Blog Title

Starting small as a digital nomad: visiting family

2017-12-11T00:00:00Z

Trying to get started with becoming a digitial nomad? I like to start with small experiments. There are a few things to adjust to, and starting small makes things easier. For example, you will likley need to downsize. Many of us are used to an extra monitor or two. We have printers and external keyboards. There are the chair and coffee machines which seem indispensable for our daily work. Even if you're used to working from your home, it's much different when you have to leave all of your usual gear behind.

Make sure minimal gear will work

So, let's assume that you're OK with taking only your laptop, some headphones, and maybe a portable mouse with you. How do you know that minimal gear will be sufficient to get your work done? The short test runs from the local coffee shop on occasion only go so far. They give you a taste, but won't let you know whether you can truly survive and get your work done from anywhere.

I've found that visiting a relative or a friend, can be a great test run for helping understand what you really need for digital nomad work. You might not be able to just show up at your relatives and mooch of their internet for a week. But you can start with a few half days or some hours in the evening. Again, it's about starting small. The difference from the coffee shop will be clear because all your other gear is hopefully inconveniently far away.

I've personally done several of these tryouts when visiting family. There were some hiccups, but nothing that was too difficult to get past.

Helpful tips for working from a relatives house

Here are a handful of suggestions that will help make things smoother, if you're looking to give this a try.

Make sure that you can live with just your laptop. The coffee shop session will help get you used to that. In the event that you absolutely need to have that large monitor, you might want to make sure that your relative has one of those and doesn't mind you using it. That will help you understand if you need to do more research on suitable workplaces as you work toward the digital nomad lifestyle.
Check that your relative has internet. This might be a no-brainer, but there are still places using slow modem connections or a restrictive data plan. It would be rough if you got there only to find out that the internet is limited to 1GB of high-speed data. The best choice is to have a backup regardless. My choice for this is a Verizon MiFi without a monthly plan. I can add a few GBs of data and at least keep working almost anywhere.
Confirm that your relative is OK with it. You might have the kind of relationship where you can just show up and use the internet, but it's always good to check and let them in on your plans ahead of time. Of course, it might be a non-issue if they are working during the day, or you might find that they also want to try this remote working thing.
Bring headphones. Your house may be quiet. Don't assume your relative's house is too. It might be generally quiet, but it's a different thing when you're trying to work. They may be home and have the TV on all day and tuned to the worst station you can imagine. Trust me. Bring the headphones.
Be flexible and adventurous. You're trying to be a digital nomad. Might as well take the opportunity to explore some places around this new location. Work from a different coffee shop or the library. Go out for lunch, maybe see a movie. The more you can gain comfort in being productive in different locations that better. After all, that is what the experiment is all about.

Lastly, it should go without saying, but take your hosts out for dinner and/or drinks. They just made it possible for you to run an experiment you really care about. Odds are they'll want to hear more about all this. What better way than to share with them over a meal.

Digtial Nomad mini trip: Seattle

2017-11-27T00:00:00Z

We just recently took another baby step along our journey toward becoming digital nomads: a DigtialNomad mini trip to Seattle. This was for sure further than our trip to the local Botanic Garden. In this case, my wife was attending a conference in Seattle and I joined her for 4 days as her conference wrapped up. We both are able to work from anywhere and have projects we are working on. She had a lot of social media things to take care of for her business, and I was working on some blogging and spinning up a new app I'm planning to build.

For us both there is a big draw toward becoming digital nomads. We still own a house and while we have talked much about traveling a lot more and working from places that fascinate us, we still need to clear up some of those things we've accumulated over the past 25 years.

Since we are also a bit impatient we are using these shorter trips to mix work and leisure and give us a taste of the future.

getting there

Our airfare was pretty reasonable. Since we live in Denver, we can frequently take advantage of some very affordable flights on Frontier. We've now managed to find round-trips for $100 or less a few times. There tend to be some restrictions on which dates you can travel, but since we are combining the travel with working, it's pretty easy to accommodate any of the restrictions. A common one is not being able to travel on Sunday's and Fridays.

the stay and getting around

On previous trips to Seattle, we had stayed downtown. This time we decided that saving a bit of money and trying for a more residential fit was a better choice. To this end, we stayed in an Airbnb in North Beacon Hill. It was conveniently located about 5 minutes from the Link light rail. The money savings was a big motivator, but being in a neighborhood with a genuine local feel also mimicked what we both see as our future lifestyle much better.

