Focused - 16: R2-D2 on My Desk

Episode Date: March 7, 2017

Jason and David discuss their home-office set-ups and the challenges they face when working in a house they share with other people. When do you lock your doors? How do you "go home" at the end of the day? What gear do they use? And do they admit to their clients that they're working in their pajamas?

David Sparks and Jason Snell spent their careers working for the establishment. Then one day, they'd had enough. Now, they are independent workers, learning what it takes to succeed in the 21st century. They are free agents. Welcome back to Free Agents, a podcast about being an independent worker in a digital age. I'm Jason Snell, and I'm joined as always by my fellow host, Mr. David Sparks. Hi, David. Hi, Jason. I'm coming to you live from my home office.

How are you? Where are you? I'm kind of in my home office. I'll have to explain that later in the show. This is an episode about our workspaces and setting up a workspace. And we, as I think this could be like the sub-slogan for this entire podcast, we don't come to you as experts. We are not self-styled free agent experts, independent worker experts, and we certainly are not home office integration and design experts. We are just people who have had to go through this and we talk about our experiences. experts. We are just people who've had to go through this and we talk about our experiences.

So both of us have had to deal with working at home and converting from being a person who occasionally works from home to somebody who works at home all the time. And for me, or almost all the time. And for me, that's a key distinction, right? Is there are things you can get away with if you work at home one day a week that you can't get away with if you work at home five days a week. And for me, that was a big kind of crossover point, which is I really need a place that is my workspace. I can't just eke out space in various parts of my house. Yes. I'd say on your earlier point, I think we have a lot more to share with our audience by our mistakes than we do our expertise. Depending on the subject, that is especially true. Yeah, absolutely. Anyway, so Jason, where in the house do you work? Well, I am in the garage.

I don't have a cute name for it. It's just the garage. And it was previously, previously we parked a car here and we stored a lot of stuff here. And so at some point, I decided before I left, and I've told part of this story at least on this podcast, before I left my job, I decided I wanted a better work from home space because I live in a fairly small house. It's a 1,200, 1,300 square foot, three bedroom, two bath. So the bedrooms are small. The bathrooms are small. The living room is small. I don't have an office space in my house. I would work on the couch or I would work on the bed. And so I decided that I needed another space and the garage seemed like it could be converted. We had stopped. We bought a minivan a few years ago and it didn't fit in the garage, quite frankly. It barely fit and you could barely get out of it because we also have, being it's a small house, this was sort of our storage space.

So in the end, it was available. And the thought occurred to me that if we were not going to park a car in it, we could really embrace that we were never going to park a car in it. And so I bought a desk. I bought some carpet. some carpet. I actually bought a giant rug that was manufactured out by a carpet remnant store nearby out of a bit of carpet. So it's a rug that's basically a room carpet that got turned into a rug and it's like 10 feet by 8 feet. It's huge and a pad for below it. And I basically said this half of the garage is going to be my office. I hung some curtains that I bought on Amazon to separate it from sort of the storage part of the garage. And originally, I had to step outside my house to go to work and then lock the door behind me

and then go inside the garage. And about a year later, we moved the door so that the door to the garage is inside the house. So now I actually, as I'm talking to so that the door to the garage is inside the house. So now I actually, as I'm talking to you, the door to my kitchen is open to my right. I can actually see through into the rest of the house from here. So it's much more connected. But, you know, I did the bulk of my work writing and podcasting and everything, sitting on the bed, mostly, occasionally sitting in the backyard on a nice day or sitting on the couch, but, sitting on the bed, mostly, occasionally sitting in the backyard on a nice day or sitting on the couch, but mostly sitting on the bed. And it's not ergonomically

great. And it's certainly not separated from my family. And so my wife works four days a week, and my kids, you know, have school holidays, and they're off for the summer. And it's, and so working at home when there are people around is extra challenging. So that was another reason that I wanted to move into the garage in order to have some separation. I can close the door. I can hang a sign on the door that says, I'm podcasting. Do not come in here. And so over time, I have built it up into, you know, nobody's going to mistake it for a corporate office, but it's a space that belongs to me. And even though I share it with, you know, a washer dryer and four bikes and a big metal shelf stacked with boxes, but it is my, you know, it is my place that I can go to. And that my family knows that if I'm in there and my door is closed, that they need to be more reluctant about interrupting me.

