My kitchen table. I bought a desk some months back but cannot fit a phone, laptop, and spare monitor on it at the same time, and I like having all three for doing work on Appointment Reminder.
Sometime this year I will probably rent a proper office at the local incubator.
I live alone, but went with a 2 bedroom apartment just so I could have an office separate from where I sleep and "relax" (although I never got around to purchasing a TV so that didn't work out) because I always figure if I get stressed/annoyed I can "escape" and do something else, although I guess the cheap option is to go outside or something. So uh, home office.
I sit outdoors alot in the summer. I use an umbrella, and a bit of proper angling and screen-tilt. Nothing special- now that I have a netbook I usually grab it and go outside (using HG makes keeping synced a breeze).
That's right; it's a Thinkpad X200s. Avoiding a reflective screen should go without saying, but it's surprising how many people don't understand this. The X200s is definitely the best I've ever used for mobile purposes: 1.2kg, high-res matte display, battery is easily swappable. It's got a low-voltage chipset, so with an SSD you can get six hours or so from a 9-cell battery, though usually I won't spend more than half the day outside since the seating is usually not as comfy.
I do use it in the sun occasionally for short periods, but a) I live in Seattle, and b) it actually gets uncomfortably hot if left in the sun for too long since it's black.
If you get a whiteboard, I would suggest putting it far enough away from your desk that you need to stand up (or roll over to it) in order to use it. I've found that kind of physical separation very helpful in creating a mental separation between "designing mode" and "implementing mode."
I've been thinking lately about building a white board web app. I can think of a number of benefits that this would offer, but I have also been wondering if not having the mental separation that you pointed out would overshadow all the possible benefits.
Good suggestion. I used to do something similar when I had a rolling white board. I be sure to keep it away from my desk as I was planning/designing and would then wheel it back over to my work area when it was implementation time and/or I needed reminders.
Though, I typically solve my most complex problems by leaving the computer and talking a walk around the block. That doesn't work out so well in these cold South Carolina winters, though. I need to get back out to CA.
I know it's all relative, but I woke up to -24F last week. Makes it real hard to think of South Carolina (of which my only memory is driving there in mid summer in a non A/C pickup truck) as "cold" ;-)
The coldest I have seen this year is about 14-18F. However, the downstairs heat was on the fritz for a bit so I regularly had 50-degree temperatures inside. That wasn't fun.
Oo, you're right. Summers here are absolutely terrible.
Strangely enough, my girlfriend is from New York and finds the cold here unbearable. She explained it as the inconsistency in temperatures as what makes it seem so bad to her. In NY, it was pretty consistently cold in the winter so she was able to expect it and adapt. Down here, you may have a 70F evening and then wake up to 30F and snowing the next day... that or you'll be followed around by tornadoes. :)
Thanks! This was my first serious carpentry project apart from just fixing things around the house, but I've been watching shows like The New Yankee Workshop and This Old House for years, as well as reading every Wood/Handyman/American Woodworker magazine I can get a subscription to.
I think I learned more though throughout the course of this project than I have in the past 10 years of just reading about how to do it. A typical day would end with my wife asking "How is it going out there?" (in the garage), and I would answer, "Well, I'm learning a lot about how not to do things."
Nice work. I've always liked built-in storage and workspaces. It just seems like a cleaner more organized look than stand alone furniture. And all the better that you could design it to your exact specifications.
I typically do a local coffee shop in the morning then finish up at the home office. The morning walk is refreshing and once I get in a groove at the coffee shop it's easy to finish strong at home. Sometimes it can be too hard to get rolling while at home in the morning -- too comfy I suppose.
That is exactly my motivation for going to the coffee shop. I find I can focus on just getting there first thing and the rest of the day goes a lot smoother. If I sit at home, I make breakfast, then eat it slowly, then surf HN, then it's 10:30am and I haven't done anything.
I do my 2-5 days a week (depending on if I go to the real office) at about 50% coffee shop, then lunch and home. I try to average a coffee or refill per hour there so that I'm not pissing the owners off, but if I'm there really early, I might cut that back. When the traffic starts filling up the shop, though, I make sure I'm a paying customer.
When I was still an aspiring writer (might return to that one day, right now I'm an aspiring startup dude) I used to do all my writing in coffee shops.
I find that the only way I can do anything creative is with a lot of noise around me, the randomer the better. Helps me focus and get into the flow for some reason.
Honestly, if there isn't enough noise I will often play three different pieces of music at once to create it.
