Peace and Quiet

Peace and quiet. I don’t get a lot of it at my house. I live in a townhouse so space is somewhat limited. Between my wife and I and our two daughters there is not a lot of space left for silly daddy to play with his computers. I think I have about 3 square feet of space in my house that I can call my own. I downgraded to a laptop to save space and make it easy to get the heck out of dodge when I need some time to work out a particularly tricky bug. It’s not the kids or my wife that bother me. It’s just that my whole house is a distraction. There is always something to clean or a diaper to change or a ukulele to practice or a blog entry to write.

I have found that Starbuck’s has become a great resource. I’ll have a cup of coffee while I work and I can sit there for a couple hours, inside or out and enjoy a little work. I really like to do work here. They always seem to have a comfy chair and a decent WI-FI signal and I don’t feel guilty about hanging out for a couple hours when my coffee costs $7. They were giving out free 2 hour WI-FI through Bell in Canada and AT&T in the U.S. but now they have made it completely free. No more time restriction. When a lot of other coffee shops also allow WI-FI for free the sheer number of Starbuck’s makes this an excellent bet for some work on the road.

Sometimes I will head to my best friend’s house after the kids are in bed and I will work on coding while he is raid leading a World of Warcraft raid. This works pretty well because he is so engrossed he pretty much keeps to himself. If he is reading this, he needs to get new internet so his ping doesn’t drop to 1200ms when I download a project file.

I do work from home for my full time job as well from time to time. You want to keep your distractions to a minimum. Don’t put the TV on in the background. Schedule your day like any other including food breaks. Stretch often. Find time to go for a walk. It’s important to stay focused.

Peace doesn’t have to include quiet. Works where you are comfortable.and stay focused. Also any net port in a storm.