Yeah, I've been in your workspace. It's really, it's nice. You know, you've kind of made a nice place for yourself. And I think that's important. And we did a show on, you know, where you work, and we talked about co-working spaces and all the other things. But this show assumes you're going to be working at home. And unfortunately, I have not got my own home office. Yeah. So tell me, tell me what your situation is. Yeah. I mean, like you, we have a small house, 1500 square foot. You know, we live in California. You can't afford a big house, you know, and just two kids. So it's a three bedroom house. The master bedroom is large enough to afford a corner for, you know,

Max Barkey Enterprises or whatever. And so I've got a corner of the master bedroom. I didn't want to, like, tell my nearly adult children that they have to share a room. And there's just not an extra room in my house. So I started setting it up. And this was I was evolving into it because I was doing a lot of podcasting and writing before I left the day job. So I already kind of had a home office set up. And we'll talk later about the gear we have.

But I have nice gear and I have a nice corner. But it is weird being in the bedroom. And it's not ideal. I mean, you know, if my wife wants to come in and take a nap, you know, and I'm sitting here working. She's like, no, don't worry about it. won't bother me but it bothers me right because i'm sitting here maybe i'm recording a screencast or something and and she's asleep there or i'm just even just typing i can just i know that that would bother me if i was trying to sleep so it causes issues there also we should say that the the one of the things is ergonomics here.

Like there are things that you can take a laptop and go sort of anywhere in your house and do work. But, you know, depending on whether you have some health issues where using a laptop for an extended period of time isn't great, or if you have specific issues with like where you need a big screen or you need a certain kind of pointing device, or for us it's podcasting right you need to have a a microphone and you need to have an environment where recording it is going to be quiet and not have echoes and things like that there's a lot there's a lot of stuff that you you you know ideally need a dedicated space because you can't just fling it on a laptop and go you know go sit sometimes you can but there's a lot of jobs and there's a lot of work that is not really predisposed

to sort of taking a mobile device anywhere. There's some stuff that you really do need a dedicated space for. Yeah, and another thing that I think is a kind of a weird hippie problem, but when your office is in your bedroom, I find it sometimes hard to disconnect the two. And so I go to bed and I see the computer and the table and I see the file that I need to be working on sitting on the desk.

And it's hard to go to sleep because I'm just a few feet away from working on that problem a little bit longer. In fact, so much so that I've got – so if I do work later into the night, I don't work in my home office. I take the laptop downstairs to the kitchen table or whatever, because by then the kids are in bed. Or when your kids get older, it's not that they have bedtime. It's just that they don't want to be around you, and they go into their rooms. Right.

So either way, it's quiet enough downstairs that I can do that. And I've also kind of set up what I would almost say multiple home offices, because I have some really nice space in the downstairs section of our home where it's a desk and flat surface and it's a nice space to work. And then even in my backyard, a couple of years ago, I bought one of these couches, these outdoor couches. And on nice weather, I love to go out there and work. See, I was going to say you're a bit of an inspiration because we're talking about doing some work in our backyard. And one of the things, your name comes up a lot because we've been in our backyard. And one of the things, your name comes up a lot

because we've been in your backyard. And you live in Southern California, so you get way better weather than I do in Northern California. But still, our summers can be a little cold here. But the prospect, I mean, I've always loved sitting in the backyard and writing. I've written, I cannot tell you how many thousands of words sitting in a chair under the redwood tree in our backyard. And so, again, it's seasonal and it's not a permanent space. And I probably wouldn't record a podcast out there, although I have admission. Just one.

I think it's valid to say you've got multiple work zones. It's just the idea of having spaces and knowing that I can work here and it's not a, I don't know, some things for me that the problem became that, yeah, I didn't want to have it be a nomad who like I have no dedicated workspace. I am literally just trying to find a place where there's nobody for me to go. That's not great. Well, you know, my oldest daughter is 20. So I figure at some point, you know, not that I'm in a hurry for her to leave. I love having her around. But at some point, she is going to move on in the world. And at that point, it has been made very clear to my family that dad gets that room.

Yeah, I think that's fair. With the garage, I'm not entirely sure that when my um you know daughter goes off to college that i'm going to necessarily honestly this space is pretty great and i'm not sure one of the bedrooms in the house would be as much um so i i'm it's funny that i've gotten to the point now where although it's true that all the bedrooms are occupied um i've made a space that is my own, and I'm not sure that I would give it up at this point and move into the house. Besides which, then trying to coax my daughter back for a visit

would be you could sleep in the garage, which is less exciting. That's true. That's true. This episode of The Free Agents is brought to you by FreshBooks, online invoicing made easy. Go to freshbooks.com slash free agents and get a 30-day unrestricted free trial. So imagine you're a free agent racing against the clock to wrap up three projects, prepping for a meeting later in the afternoon, all while trying to tackle a mountain of paperwork. Welcome to life as a free agent.