As for b) and c) I never stayed at one place for more than a few hours.
a) Only when it's super loud. I have headphones and like some background noise.
b) I work at home 2-3 days/week and the coffee shop the other days. Sometimes I'll hit a different coffee shop, but not usually.
c) It's a local shop and the owner has no problem with me or the other regulars that come in. I always buy a coffee and depending on the time a breakfast or lunch burrito (also home made by another local business - super tasty). I also helped her fix a computer problem the other day. There is something a lot different about going to a locally owned shop versus something like a sbux.
a.) a pair of foam earplugs does wonders for noise cancellation. much cheaper than $200 noise-canceling headphones, and works just as well (assuming you don't want to listen to music)
I actually pair program over voip at coffee shops, so in my case the noise issue is more about making sure I'm not sitting right next to the bean grinder.
I don't think I could handle the same place all the time, but in Seattle there are lots of options; if you don't mind driving ~20 minutes you could practically go to a different coffee shop every day for a month.
a) Not particularly. I notice this affects people differently, however. I love working next to live music and if I don't' I can ignore it with headphones. My father, on the other hand, can't handle the distraction and is driven nuts by that sort of shit.
b) I try to change it up. It's easy to do in the localities I frequent. I'm sure it's harder for other people. I feel like I could do it anywhere I could get a 3g connection.
c) I like to frequent places that are very student and musician friendly, and am lucky to live in places with local businesses which embrace that sort of thing. In general these people are pretty tolerant of heavy laptop/internet usage.
Living in a big student town can cause problems for seating in coffee shops. Finals week or mid-quarter midterm dates are times when it's particularly impossible to find a place to get some work done. This has led to some contention with patrons who want space to just read the paper or talk with a friend. One coffee shop I attend has chosen to designate special space for the more casual patron to ensure they have a spot (see: http://daviswiki.org/Mishkas_Cafe).
Believe it or not I do much of my work walking along the street. When I'm doing office hours at YC (and the weather's good and we don't need to look at screens) I usually suggest going for a walk.
Just today I've heard a theory, that when you walk around brain is more able to try new ways of thinking and solving problems, because the 'motion center' in the brain is doing what it's supposed to do: handling one's movements. On the contrary when we are not moving, this center can often
overwhelm the thought process with already established habits, which makes trying new things harder.
I thing it works - even in offices many people start walking in circles when they have an important decision to make.
Funny, in my language the word meaning 'reflexively', 'instinctively' is in a form which can be literally translated 'out of the movement', which quite fits this theory.
I didn't look for the scientific background, but I know from the context of how I've heard this, that it was taught at the univ on a psychology specialization.
Interesting. Sometimes we speak metaphorically of life's inertia. If the part of the brain that controls our actual movement also controls our habits of thought, I guess we are not far off!
Nietzsche said that all great thoughts are conceived while walking... perhaps this is why.
That's funny: usually when I'm about to make a phone call I almost automatically get out of my chair/sofa and start walking around. For some reason having a phone conversation works better for me when walking around. Perhaps it's due to the same theory.
Thank you for giving Aristotle some credit! Even though modern science has been able to correct some of his ideas, he was an amazing intellect and still has much to teach us.
When I was working on my thesis I did much of the same thing -- the majority of my "thinking" time was spent walking in a loop around the college gardens, and I would only go inside to type out a few paragraphs once I had composed them mentally.
I got quite annoyed when the college closed the gardens between midnight and 4 AM...
When a student I would regularly be out and about between midnight and dawn - it's when I did my best work. I never had any concerns. Still don't. It's a pity that you live somewhere that makes it an issue.
Aside from the danger of tripping over my feet, it was quite safe. Oxford dates from a period when the "town" would routinely riot against the "gown", and college are, quite literally, fortified.
The Wadham college gardens aren't quite so well guarded as the college proper, but they're still surrounded by a 15' stone wall -- hardly something anyone is going to climb over just on the chance that they can mug someone.
I should've looked it up, but I'm on my mobile and 'net access is inconvenient - sorry. Thanks for the amswer. Your comment sounded familiar - I was at Corpus, Cambridge - so the experience is similar.
An old professor of mine used to go on huge country walks for a lot of the day. He is one of the top figures in his field of AI and attributes most of his success to being able to just walk out of the campus and into a huge field. He is at a large post-polytechnic and is courted by the likes of Oxbridge and UCL/ICL almost yearly, but stays because he likes the nearby field.
Whenever I'm reading a book to learn something I tend to walk randomly around the house while reading... For some reason, it feels like it helps me to concentrate on the content and I remember it better that way...
