Last year I rented an outside office in downtown Concord, NH. I loved it, but when I cut my work week down to two days in August of 2009, I realized it wasn’t worth $300 per month to spend a mere eight days in my office every month. So I sublet the office to a nice yoga instructor, and now I work from home again.
If you’re like me, sometimes you just have to get out of your home office (or dining room, or living room) and work at a freelancer-friendly place like Starbucks, Borders, Barnes & Noble, or a local café or bookstore. But while these are great for a change of view, they can also create major hassles for busy freelancers. Sometimes I go to Borders and all is fine and dandy, and other times I go there and end up sitting next to a lip-smacking loud-eater, getting approached by every weirdo in the store, and having to fight for a table near an electrical outlet. So I compiled this list of advice on how to get the most out of your visits to your “office away from home.”
1. Get there early. If you get to the café or bookstore at noon, forget it — every freelancer, telecommuter, and computer-game addict in town will have commandeered the tables near the outlets. If I get to the store by 10 am, I can usually find a good spot.
2. Bring a cord. Sometimes all the tables by outlets will be taken, but the tables that are almost-but-not-quite near outlets will be free. I always bring the extension cord that came with my Mac so I can sit a little further away from an outlet. If you do this, just be sure that you’re not stringing your cord halfway across the floor; you don’t want to trip up any innocent old ladies.
Also, I hope it’s kosher to pull out a tip from the comments. Thursday Bram of the Constructively Productive blog left a great comment: “I make a point of going beyond just bringing a cord: I bring a plug that turns your average outlet into a charging station. It’s got a couple of extra outlets, as well as USB slots for charging phones and such. A power strip will serve the same purpose. This way, you can always get extra folks plugged in, making you a favorite at the coffee shop and making it easier to find a seat.” Thanks, Thursday!
3. Plug your ears. For some reason, I seem to be a weirdo magnet — and my local Borders has a lot of weirdos. One time, a drunk man sat at my table while I was clearly working and started babbling about his “&^$# VW van.” Another time, a young man dressed like a caricature of a gang member sat down at the chair next to me and regaled me with stories about how he was thrown in the clink for beating the $#!^ out of some other guy. He also recited lines from A Clockwork Orange. That’s one of my favorite movies, but I really don’t need some freak whispering “The old ‘in and out’” in my ear over and over.
Another writer suggested I wear a pair of headphones to deter anyone who’s thinking of making themselves comfortable at my table and bending my ear. This works on airplanes — why not in cafés and bookstores while you’re trying to work? If you find music distracting, you don’t need to listen to it; no one will know that you’re just listening to the sweet sounds of silence. (By the way, the headphones also block out the sounds of the loud eaters you’ll inevitably find yourself sitting by.)
4. Buy something, dammit! Starbucks, Borders, and so on don’t
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