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Best of all, FreshBooks is offering a 30-day unrestricted free trial to listeners of this show. Just go to freshbooks.com slash free agents and enter free agents in the how did you hear about us section so they know you came to them from the show. Thank you so much FreshBooks for supporting this show and all of RelayFM. If you're going to work at a home, there's some complications to it all. And I think the first one is that it's a home. It's not a workplace. And there are other people there that have things going on. How do you deal with that? It's a challenge, right?

Like I mentioned earlier, like rules are part of it and not necessarily strict rules. But like I have a thing. So I have a thing that I can hang on my door like you have at like a hotel. That's basically a do not disturb. And I only put it out there when I'm recording a podcast. It's meant, I mean, like literally if you were going to try and come into the garage to talk to me or to put in some laundry or to pull something out of the cabinets that are out here you would put your hand on the doorknob and be like oh the thing is hanging on the doorknob i'm not going to go in there which is

great because i don't have a lock on it i actually can't lock it from this side they can lock me in here but but i can't lock them out. They haven't. I thought, I've been meaning for a while now to see if I can just flip the locks around so I can just lock them out. But the nice thing about that is since this is a garage and therefore a little less secure, you know, at night I put the bolt on the door and if somebody were to break into the garage, they would be bolted out of the rest of the house. So I've got that door hanger, and that's one. And then I've talked, I had some conversations with my wife and my kids about the door being closed versus the door being open. And like the door being open, I may still be working. In fact,

I probably am still working, but I'm at least okay with being interrupted, or I wouldn't have left the door open. Sometimes I leave the door open because I want to hear what's going on, or I'm just working for a little bit, and then I want to go back. The door open because I want to hear what's going on or I'm just working for a little bit and then I want to go back. The door open has a meaning to me and it has a meaning to them. And then there is, you know, and then there's the doors closed and there's nothing hanging on it. And we have an understanding that when the door is closed, that means try not to bug me. And in fact, ideally, if the door is closed, you may actually want to send me a text, you may want to send me a message somehow, instead of coming in here and asking me a question,

because I don't know if when you're working on legal stuff, if, if you get into a kind of a flow, but it certainly happens when you're writing, right, that you start writing something, and you know where you're going. And you've been staring at that cursor for 20 minutes and now the words are flowing out and then somebody interrupts you. And it might take you time to get back in. It's frustrating because you lose your momentum. And so they know that when the door is closed that those are the rules. Now, that's for the office space. But, I mean, there's the larger issue, which is, you know, the dog wants me to walk her. The kids want me to go like to take them to their dance

class or pick them up from school. And there is, I got to say, I feel like, and some of this is, I'm laying on myself. We're back to the hippie feelings part. But I do feel like it's very easy to make assumptions about a person who is at the house that because they're present at the house, they're available for whatever. And that can be a challenge too. Like just because I'm here doesn't mean I can mow the lawn today because I've got a lot of work I have to do. I might be able to mow the lawn, but do not assume just because I'm present that I'm a tool that's able to be deployed. And that has taken my wife and I some time to work out. And I don't want to say that it's her because a lot of it is on me. Like I start feeling guilty that I'm not doing things because I'm working all day when

the reality is that I'm working all day. So sometimes I'm the instigator of this, of these feelings. And sometimes, sometimes not, but it's like, do I, I could, I could start cooking food for dinner at, at four if my wife comes back at five 30, but I'm working at four. So trying to do that balance too of, yes, it's great that I'm at home and that adds flexibility. I can sign for packages. I can go run an errand that is much more useful at 2 p.m. than it would be on a weekend because everybody's out on the weekend doing it and I can do it during the day. That's all true,

but you wouldn't say that if I was in an office somewhere in the same context. So, those are kind of the challenges that I think I face. Yeah, I really think that a lot of it is about communicating with your family when you start working from home and just kind of setting those limits. I was very fortunate. I mean, my wife is super understanding and gets that, you know, I'm trying to make a living here. And she does not, in fact, to a fault, she will, um, she will not, you know, she will insulate me from those things.

Like once in a while I'll, I'll find out that she's like doing cartwheels to get the kid to one place and do something else. I'm like, yeah, you know, I could have helped you with that. You know, you should have asked, you know, and, um, uh, so that's, I'm very fortunate that way, but I think you need to have that conversation. And with the kids, it's the same thing. Um, you and I are, uh, we are broadcasters in addition to other things we do. So that door close thing is super important. Someone even just knocking on the door can upset a screencast I've been working on for an hour. And it really does cause a lot more trouble than you think it does.