I am a runner. I run 60 minutes to 120 minutes / day. I understand this. But at some point, you do have to click buttons in some divine ordered pattern, right? Or are you saying you don't even do this?
As a frequent visitor to the islands (my dad lives there), how do you keep from going completely stir-crazy? I've thought about moving out there and then flying to SF occasionally for networking and stuff but I just think I would go nuts.
I used to have a home office, but we moved into an (allegedly) temporary place and my desk is just in a corner of the living room now. It's not anything approaching ideal and we're hoping to buy a house soon so I can have my office back.
We "officially" open on Monday, but we are already functionally open and a group of us have been working out of the space for about a month. The picture above only shows one small section. It has open shared spaces, a small lounge, a collection of private offices and meeting space. If you are a north Chicagoan, stop by!
Coffee shops are great, I really love working out of them and we have some awesome ones in the area, but I needed a change. IMO, coworking spaces can do a good job of having the positive atmosphere of a coffee shop while also being conducive to actually getting work done and they make it easier to connect with people working on similar things. It's also a great way to crowdsource an awesome office for people who otherwise would be working in more isolated environments.
In the lab, at school, for the ~30 hours immediately before a project is due. I know my time management skills are non-existent, but I actually quite enjoy coding non-stop for over a day. I usually bring my coffee maker and a bunch of fruit and have at 'er.
I split my time between a local coffee shop and at home. I simply can't sit at the house all day so on days that I don't go to the gym around lunch I instead hit the coffee shop.
There's a small group of older guys who work from the coffee shop and it's nice to have a little chit chat with them during the day. Found out today one of the guys is retired and worked at Bell Labs back in the hey day. Turns out he knows Kernighan and Ritchie and was around when those guys were hacking away to make C and working on Unix. Amazing the people that one can randomly meet.
I work in two separate office for most of my time (in Sunnivale and Mountain View), primarily at home during weekend, and in some coffee shop when I am in San Francisco or in other places.
I work at home in a non-distinct office. I wish that I had my own office some where in the house but the place just isn't big enough to accommodate that scenario.
I am going to try to arrange for this in my next move, though. I find that I have a much easier time concentrating when I can "separate" myself from the rest of the house with the option of wandering about the house with a laptop when I see fit.
125 comments
[ 4.9 ms ] story [ 183 ms ] threadSometime this year I will probably rent a proper office at the local incubator.
Currently, working from a hipster coffee shop. Makes for interesting scenery.
Previously, I worked at a tea cafe whose website I built, so I got all my drinks for free.
And before that I worked at a local coworking facility.
What laptop do you use? Are you enthusiastic about its outdoor use?
In my experience for basic stuff like writing words or code, a matte screen in the shadow is fine outdoors.
I do use it in the sun occasionally for short periods, but a) I live in Seattle, and b) it actually gets uncomfortably hot if left in the sun for too long since it's black.
Yes, it surprised me the first time I brought my shiny new Compaq outdoors. :)
http://dropup.net/7mwid4-2w45cb.jpg.html
still a bit bare, suggestions welcome
Though, I typically solve my most complex problems by leaving the computer and talking a walk around the block. That doesn't work out so well in these cold South Carolina winters, though. I need to get back out to CA.
Cold? South Carolina? Does. Not. Compute :-)
I know it's all relative, but I woke up to -24F last week. Makes it real hard to think of South Carolina (of which my only memory is driving there in mid summer in a non A/C pickup truck) as "cold" ;-)
Oo, you're right. Summers here are absolutely terrible.
Strangely enough, my girlfriend is from New York and finds the cold here unbearable. She explained it as the inconsistency in temperatures as what makes it seem so bad to her. In NY, it was pretty consistently cold in the winter so she was able to expect it and adapt. Down here, you may have a 70F evening and then wake up to 30F and snowing the next day... that or you'll be followed around by tornadoes. :)
Before: http://family.efinke.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/11/House-Vi...
After: http://family.efinke.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/IMG_5086...
Some more "after" pictures, which might be of interest to anyone else that enjoys woodworking as an "away-from-computer" hobby:
Drawers: http://family.efinke.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/IMG_5089...
http://family.efinke.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/IMG_5098...
http://family.efinke.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/IMG_5078...
Custom sliding shelves: http://family.efinke.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/IMG_5080...
Kudos to you mister, the rest of us mere mortals can but bow before your presence.