The Link light rail works very well. Installing the Transit Go app on the phone makes getting around on public transit very easy, convenient and affordable. For example, to get from North Beacon Hill to downtown Seattle was only $2.25 per person.

getting work done

As I mentioned, my wife has her own business. I have a full-time job. For this trip, I took some time off to work on things that hopefully will replace my day job at some point.

Given that we wanted to combine a good amount of leisure into this trip, we only worked the morning. We enjoyed The Station and Fresh Flours Beacon Hill for our morning work sessions. As we wrapped up, we dropped our laptops at the Airbnb and took off to find lunch.

finding some great gems

Seattle Japanese Garden

One of our lunch highlights was The Pink Door. It's not a budget place, but we were in no hurry and enjoyed a long and slow lunch here. It's hard to go wrong with 3 courses, top quality seafood, a bottle of wine, and dessert.

Both of us enjoy exploring on foot. So in addition to taking full advantage of the public transit system, we also did a lot of walking. On our way to see the truly beautiful Seattle Japanese Garden, we happened across Araya's Place. This vegan Thai restaurant was another winner. This one is quite affordable and very good.

We also enjoyed dinner near our Airbnb. When you have some time and aren't in a hurry, Travelers Thali House has some excellent and vegetarian Indian food on offer. The other fun spot around North Beacon Hill we enjoyed was Perihelion Brewery.

Beers at Perihelion after the Seattle Art Museum

Their beer was very enjoyable and food wise it was well beyond the bar food you find in most brewery taprooms. It provided a great way to wrap up the day after a visit to the Seattle Art Museum.

All in all, it was another great work and play mini trip, and we are inching closer to becoming true digital nomads.

Being accessibile

2016-12-15T00:00:00Z

When you work in an office setting your presence alone sends a message: I'm here at work and available.

When you're working remotely, there is no physical indicator. You need to make sure you're not invisible.

The primary way to make sure you're not invisible is by communicating pro-actively. My favorite way to do this is via a daily update. It's hard to not be noticed when you're reaching out.

What might be even more important than initiating the communication is being accessible. The reason is pretty simple. People will take note of your accessibility if they are already thinking of you. Being accessible is a great substitute for physical presence.

How do you make sure you're accessible?

When you're not in the office with your colleagues, accessibility shifts from the physical to the virtual. Many organizations take advantage of instant messaging, video conferencing, email, and the phone. I'm happy to use whatever gets the job done. However, I like to make sure that others know what to expect from me via the various mediums.

For example, I don't have notifications for emails. I've always thought of email like mail just with an 'e'. Most of us don't go check the physical mailbox every few minutes and shouldn't do that for email either. I check my email a couple of times a day and work hard at maintaining Inbox zero, but it's certainly not instant.

That's where the "instant" in instant messaging comes in. This is my virtual shoulder tap. I make sure I log on to relevant systems whenever I'm available. When the system allows for it, I also set my status. For example, with most instant messaging platforms you can set yourself as 'available' or 'away'. On some you can also set yourself as 'busy' and perhaps even declare a status like "heads down on awesome report". As a side note, that is about the only thing I would love to see Slack add, although there is a workaround. Regardless of the mechanism or the tool, I make sure that I respond in short order when I'm set as available. I try to respond as though I was sitting at a desk and someone just walked up. That creates expectation and validates my accessibility. On the flip side, I tend to delay my responses when I'm not set to available. That also enforces the expectation to trust the IM status.

The phone is a way to always get to me. It's rare that people call since IM is sufficient for a lot of stuff. That said, it provides a safety net to get to me almost 100% of the time. I don't give my number out to many people for that very reason.

Video chats are generally used for scheduled meetings. Every now and then it's nice to just fire up a quick video chat and it increases how people will feel about your accessibility. I'm a big fan of Google Hangouts, but Room is awesome for really quick video chats.

I'm sure all of this is perhaps a bit obvious, but for me it took some thought and deliberate choices. For example, deciding to turn off email notifications and ignoring IMs when I am not set to "available". It takes practice to stick to it, but it's worth it.

There is one last thing I do to make sure I am accessible.