So my family understands that. And my benefit is my children are 15 and 20. They're old enough to understands that. And my benefit is my children are 15 and 20. They're old enough to get that. Now, somebody listening to this that has children that are 2 and 4, I wish I had good advice for you because I think it's going to be super hard to set up a home office with little kids running around. If they can't open the door or you can lock the door, then it maybe is okay. If they are just freely running around, that's going to be a challenge. Then again, the little kids, we need to set aside something here, which is right. I believe firmly, and anybody who's tried this would back me up on this, that falls in the category of don't assume that just because I'm home, I'm available,

because I'm working. Childcare is a perfect example of that. And it's not babysitting if it's your own child, it's childcare. But you cannot work at home and care for a child. You can't. You can't. It's not possible. The level of detail that needs to go into caring for a child is a level of attention and detail that you cannot do while you're also working at home. Now, maybe if you're doing when they're down for a nap or something like that, but I don't think they're compatible. I mean, you can, at older ages, they can watch TV or play with a friend or something like that, but it's very difficult to do both with the level of detail that they probably should be given. So, if somebody says, oh, well, you know, I mean,

I think the best example would be a kid is home from school and sick, let's say, are you going to work that day? Well, I hate to break it to you, but you're not. You're not because your kid is sick. Maybe you could take your laptop and sit in a room where you can hear them when they're asleep and get a couple of hours of work done. But that's not the same. So with little kids, I feel like some barriers, if they can't be taught, can you lock a door? Can you do something like that? But also just the fallacy of believing that, I mean, I have trouble. My kids are almost both teenagers now. And spring break is a problem for me just because they're in the house, let alone the fact that

they're not little kids running around who actually need attention. They're pretty much self-carers at this point and still it's a problem. So, you know, I don't know. It's a, it's a, um, it's a hard one, but I, I have, having gone through that, um, I can, I can definitely say that it's not realistic. Like this is not a, this is not a solution to working and providing childcare for little kids. You just can't do it. Well, I think you almost have to look at it just like you would look if you got a jobby job where you went somewhere. You still have to have someone take care of your children. Yeah.

Would you bring a little kid with you to your jobby job and close the office door and let them just sort of do whatever while you worked? No. No, it would not be possible at all. It would be a madhouse. So, yeah. But in terms of actual barriers and things like that, I mean, if you've got somebody, if it's evening and you have to work and there's another adult in the house and there's a little kid running around. I think it's that understanding of if you're working that the other adult in the house or adults needs to be the one who's on call because you're working on your thing right now. And that needs to be there's a communication element there. Also, block off your door so that a kid with a Popsicle followed by a dog just waltzes in while you're trying to do some work in your office.

If you can lock that door, that's probably a good idea, too. And we've talked about it. I mean, one of the advantages of doing this, I mean, one of the reasons a lot of us do it is because we want to be home. We want to be more available for our families. But you just have to set those limits, and you have to have some times where the home office truly is the office and not, you know, the revolving door. I actually have a calendar item. And of course I do because I plan a lot of my life by calendar items for my, when my kids get out of school and my kids are old enough now that they get home by themselves. So I have a note about when they're coming home. And sometimes I schedule things

during that, that I sort of try not to because I know, like, I'm going to need to open the garage door for my son to roll his bike in. And he's going to, you know, I'm going to check in with him about what he's doing and have him, you know, start on his homework or have a snack or something like that. My daughter comes home or maybe I know I have to go pick up my daughter or take her somewhere. All of those things. I schedule those in just so I know when those interruptions are going to come and I can kind of go around them.

And so that's a good example of like, yeah, I can welcome my son home and see what's going on with him and see what his homework is and all of that. And that is time when I'm not working. But what it isn't is like he's home and that's the end, right? It's like there's a moment where I welcome him and we check in and all of that. And then there's a moment where I'm like, all right, do your homework. I'm going to go back to work now. And I'm no longer supervising him doing his homework, which comes back to that same thing

of like, if you and your partner are not in a mindset about what your presence in the house can be, that can be a source of tension, which I have felt. And again, I don't know how much of it came from my wife and how much of it I put on myself, but it's the idea of like, my son's not doing his homework when I'm here in the house working and she comes home from her job and finds out that he's not doing this homework. There's this moment of like, okay, what should have happened there? But in reality, to a point, I can check in on him. But to another point, I'm not at home to monitor his homework. I am home to do my job. And there has to be a limit to what can be done there.