I think I learned more though throughout the course of this project than I have in the past 10 years of just reading about how to do it. A typical day would end with my wife asking "How is it going out there?" (in the garage), and I would answer, "Well, I'm learning a lot about how not to do things."
a) Does the noise bother you?
b) Do you ever get sick of being in the same place everyday?
c) Does the owner ever get sick of you being there everyday?
I find that the only way I can do anything creative is with a lot of noise around me, the randomer the better. Helps me focus and get into the flow for some reason.
Honestly, if there isn't enough noise I will often play three different pieces of music at once to create it.
As for b) and c) I never stayed at one place for more than a few hours.
b) Yes. This is why I am constantly checking out new places. Luckily I live in a place with lots of options.
c) Generally don't notice due to b). And I work from home too, so I'm not there 9-5.
b) I work at home 2-3 days/week and the coffee shop the other days. Sometimes I'll hit a different coffee shop, but not usually.
c) It's a local shop and the owner has no problem with me or the other regulars that come in. I always buy a coffee and depending on the time a breakfast or lunch burrito (also home made by another local business - super tasty). I also helped her fix a computer problem the other day. There is something a lot different about going to a locally owned shop versus something like a sbux.
diy with an old set of broken earbuds easy enough.
I don't think I could handle the same place all the time, but in Seattle there are lots of options; if you don't mind driving ~20 minutes you could practically go to a different coffee shop every day for a month.
b) I try to change it up. It's easy to do in the localities I frequent. I'm sure it's harder for other people. I feel like I could do it anywhere I could get a 3g connection.
c) I like to frequent places that are very student and musician friendly, and am lucky to live in places with local businesses which embrace that sort of thing. In general these people are pretty tolerant of heavy laptop/internet usage.
Living in a big student town can cause problems for seating in coffee shops. Finals week or mid-quarter midterm dates are times when it's particularly impossible to find a place to get some work done. This has led to some contention with patrons who want space to just read the paper or talk with a friend. One coffee shop I attend has chosen to designate special space for the more casual patron to ensure they have a spot (see: http://daviswiki.org/Mishkas_Cafe).
Watch out for traffic though.
:)
Just today I've heard a theory, that when you walk around brain is more able to try new ways of thinking and solving problems, because the 'motion center' in the brain is doing what it's supposed to do: handling one's movements. On the contrary when we are not moving, this center can often overwhelm the thought process with already established habits, which makes trying new things harder.
I thing it works - even in offices many people start walking in circles when they have an important decision to make.
Funny, in my language the word meaning 'reflexively', 'instinctively' is in a form which can be literally translated 'out of the movement', which quite fits this theory.
I didn't look for the scientific background, but I know from the context of how I've heard this, that it was taught at the univ on a psychology specialization.
Nietzsche said that all great thoughts are conceived while walking... perhaps this is why.
An early Western practitioner of "walking meditation" perhaps?
We yogis from Berkeley prefer lotus posture with gaze turned toward spiritual eye ;)
Good to have you aboard, Nick. Hope you enjoy an addiction to HN as much as I do.
Edit: Just realized I replied to pg. Well, get your ass back into that office and implement some of those great ideas then.
I got quite annoyed when the college closed the gardens between midnight and 4 AM...
I wasn't a CS student, though.
The Wadham college gardens aren't quite so well guarded as the college proper, but they're still surrounded by a 15' stone wall -- hardly something anyone is going to climb over just on the chance that they can mug someone.
Expansive ocean views... kinda distracting.
http://coworkingevanston.com/
http://desktimeapp.com/spaces/92-coworking-evanston
We "officially" open on Monday, but we are already functionally open and a group of us have been working out of the space for about a month. The picture above only shows one small section. It has open shared spaces, a small lounge, a collection of private offices and meeting space. If you are a north Chicagoan, stop by!
Coffee shops are great, I really love working out of them and we have some awesome ones in the area, but I needed a change. IMO, coworking spaces can do a good job of having the positive atmosphere of a coffee shop while also being conducive to actually getting work done and they make it easier to connect with people working on similar things. It's also a great way to crowdsource an awesome office for people who otherwise would be working in more isolated environments.
There's a small group of older guys who work from the coffee shop and it's nice to have a little chit chat with them during the day. Found out today one of the guys is retired and worked at Bell Labs back in the hey day. Turns out he knows Kernighan and Ritchie and was around when those guys were hacking away to make C and working on Unix. Amazing the people that one can randomly meet.
I am going to try to arrange for this in my next move, though. I find that I have a much easier time concentrating when I can "separate" myself from the rest of the house with the option of wandering about the house with a laptop when I see fit.