I'm not always at my desk or on my computer. I often move around my house and don't always take the laptop along. It's nice to take a long piece of documentation to the back yard and read it on the tablet or phone. Sometimes I step away from the desk to run a quick errand. I also enjoy pacing rather than slouching ever lower while trying to think through something. Still, I remain accessible.

It's rather easy if you have a smart phone. Set up instant messaging on the phone and maintain your accessibility everywhere. Just make sure you deal with notifications and IMs the same way as you would on the laptop.

Many instant messaging platforms have a setting to automatically set your presence. It basically sets you to "away" after a certain amount of inactivity or available if you are using the device. I've tripped over that best guess feature a few times. My advice is to to turn it off whenever possible. Sometimes that feature gets a little weird if you are logged in on more than once device. I have noticed that sometimes being logged in from multiple places can set you as "away" from one device even if you're on the other. At other times I get set to available and get random requests because someone saw me become "available". It's a bit of an annoyance, but setting your status manually is pretty simple.

The expectations are totally in my control. The key is to be consistent about accessibility, communication and doing great work. Then rejoice in not sitting in an office to prove you're getting stuff done.

Enjoy that telecommute.

Botanic Gardens

2016-11-23T00:00:00Z

The Denver Botanic Gardens are beautiful. It's one of the places I had in mind when I put the idea of becoming a local digital nomad out there.

Shortly after I had finished that post my wife was working from home with me. She was being distracted by some of the things that needed doing around the house. She's also an incredible listener and knows that the Botanic Gardens was one of the places I was planning to work from in local digital nomad fashion. So when she suggested that we work from the Botanic Gardens after lunch, I was all in.

We've been to the Gardens before. It wasn't really exploring a new location. Then again, we've never tried working from there. We decided to also try a new place for lunch on the way.

A short while later we were on our way.

We grabbed lunch at Biju's Little Curry Shop, which has been on my list to check out for a couple of years. It was quick serve from the counter and quite tasty. It's hard to go wrong with Indian flavors. The restaurant is an area of Denver which is under much development. Gentrification is likely a better term for it. After eating, we took a couple of blocks long stroll to take in some more of the awesome graffiti we had spotted earlier.

That's when we stumbled into the Denver Central Market. That place offers a lot food and beverage choices and is now on the list for another excursion. We did decide to have some ice cream from High Point Creamery. It was incredible. Even their vegan ice cream was phenomenal and not just because most vegan ice cream is setting such a low bar.

After the lunch excursion we were off to the Botanic Garden. We knew that there was WiFi available, but hadn't tested it during previous visits. Just beyond the entrance is a cafe where we would be able to work if needed. We decided to see if the connectivity near the cafe near the center of the garden would work as well. The signal was quite strong, but there were quite a few visitors at the cafe itself. That made it pretty noisy with lots of kids.

After a stroll around the building we found there was another table to the west of the cafe. The WiFi signal was weaker, but sufficient. It also was far more quiet. We both had fully charged laptops and so the lack of an outlet wasn't an issue. We set up shop. The weather was perfect and an umbrella kept us from baking in the sun as well as keeping the laptop screens legible.

We worked there for the rest of the afternoon. We both took a couple of breaks and just strolled the grounds near us. We even took turns snoozing on a nearby bench and refreshed with a beverage from the cafe.

We wrapped out our little mini adventure by strolling through the garden.

All in all it was a delightful afternoon and we both wouldn't hesitate to do it again. It sure seemed like a great bit of variety and exploration to our usual day.

\@matthias

what your manager needs

2016-11-18T00:00:00Z

So you'd like to work from home, but you also want to do it in a successful way. I'm not going to delve into details on how this is becoming easier. This is more about what worked for me. In a nutshell, it's about incremental change...

I work with computers and this allows me to work from pretty much anywhere as long as I have Internet access. My telecommuting started small, with a day here or there and then a permanent one day per week at home. I gradually managed to increase my time where I only occasionally traveled to the office.

There are a lot of blog posts like 6 tips for convincing your boss to let you work from home and 7 Steps to Persuade Your Boss to Let You Work From Home and 10 Ways to Convince Your Boss to Let You Work From Home. There is a lot of good info about the generic benefits of working from home or telecommuting. For me, it ultimately came down to answering one primary question. The most compelling argument to convince your boss to let you telecommute.

Before I share my "secret", I'll step back for a moment and change the perspective to another important angle:

What does your manager need?