And you have to have discussions about what that is. Like, how much do I need to check in on him versus how much do I need to let him be, you know, do this on his own? Because if I become a homework monitor, um, my, my, my eight to five or nine to five or, you know, six job becomes I'm working until 340, at which point I spend the next 90 minutes as homework monitor. And that's bad for my productivity. Yeah, it's a challenge. And I guess there really is no big answer to it, except you need to address it. And you need to have a plan or you need to look at another option. And communicate clearly like what the expectations are. I think for your own sake, as much as for your, if you've

got a partner who works outside the home, for example, or if you're both working in the home, as much as as as for your if you've got a partner who works outside the home for example or if you're both working in the home um either way uh you have to communicate like what the what what the expectations are and what the assumptions are because i think some of it is that which is like you know if one person assumes that the person who's at home is going to help the kid with their homework and the person who's at home assumes um that helping the kid with their homework is not going to happen until both of the adults are home and done with their jobs for the day, then that's a recipe for disaster. Because then one of the people is really mad at the other one for not doing their job. And that's not, I would say, you know, there's no fundamental answer there. If everybody agrees that the person

at home is right to spend time after the kids come home from school, helping them with their homework, and everybody's okay with that, and you work less or you work later in the evening in exchange for that, whatever that is, it's fine, whatever the answer is, as long as everybody agrees on it. It's when people bring in those assumptions and they don't agree with one another that it becomes a problem. All right, let's talk a little bit about the stuff. Let's have the gear. How did you set up your home office?

Oh, so I did it about a year before I actually started. I wanted to set up a good home office before I made a move, and that was my thing. I started with a desk. Desk was number one. I wanted a desk. I don't have a desk. There's no desk in this house. We used to have a big computer desk, but that's before we had two kids. And quite frankly, big computer desks are very old, very old school. You know, we don't have big computer, like tower computers and stuff pretty much anymore. And so I wanted something that was a space for me.

We had like the bar and the kitchen and like the dining room table. And like I said, the bed, but I wanted a space where I could put a big monitor and plug my laptop into it. And so I bought a sit-stand desk. I asked around, talked to friends who had them. I think the Wirecutter hadn't done their recommendations yet, but I talked to friends who had them. I think the wire cutter hadn't done their recommendations yet. But I talked to friends who had them Lex Friedman, who actually works at a sit stand desk, but now he just stands and does a treadmill. It's crazy. I'm not at that point yet. But he recommended a sit stand desk, which was not too expensive. And I bought that and assembled it. And I mean, that was really the start. And then I gradually

added the other stuff over time. I did buy a monitor, I bought a Dell external display, because at that point, I was I was taking my laptop to work with me. And so when I would work at home, I could just plug the laptop in, I actually bought a since it's a MacBook Air, I bought a Thunderbolt hub. So basically I had one plug, the power and the one Thunderbolt plug, and then I was docked and I had all my USB devices and my monitor and everything was coming out of the Thunderbolt hub. It was pretty great. And I still have the Thunderbolt hub and use it as more just to cut down on cable clutter because now I have an iMac. But at that point, I just bought a nice, you know, 24 inch Dell monitor and put it

on my desk. And that was pretty great. I bought a, you know, keyboard and mouse, I basically replicated my workspace at the office, I bought a chair that was the same chair that I used at work, I bought a keyboard and a mouse that were the same that I had at my job. And so I provided myself with some because I was happy with my workspace And so I provided myself with some, cause I was happy with my workspace and I provided myself some continuity that way. And then over time I accumulated, you know, I accumulated more stuff. Um, I bought a boom arm for the, for podcasting and I had some pictures that I put up on the walls to make it feel a little more like my, my space, which was nice. Um, and then when I left my job, I, I my job, I got an iMac because at that point I

could, I saw this as the place I would be doing the bulk of my work. And although I still have the laptop and I have the iPad that I use for some stuff, I wanted this place to be my primary workspace. And so now I have an iMac on the sit-stand desk. And then beyond that, like I said, it was I'm in a space that is divided from the rest of the garage, which is used for storage. And it's pretty ugly because it's boxes and stuff. And so I went on Amazon and I bought two sets of the same kind of curtains and two curtain rods. And there's a beam in the garage here, an exposed beam that I could screw the curtain rods to. And so now I have a probably, I don't even know what it is, 10-foot span of curtains that block off the ugly part. And it actually makes a difference to have kind of not the distraction of the junk that's on the

