to pretend to function. I don't get really sick often, but I once went on a prospecting call when I really should have stayed in bed because I was afraid I'd loss the opportunity if I tried to reschedule. (I won the business and somehow my new client didn't catch anything from me.)

Things you can avoid: Writing new blog posts, Twitter updates, and everything in your RSS Reader. Seriously, you can catch up later. Plus, would you tweet when you were drunk? So why tweet when you're drugged up on cold meds--or worse.

What have I missed? What have you done to avoid a workshifting meltdown?

Photo Credit: Snugg

Over the past year I was banished from cubicle-ville, where I more or less worked a 10 a.m to 6 p.m. shift five days a week as a print reporter. After my position evaporated, I spent the past year freelancing, looking for a "real" job, and finally launching a new career as a social media manager for a digital marketing agency. During this time I've come to appreciate five largely unspoken benefits to workshifting.

1. Safety in sickness. Earlier this month I felt miserable for three days. I ended up taking half a  Tuesday off and half a Thursday off. I was sick enough to have to take it easy, but not quite feeling so bad that I had to ignore work completely. What I really appreciated through this sick spell was that - and I'll admit this may sound a bit gross - the toilet was only 20 feet away, and the bed 15 feet. I could visit the bathroom 20 times and no one would notice, and I didn't have to worry that Joe from accounting was hogging the only stall. Then whenever I needed to rest for a little while, I didn't have to sneak outside, or try and relax in the company break room. I say this because the ability to toil away in the place I feel safer and more comfortable in than anywhere else in the world, allows me to be at least partly effective, instead of having to take the entire day off. In a traditional job, you either have to feel nearly fine, or go home. There's not a happy medium. You also have to be worried at work that others are watching, worried they might catch what you have. Had I been at my old post, chances are I would have had to take two or three days off, not so as a workshifter.


2. More windows. Because newspapers are traditionally old institutions, their buildings are often  drab, windowless structures located in cramped downtowns. In the winter it's too cold, and in the summer too hot. My home office is naturally located in a neighborhood I chose to live in, has lots of great windows, and on sunny days I can watch and hear ships slide in and out of the Duluth Minnesota port on Lake Superior. During the winter, I can light a fire in my fireplace and work in front of it. In the summer, I can open or close as many windows as I desire. In other words, the views and temperature controls of my office, are all in my control.  And parking's free!


3. Peer pressure nonexistent. While I have many friends, co-workers, clients and a boss scattered all over the globe, because they aren't sitting next to me I often find myself not spending as much time worrying about what others might say about my ideas. Obviously you always want to be very open to constructive criticism, but I feel much more freedom now, working solo, than I ever did when bosses and co-workers were always meandering about, reading what I was writing. Being physically alone allows me to feel freer to flex my own mental muscles more liberally.


4. Connected with others in ways that works better for me. One of my co-workers is in the Philippians. I'm working with a customer whose team is spread between the Silicon Valley and India. And many of my new colleagues and friends I've only met through Skype, blogs, e-mails and tweets. So while I work solo every day, I feel like I'm virtually surrounded by great people who are never more than a chat or tweet away, yet distant enough to not get irritating, or overbearing. I also have gained lots of input from forums like Third Tribe, with people who know exactly what I'm going through. Often because geography is no barrier, I meet more people whose thoughts and optimism about the world lines up with mine far more than I'd ever found locally.


5. Doesn't feel like work. There's something about working in the place you relax that helps make me feel like I'm not actually working. Most of the time I'm in my upstairs office, with my cats sleeping nearby. If I'm not there, a local Italian restaurant or coffee shop with WiFi, is where I can be found, meeting with clients. I don't worry about deciding what's for lunch. I hit the fridge when I'm hungry. I occasionally run an errand at 11 a.m., and do a couple of hours of work beginning at 11 p.m. I now work for myself, on what I want, when I want. And it feels pretty darn good.

What are some of the unspoken workshifting benefits you've never seen mentioned here?


Photo Credit: Stewf
 

So, with the World Cup upon us, employers are once again getting twitchy about the high levels of absenteeism - or 'throwing sickies' - which may well arise over the next few weeks.  No surprise there of course, based on the evidence of previous tournaments when big matches are scheduled, especially those involving the British teams.
 
Yet as an employer, the solution is firmly in your own hands.  Your HR departments will already be under varying legal, social and environmental pressures to introduce more flexible working practices.  And the good news is that, whatever cultural or organisational issues your organisation may have to address,   technology no longer presents a costly barrier. 
 
Easy-to-use voice and data collaboration tools providing secure remote access to your network, web conferencing, training and diagnostics are now within financial reach of even the smallest business.  As a result, staff can remain fully operational and stay in touch with colleagues and customers, wherever they are.
 
By doing this, employers can help their staff achieve a better work/life balance.  And, as recent surveys have shown, such moves are likely to have a really positive effect on staff satisfaction and retention levels - without damaging productivity.   Sounds like a winning goal to me.

What do you think?


Photo Credit: Phalinn