If you think it's about work getting done in an effective way, than you're spot on. Your boss pays you to do your work. When you work at home your manager may feel like there is less visibility of you actually working. To me physical presence has always seemed a bit weak as assurance. I think we've all seen people go for very long trips to the coffee machine, take extended lunches, check Facebook, or just chat about the weekend at someones desk. I won't claim that this doesn't happen when telecommuting. In the end it's about results and demonstrating productivity doesn't require physical presence.

This means there is an extra burden on you to make sure your boss never wonders if you are getting work done. In many cases there are systems to work through, which can help. Ticket systems, work queues, call sheets, to-do lists, Trello boards, etc. are great to help illustrate the progress you are making. In my line of work there is a lot of project work that is hard to measure, which isn't to say that progress cannot be communicated. In all cases there is something more you should do and that's the "secret."

The secret is that you should go the extra mile to communicate your efforts. The most effective way I've found is in the form of a daily update.

The purpose of the daily update is to serve as a steady reminder that you are doing work. It doesn't need to be a lengthy minute by minute account. The opposite is true. A very long update only adds burden to you and your manager. That is counter productive. Instead a short and sweet email is all that's needed to spark the notion that "yep, work is getting done" and it's also easier on you to generate. The result will be confidence in your ability to work away from the office. You'll also be more transparent than your office brethren who will only be physically present but without a clear indication of continued progress.

Generally, my daily updates follow a very simple recipe. A list of bullet points of things I worked on. Never more than 1 for each hour and often only 2-5 bullets of the day's accomplishments. I also add another list of bullet items of what I have planned for the following day. I send this out as the last thing I do for any given work day.

Here is an example:

Accomplishments
- meeting with Bob do discuss project plan
- issue pull request for for version bump
- resolved issue found in production
- prepared for training
- Unplanned Accomplishments
- status call with client
Next
- prepare for presentation to team
- assist development with capacity research

This should be enough for your boss to understand your efforts for the day. It will take you 5 minutes to put together and even less time for her to read. The value that brings in terms of transparency is far greater than it might seem.

I started this before I began working from home consistently. I realized that raising the awareness of progress was a great way to develop an understanding of my habits and build a great relationship with my boss. The feedback has been nothing but positive. Again, it will set you apart from most others and greatly increases your value, since your boss will never wonder what you did all day... whether in the office or remote.

Getting started was pretty easy. During my one on one with my boss I mentioned that "I keep a daily log of work accomplishments. I would love to share them. Is that ok?" There were no objections. That evening I put the short update into an email with the subject of "Daily Accomplishments for ". That subject line did a couple of things. First, it emphasized "daily" and builds an expectation. Second, using "accomplishments" rather than "update" or "work" adds positive light, since an accomplishment is generally seen as a good thing. It looks better.

But why daily? Well, I've been a manager myself. As such I was very hands off. I've only ever "mandated" very few things of all employees. One of these mandates is some form of regular update at least once a week. Most employees choose a once weekly approach. That frequency works OK, but it eliminates 4 opportunities to look good. It's also harder to summarize an entire week and is more burdensome to consume. Lastly, it reduces the opportunity to get quick feedback. For example, if your update lists an item you plan to work on but it's actually no longer needed. Your boss may have forgotten to mention it and this offers another opportunity for a quick response letting you know.

The one big gotcha with all this is consistency. If you set the expectation of a daily email and then don't send it, you'll end up looking flaky. However, the brevity of the daily update should make that much easier. Just set yourself a daily reminder until it becomes habit. I personally just have it always remind me... just in case.

As you send these updates (and remember to do it when you're in the office as well), you'll start building greater confidence in your ability to get things done. As you work from home, which may only be occasionally to start, you will reinforce this confidence until the concern over your telecommuting melts away.

\@matthias

becoming a local digital nomad

2016-11-13T00:00:00Z

I remember when we moved to New Jersey. We were quite excited over the prospect of all the amazing sightseeing and cultural opportunities in close proximity. Best intentions. We lived there for about one and a half years. While we weren't exactly a hop and skip from New York City, it certainly was pretty close.

Well, we ended up moving away for a new job. During the time we lived in New Jersey we only managed to visit the Jersey shore once and the Big Apple twice. Sad.