other side for me it probably gives you some good acoustics too for your podcast yeah none of it was intended to be podcast stuff i we also have uh we insulated in here which it wasn't before and that that has improved the the sound too but it wasn't part of the plan it just sort of happened and then the the carpet like i said this was an unfinished, it was concrete slab, concrete floor. And so, adding the carpet was great because it feels less like a prison and more like a room of the house, which is a big deal. Moving the door was a big part of that. And then in terms of heat, our central heat doesn't come in here. And despite people, you know, who live in cold places, who at california californians for saving saying things are cold which is true but at the same time i'm not really interested

in working in a in a 50 degree office in the winter yeah i'll grant you that if i was in new york the garage would be like 10 degrees but at 50 degrees it's still not a workplace so i bought a i bought a heater i bought a big um it bought a big, it's got oil in it, but it's not like, it doesn't burn oil. It just uses the oil as the conductive medium. And it's a DeLonghi heater that has got a timer on it that I plug in. It's an electric heater. It comes on in the morning, like 6 a.m., 5.30 a.m., something like that, and starts warming up the place and so by the time i get in here at uh like seven or eight it is uh coming up into the you know it's in sort of maybe the low to mid 60s and it'll get to 70 eventually and uh those are the things that that made this a oh and i

bought some shelves at ikea at some point along the way. I bought a kind of a credenza kind of thing with drawers and the, and the, uh, the doors of the, of the different, you know, items on this Ikea thing, uh, has made a difference for me. So that's my, that's, that's my story. It was, you know, if none of it is super pricey, um, I, you know, I didn't cheap out on like not having carpet and working on concrete. Cause I thought that would make a huge difference. And it did, it made an enormous difference. But you know, this sit stand desk is not the best. You know, if I were buying one today, I would consider buying the better one. But I was I wanted to do it frugally. So I got a I got a small, cheap, sit stand adjustable desk. I think that's an interesting point is when you get started. I mean, I think

the general advice I would give to anybody is you're starting a new business. Don't spend any money you don't have to save your capital because it's going to be a lean when you get started. Right. But the flip side of that is this is your workspace and this is where you're going to be making money. This is where you're going to be earning money for whatever it is you're doing. And I think it needs to be a comfortable space. So while I'm generally in favor of saying don't spend a bunch of money, I do think you should spend the appropriate amount of money to make it a comfortable place for you to work. And if that means you get a nice sit-stand desk, then get a nice sit-stand desk. I know when I first started, I have a sit-stand desk as well. Mine is more of a traditional big computer-sized desk.

I mean, I don't know, it's like six feet long and maybe two or three feet wide. And it's really nice because I've got an iMac on it, but I can clear the decks very easily. And when I've got, you know, I work a lot in corporate books and sometimes I do have a lot of paper and I can work on it that way as well. And it goes up and down. It's just, it's really great. I mean, the other stuff I bought when I got started was I got a good quality shredder because I deal with stuff that needs to be shredded. And I also bought a really good quality laser printer because I need to, you know,

even though I'm working from home, I want anybody in any big firm in the country to get something from me to see quality, you know, paper quality product. So it doesn't look like some, you know, goofball. That's a big difference between our two professions is the legal profession. I think there's a lot more paper. Yeah, there is. Sounds like you bought a lot of paper supplies.

Well, even then, you know, I was thinking I don't have an office in the garage, but what I do have is I have some quality shelving in there because I represent a lot of companies and I have corporate books for hundreds of companies sitting in there on, you know, organized on shelves. And so I can access what I need. I don't want to put those in the bedroom. So, you know, it depends on what business you're in. But I think the overall point is when you're getting started, do be willing to spend a little bit of money on yourself to make it a good, comfortable workspace. Give yourself what you need to succeed. It doesn't mean go out and buy 10 iMacs or buy the $10,000 desk and the $8,000 chair. But get yourself – there is good quality stuff that is affordable out there.

What you shouldn't do is put a piece of plywood on a couple cardboard boxes because you're like setting yourself up for failure from the beginning yeah if you're going to be miserable then that's no good also if you're if you're planning on making your move like i did um i think taking the time if you're not sure when you're going to make the move taking the time to have a good home workspace first off if you never leave your job and you and you remain at it but you do you know you work at home a day or two a week or something like that, that happens more and more. People are working at home, even in corporate jobs. All of these same things apply, and it gives you a huge time horizon in terms of building this thing. So you may be thinking in a year or two, I'm going to go. But in the meantime, you know

