So it has now been two weeks of officially working at home now and okay, so the first week didn’t really count because I hardly got a chance to touch work, the second week has been a pretty good indication of what it is going to be like.
Firstly, I must confess that although I hate the travelling into UCT on a Monday and Friday, the actual experience of being in the office turns out to be a pretty good one because it is important that I connect with my colleagues there as well as abuse the UCT network and resources as much as possible before I return to my more restrictive resources back at home. Still, I am now more than ever convinced that I am right and that only one visit a week would be more than sufficient as twice a week is proving overkill and in fact, you get less output from me when I am in the office than when I am working out of home.
The main reasons for this of course is all the catching up chatting that needs to be done, the lure of the cafeteria’s muffins and the technically unlimited bandwidth I have access to over there. Back home, left to my own devices and using my limited cap, it turns out that I am far more productive and less prone to be distracted – in fact, usually it is Chantelle that is the most distractive influence there!
Unfortunately I still don’t have my land line installed at the unit yet, so I have to rely on Vodacom’s less than stellar 3G service that has a nasty habit of falling over every now and then. Luckily it has been fairly stable while I’ve needed it and has even managed to surprise me by broadcasting a stronger signal that when I initially tested the system out way before I moved in. The only realy problem in terms of connectivity at the moment is in fact cap, but thankfully Ryan has graciously offered to loan me his 3G sim card to make up for any short falls that I might experience during the month.
Of course, with my Telkom ASDL and land line scheduled to be installed at the end of this month, that shouldn’t remain a problem for too much longer.
On the work side of things it turns out that it is rather relaxing to work from home and I feel a lot less stressed out than what I would feel at the office. Luckily I am the type of person who likes to work alone and who can motivate themselves to work, so the actual work is in no danger of not actually getting done.
In fact, probably the only real disadvantage of this whole working at home thing is that if one isn’t careful, the boundary lines separating work from play time tends to get very blurry and often you’ll find yourself voluntarily chained to the desk for far longer than what you would have worked on something had you been in the office environment.
So to sum it all up, this working from home gig is certainly enjoyable at the moment and thanks to my fairly decent setup here, I don’t suffer from work-related headaches any more! And with my ample music collection and figurines all around, how could I possible find this lonely? :P