I think this is what often happens. There is a lot more to do and see near home for a lot of us. Since it's all so near to home it will always be available. Other obligations keep you from enjoying many things in close proximity. Something like the following is a pretty routine conversation in our house:

"Hey, should we go do X tomorrow?" "No, we can do that another time. I think I just want to take it easy."

If you're lucky, some relatives come to visit and you take them. For us, we've ended up moving more than once without ever taking advantage of the opportunities near home.

We now live in Denver. Colorado is beautiful. Again, we frequently skip the "sightseeing" and day trips in favor of chores and obligations.

My wife and I have been talking about some long term travel and becoming digital nomads. That has me once again wondering about the many opportunities I'm likely missing around here. It also makes me wonder why it's so much easier to explore when traveling.

Rather than thinking about all the reasons and lamenting missed opportunities, I'm making a change. I'll embrace the digitalnomad in me, but locally.

I work from home. I am not tied to an office. It's time to start doing. Over the next few months I'll be taking some day trips and willingly commute to places close to home. I'm not just thinking the nearest coffee shop. I'm going to pick a place that is interesting and then work from there or nearby. Then I'll explore a bit throughout the day.

There are a lot of beautiful and cool spots within an hour's drive. Lots of places have some sculptures, a little museum, maybe a microbrewery, a cool park or a fun lunch spot. I'm going to find some of them and become a local digital nomad.

Here's to trying something new.

\@matthias

Why I don't embrace a dedicated work environment

2016-10-29T00:00:00Z

There are many guides for telecommuting and working from home:

Many of them offer similar advice and much of it good.

There is one commonly offered suggestion, which I do not subscribe to: have a dedicated workspace ideally with a door.

My biggest issue with that is my house. I have a very open floor plan. From where I'm typing this I can see into my bedroom, the family room, the living room and a good portion of the kitchen. Until my daughter moved out, there was no isolated workspace available for me. So perhaps it is because of this, that I've not embraced the idea of a dedicated workspace. I might be rationalizing, but I have some other suggestions, which accomplish the same thing for me.

First off, one of the key reasons for the dedicated workspace is to allow a clean delineation between "home" and "work". I do believe that getting away from work is important. I know from experience that it is very easy to simply keep working or "quick check something". In the open floor plan I described, I can always see my desk. The lure of a quick email check took me a while to overcome. Adding to that, I do enjoy working on my personal projects on the computer. That puts me even closer to work related things. In the beginning that often led to a lot of extra work. I'm pretty sure I was a solid statistic in research like Remote Workers Log More Hours and Are Slightly More Engaged.

I've made a few adjustments to overcome this. The first of which was giving up on an email client. I don't have anything per se against email clients, but it's very easy to have all your email show up there. It's convenient and also easy to get sucked into work email. My personal email is on Google and my employer also uses Google apps. I replaced the email client with Google Inbox. In order to read my work email I have to open up the browser and point to the work inbox. That's an extra step, which doesn't seem like much, but it is far less likely for me to stumble into an email. I also turn off all email notifications and only drink from the email well a couple of times a day.

For project tracking we use a specific tool. It's one I don't use for personal things. If that tool is not open I won't fall into the "task hole" and get stuck. The same goes for many other sites and tools. For some very specific work items I've created an extra user in Chrome. I use that user with its own window to do those work things. That keeps my history from getting cluttered with work related links I might be tempted to open. I do the same for Slack, which we use for messaging.

I think you get the idea. It also extends in the other direction and keeps me from getting distracted with personal things while I'm working.

When it comes time to quit for the day, I simply close the work related windows and tabs.

In a sense, the result is a dedicated work environment. Unlike a dedicated physical office this is simply a virtual workspace.

It's also possible to have different computers. At one point I experimented with different laptops. That was too tedious for me. Since I own my work laptop I simply opted to split the use "virtually".

I have another reason for not wanting to have an isolated and dedicated workspace. I worked too hard to get out of the confines of an office only to chain myself to one at home. That might sound a bit dramatic, but hear me out.

There were many things I disliked about working in an office. The commute, the interruptions, crazy things dealing with a shared kitchen, and being tied to that spot someone told me to sit at. I like to move around. I don't do it all the time, but it's not unusual to go sit on the porch for a half hour and then spend some time in the dining room. Sometimes standing at the breakfast counter is what I'm in the mood for or even lounging on the couch. Most of the time I'm at my desk, but I enjoy the freedom of changing the scenery. That might even include leaving the house for a coffee shop, the library, etc.