what? Don't let that stop you from making a better workspace in your house, right? Because even if you never leave, it will benefit you for when you're working at home. So I think that's something that if you're starting to think about this, that's a thing to always think is like, I could build my better workspace now. I don't need to wait because for me, it was really great. The day that I started work in my garage, I already had a garage workspace. It was already set up. I'd been using it for like nine months or a year. And I can't imagine, I've said this before about a bunch of different aspects, but I can't imagine starting on day one thinking, okay, it's time to start my new business. And here, here I go and not having anything

because then you need to spend the time doing it. So lay the groundwork. Like if you're, if you're going to go lay the groundwork now, get, get yourself a chair. And again, if you've got a chair that works, okay, that's fine. But if it's going to make you, if it's not something that you can envision sitting on for eight hours a day, um, if, if when you do work at home, your back is killing you and it's miserable and you know, then maybe you do need to make a change of some, of some kind or other. I had chairs in this house that I could have used, but I bought a chair that is the same chair as my office chair at IDG because I was comfortable in that chair and I wanted, and it was worth it to me to do that and not just kind of take a dining room chair,

which doesn't have wheels and isn't adjustable and is not that comfortable and makes my back hurt if I sit longer than a meal on it. So make those, make those decisions. You're not looking for Tiffany plated, you know, stuff here, but make decisions that are going to make you comfortable because these are, this is a place that you're going to need to work and want to work at. And right. I mean, you also, there's that of like, you got to override the I'm in bed. I'll just stay in bed. I'm going to watch some TV. I'm going to do whatever, right? You got to override the, I'm in bed, I'll just stay in bed. I'm going to watch some TV. I'm going to do whatever, right? You got to override that. You got to be excited about doing this. And if your workspace is crappy, it's a lot harder to get excited about it. And if that means whatever that means to you, like if that means carpet, I keep mentioning the carpet. It's like,

if that means putting down carpet, so you're not standing on concrete and that's important to you, then do something about it. Get a rug, get something. And it doesn't have to be, I'll go back to another thing. My garage, as I mentioned, when I let my son in with his bike, my garage is still a garage. We didn't hire a contractor and enclose it and put up walls and put in a bathroom and all these things that we could do and people in our neighborhood do. We didn't do any of that. We did a soft conversion where it's still a garage. Give me a couple of days and a couple of moving trucks and you could park a car in here. We didn't, that means we didn't put in carpet. We just got a big remnant carpet. So we made decisions that were not the

expensive decisions, but what we didn't do is say, well, if we're not going to go all the way, we just won't bother. Instead, it was like, what is important to get this place to be someplace that I want to be every day? And I do want to be here every day. And I do like my place. And it feels like mine. That goes back to something that's also not a luxury. Like if you've got a little place, and you can make your heart happy by putting up a picture of what you do or what you love, your family, some art, whatever it is, that helps a lot too. A knick-knack on the desk, things that make it feel like your workspace. It's even better on that because when you're working for yourself, you can put things on your desk that you wouldn't put on your desk at the office. I love Star Wars, and there's this great company that sells these very overpriced, expensive Star Wars figures. They're like a couple hundred bucks to get one. And

every time I do something big, I release a new book or something, that's my reward. So I've got several of these, and I rotate them on my desk. There's no way in my old firm I could have a 12-inch R2-D2 on my desk all day and get away with it. But I have it now, and I rotate them on my desk. There's no way in my old firm I could have a 12 inch R2D2 on my desk all day and get away with it. But I have it now and I'm looking at it right now and I'm smiling. So I think one of the advantages of your home office is that you get to do a few things that you couldn't otherwise. Yeah. And I had one last point I wanted to make in this section, which is about keeping it clean. Everybody's going to vary, and I am not a neat freak by any stretch of the imagination,

but it's a little bit like just because nobody's going to see it and it's just for you, and so you can kind of let it go and be a mess. And it's very easy to prioritize work over keeping your area clean, but I spend some time patrolling my office. And just yesterday, I did a I did a big cleanup, because things start to gather and they start to clutter. And what I realized personally, and again, not everybody might be like this is I would open the door in the morning, and I would see like laundry spread out, and then a big box full of junk, and a couple of boxes that had come with with products in them for me to review that are still sitting here. And there's visual clutter full, you know, and a full trash can and things

like that. And I would not feel as excited about walking into my office. And, you know, so I did some cleanup yesterday and I walked in this morning. I was like, oh yeah, because it was like the clear runway, like the carpet is clean, the boxes are out of the way, everything's good. So that's something, you know, again, it might not be your first priority, but I feel like it can make a difference is take some pride, not only in the pictures you put up and the figurines you put on your desk or whatever, but in keeping your workspace organized and neat, at least to a degree, because I think it makes a difference to your mindset.

