How I Work– Working From Home

re: How I Work– Working From Home

CRMHUNT — Tue, 29 Jan 2013 04:54:02 GMT

Great Article!.. Wish my company allowed me for this......

re: How I Work– Working From Home

NiteshLuharuka — Sun, 26 Aug 2012 05:06:54 GMT

Buck -

Very Well written article and definitely I have taken notes of the points that I can implement to get my "Work from Home" more better :-)

re: How I Work– Working From Home

Sue — Mon, 23 Jul 2012 13:49:56 GMT

Great article. . .I worked at home for 11 years and loved it. People laughed when I told them that it takes a great deal of discipline to step away from the vacuum cleaner and dishes in the sink, but it is key to working successfully at home. Transitioning back to an office environment took a long time and I'm sure I'm still not as productive as I was at home because of interruptions, but I do like working with other people and the on-going learning and exchange of ideas that happens in that environment too.

re: How I Work– Working From Home

SViking — Wed, 18 Jul 2012 05:54:14 GMT

Thanks for writing this Buck. I am sure I will try many of the bullet points in here.

I don't have to reinvent the wheel for some known issues.

re: How I Work– Working From Home

Glenn Wilson — Wed, 18 Jul 2012 00:45:56 GMT

Thanks for this, a really good read. Been thinking of the move to work from home, this gives me some information to help me make the move.

re: How I Work– Working From Home

WayneS — Tue, 17 Jul 2012 19:33:08 GMT

Hi Buck,

Great article, one that I am sure that I'll find valuableas I start my new remote job. Thanks for taking the time to write this.

re: How I Work– Working From Home

Scott Stauffer — Tue, 17 Jul 2012 19:30:50 GMT

Indeed Buck... What Erin said... :)

Sincerely though, thank you for sharing!

re: How I Work– Working From Home

Erin Stellato — Tue, 17 Jul 2012 19:07:23 GMT

Buck-

Thank you for taking the time to write all of this. I find it very valuable and will be a great reference for me going forward. I have thought through many of the concepts you discuss, but it helps to see someone else describe how they do it, and how it works for them. I realize that your method may not be right for me, but there are many great ideas here that I want to implement.

I can see how changing the setting (either different rooms in the house, or getting out) is helpful - that is what I will have to work at the most. But lots of great info; many, many thanks!

Erin

re: How I Work– Working From Home

BuckWoody — Tue, 17 Jul 2012 17:54:44 GMT

Koen - thanks for reading. I use all of the Outlook Task fields I can, but it certainly isn't a full-fledged Project Management system by any means. However...

I have used Microsoft Project in conjunction with Outlook, and it extends the features in tasks to report back to a larger system. Another add-in I like a great deal is Outlook Business Contact Manager - really beefs up Outlook. There are others as well. However, all of these (necessarily) map back to a particular instance of Outlook - which breaks my "work on any machine" motif I need.

Sometimes when I visit clients they won't let me through their firewall to do presentations and so on, so I just use one of their laptops and do everything from the web. As such, I do fine with tasks, since it has a Rich Text field I can put anything in. I primarily use it as a GTD methodology and so on.

re: How I Work– Working From Home

Koen — Tue, 17 Jul 2012 17:43:55 GMT

Well written article and very similar to my approach on working from or at home. I was just wondering -and I am well aware that this is not your key expertise- how you've set up the Outlook Task system in terms of categories, status, assignments etc. maybe even in collaboration with SharePoint? I find it very hard to build a system suitable to my needs as a PM for different (large) projects and manage it all from one place (instead of using separate progress reports, OneNote books :-) , issue lists, etc.)