I do understand the concern with interruptions. It sure happens in my house. That's why I have headphones. Everyone knows that when I'm wearing them, I'm working. It has the same effect as closing the door to an office. The biggest difference is that I can take my headphones and sit in a different part of the house. It would be very awkward if I had to bring the office door with me.

My final reason for choosing a virtual work environment is future looking. My wife and I are working toward a nomadic lifestyle. We're not there yet, but at some point we will pick up to work from another continent for a month. When that happens, I don't want to worry about needing an office. So I'm cutting my teeth on working from anywhere while I have a lot of control over my environment.

I'm sure the dedicated office works great for a lot of people. I have friends who have taken that approach. Perhaps it's a great way to get started with working from home. For myself, I prefer to separate work from personal in a virtual fashion and working from where my mood takes me.

I think of it as working uncaged.

\@matthias

Lots of mini workouts

2016-07-10T00:00:00Z

Finding time to work out can be tricky. It would be easy to assume that working from home it would be easier. Clearly, since there is all that extra time that doesn't get flushed down the commute drain all the other things we're trying to get in on any given day just happen. Right. Alas, time, being the only truly finite resource for us all, is always at a premium.

Over the years I've had various workout schedules when working from home. I'm fortunate in that many years ago, my wife bought a very nice home gym for me. I used it religiously for years. Three times a week I would work out for an hour over lunch. On the off days I would go for a swim or a run.

Over that last year of so, I lost some of my motivation to keep going.

Numerous studies such as the one reported on CNN that sitting will kill you and the Mayo clinic's article on What are the risks of sitting too much? suggest that it's a good idea to spend more time out of the chair.

Since then I've adopted a different workout strategy.

These days, I work out all day long. Well, technically, I workout throughout the day.

So what does that look like? Lots of mini workouts.

I often use the Pomodoro technique technique to chunk out solid focus time. When I'm done with one of my 25 minute blocks I get up and take 2 to 15 minutes to get some exercise. I'm sure training experts might frown on this, but for me, it's been a great change to my exercise routine.

At the end of the day I often end up with more than an hour of exercise. I also get the benefit of getting up routinely throughout the day, instead of sitting all day at my laptop. That in turn helps me keep the blood moving, which helps me keep my energy up.

So what kind of of exercises do I squeeze in? I have a decent grab bag to pick from depending on how much time I want to take for that time between Pomodoros.

A walk around the block
Push ups (sometimes against a wall)
Pull ups (I have a bar that hangs from the door frame like this
Sit ups / crunches
Some reps with free weights
Squats
Stretching
Jump rope
A little yoga
...

The sky's the limit on this. Often it depends on my mood, but it's another thing that is a whole lot easier to do when you're not in an office.

I still work in a couple of long blocks for a run. Many of my exercises, though, happen throughout my day.

In the end, if I take an 8 hour workday, it's about 12-16 Pomodoro's so on the low end, I'll have roughly 12 * 5 minutes of exercise, which ends up being an hour. The small chunks of time also make it a lot easier for me to get it done. After all, a 5 minute chunk of time just goes by so fast and I don't even have time to talk myself out of it.

I've also been standing a lot while working and mixing in some unconventional sitting, but I'll save that for another post.

I sure do love working from home.

\@matthias

Working from the road, literally

2016-06-03T00:00:00Z

Sometimes plans don't work out.

Over last Christmas a good number of our relatives were planning to gather at our house. Unfortunately, an emergency involving hospitalization kept that gathering from happening. Without going into details, it was a very difficult time, which had our relatives spending a number of days in the emergency room.

We were also quite concerned and decided to go make a trip to see and support our family.

Before I continue, I'll say right now that things looked dire, but turned out OK. Celebrating the holidays with our family, even in the hospital, was nice.

In the grand scheme of things, work was clearly not nearly as important as being with family. However, I was also under some heavy pressure and deadlines. I had planned for some time off during the holidays, but not for an additional couple of days of drive time. The one-way trip takes about 12 hours and so it seemed that I would have to find a couple more days somewhere to meet my commitments.

I'm fortunate in that I am a fully remote worker. In theory I can work from anywhere and anytime as long as I have Internet connectivity.

With that in mind, I hatched the idea that I could work while we were on the road, assuming that I could be online for most of the drive. I'd be working from the road, literally.

I'm a pretty happy T-mobile user, but I knew that coverage and data access were going to be spotty where we were going. On a previous trip I learned that we were data roaming. That came with a hard 100MB cap on data transfer and that there was no way to get that increased. This meant that tethering of my cell phone would not be an option. I also knew from experience that Verizon has pretty solid coverage in those areas. I used to be a customer of theirs, but coverage in my house was atrocious causing me to switch.

My in-laws use a Verizon MiFi for all of their Internet needs and I thought, that perhaps I would be able to take advantage of such a device.

After some searching, I found that Verizon has a pay-as-you-go plan for MiFi hotspots. The prices tend to be a little higher per GB, but there is no monthly or annual commitment. That makes it really ideal for the occasional usage I am looking for.

So after picking one of those up at my local Best Buy, I was set.

We headed out early in the morning and grabbed breakfast on the way. Shortly after I was ready to start on some work. The first part of the trip was primarily Interstate driving and my connectivity was absolutely awesome. My job involves working with computers in various parts of the country and I had no issues connecting (and mostly staying connected) to them. I was getting my work done. I kept my laptop fully charged through the use of a power adapter and I had more room to work than I would have had on an airplane.

About half way through the trip there was a section of rural driving to cut over to another interstate. I wasn't expecting to be able to work for most of that. To my surprise, I only lost Internet connectivity twice for under 30 minutes total. The connection speed was a little less, but that did not have much of an impact on me.

All in all, I believe I worked nearly an 8 hour day on the trip there and again on the way back. That part of the impromptu trip was an awesome validation that I'm able to work from truly anywhere. I'm already looking forward to taking similar advantage of long travel times in the future.

As a side note, if you are looking to buy one of these MiFi hotspots you might have to ask several times about the pay-as-you-go MiFi. Most places want to sell the monthly subscription version and at a Verizon store I was even informed that there was no such plan. Online resources clearly contradicted that. Go figure.

I love working uncaged!

\@matthias

Reaching out and checking in

2016-05-27T00:00:00Z

This is the final post related to the 1 key to successful telecommuting and I think of it as "icing on the cake".

Let's assume you've got the communication down when it comes to One on One meetings, Email engagement, and Daily Updates. With all that in place you should be in an excellent position with respect to your visibility across the team. In other words, everyone should be fully aware that you are contributing and producing at an excellent level.

That's great, but there are likely still some lingering concerns. In my experience that's often due to distance or a lack of camaraderie. It can be more difficult to really get to know others and for others to get a great feel for you. Much of this will resolve over time and with consistent behavior. In terms of getting to a more personal level, it generally just takes longer than when you see people face to face on a daily basis.

I've found that this can be accelerated by reaching out. In part that can be done by asking questions when you're stuck on something. I'm sure we've all been in situations where describing a problem we are vexed by and just talking it out with someone will lead to the answer. Seeking the assistance of someone on the team also makes them feel good. Most people embrace the opportunity to help when asked. They get to show off what they know or how they do things.

I'll admit that I often chase the thrill of figuring it out for myself. I often need to remind myself that I'm likely just wasting time and I should simply ask some of the smart people I work with. I've never been turned down. Sometimes I get the answer quickly and other times I have a great back and forth exchange that helps me come up with great ideas to try and develops my relationship with that person.

On the flip side you should also make sure you offer to help when possible. If you are like most people, including myself, you'll get something out of being viewed as the expert.

Ultimately, it's really about being part of a team. Share the knowledge and everyone will be better off.

Beyond the technical there are many other ways to reach out and build a relationship when remote. I tend to be pretty private, but occasionally it's worth sharing some things in the chat room. For example, when the kids had a fun event, or when some crazy weather moved through, or the latest micro brew I tried. It's not necessary to go into a lot of details. People will strike up a conversation if it tickles their fancy. It's also not necessary to do this on a daily basis. The occasional shared item will be more meaningful than telling everyone about the daily weather.

It should go without saying that engaging in a brief chat when others share is also a great way to reciprocate.

There is really nothing like some genuine exchange, be it work related or fun, to build a better relationship. When working remotely you just have to pay attention to the opportunities a little more.

\@matthias