Yeah. And everybody's different. I'm like you. I actually can't work in a cluttered environment. It's just my brain gets obsessed with it. And so I'm always a neat freak about my workspace. But I'm sure we'll have listeners that just go crazy and they don't care. That's fine.

What do you say to clients? This is an issue I face. I don't know how much of a problem it is for you. Yeah, nobody cares with me, but I know it does for you. It's like, are you a guy in his pajamas or are you a legitimate attorney? Yeah, in like a big boy office. So it's interesting because a lot of my clients are small to medium sized businesses and they don't care. They just don't care. They love that I'm available for them when they need me and it doesn't matter otherwise. I do have, and we talked about this on the show where we talked about where you work. I have an office available to me. I've got an address on my website and I've got a big fancy conference room and I can put on a suit and tie

and go look fancy when I need to. But most days I work from home. I have a couple of clients that are, that are big companies and I don't advertise to them that I work at home a lot. I just don't feel like, you know, if they ask me, I'm not going to lie to them. I'll, I'll certainly tell them I do, but the, I just kind of, I lay low on it, I guess, with, with certain people. But, you know, the longer I do this, the smaller list gets right that i'm laying low on but i do think that's a consideration depending on what industry you're going to be in so you know it could be an issue i i have some lawyer friends that think it's crazy that i work at home and uh that you know you have to have an office and you have to you know i think it's the trappings

of it and um but you've got the trappings covered i mean that's the brilliant thing and we did talk about in that previous episode the brilliant thing about what um, but you've got the trappings covered. I mean, that's the brilliant thing. And we did talk about it in that previous episode. The brilliant thing about what you do is you've got an address and you've got an office space that you can make available basically whenever you need it. And so you've got, I feel like you've got the best combination, which is you work at home, but it's like, you've got an office that you just telecommute to essentially, it's not really there unless you will it to be there by paying for a few hours or whatever in a conference room. But you've got the space. It's not like if somebody says, I want to have a meeting with you tomorrow, you go, oh, boy, let's clean up the house, right?

You don't have that. And I feel like that is a great balance. I have a thing like that here that I could do, and I've never done it. I have a thing like that here that I could do, and I've never done it. But if I needed to, it's the same sort of thing where they've got monthlies, and then they've also got kind of like an hourly that you can rent a conference room for a few hours. Or you can drop in and say, I want an office for the day and pay them and do that. And I've never used that, and I'm not sure I ever will. But if I was in your line of work, that would exactly be what I would do is what you're doing now, which is you have an office whenever, I mean, not to use

these magical terms, but this is essentially what it is, is you can will a physical office into existence whenever it's necessary for your clients to see you at a physical office. And the rest of the time it doesn't exist as opposed to what you used to have to do, which is rent an office, even if you never went into it. Or even if you decided since you were renting it, you would go to it and you would be less happy there. Today, if you've got any kind of an office share,

co-working space around, you don't have to do that. Yeah, and we haven't really talked about a lot of the advantages of home offices, although we covered in that prior show. But the idea is you can get out of bed and you can take your shower or do your exercise or whatever, and then sit down and start working. There is no commute. Your commute is, people ask me about it and I always say like, my commute is to open the door and walk in. And the flexibility also of getting up and getting your tea, and I do this all the time, and coming in and doing work in my pajamas. And then when I'm done mid-morning, then I walk the dog or go for a run, take a shower and move on with my late morning or early afternoon. And you can't do that if you have to start the morning, get ready, go, be at a place for a block of time and then come home at the end. So these are the great advantages.

The flexibility is a huge, huge advantage of this. It's not for everyone. I would argue maybe, and we've talked about this on past shows too, lots of footnotes in this episode, that when you get started, not over committing and saying, all right, well, now I'm on my own. I'm going to buy a lot of furniture or I'm going to rent an office for a year or something like that, right? Which is like, start small. Starting at home, even if you don't intend to stay at home, starting at home can be a good strategy because you're already paying to live there. And so why pay for something else? You've already got space that you're paying for. You're using it to live. Why not also use it to work? That doesn't mean

that it's final, right? I mean, you can always, as your business grows, one, you'll have more, hopefully your business will grow and you'll have more money. You'll have an idea of what your budget would be to spend on office space. And two, you will have learned whether you can cut it at home and what the issues are. And so I really, you know, strongly advise everybody who's starting this to start working at home, see if you can make it work, save your money, and then find out how much money you've got to spend and what the issues are at home and then make a decision. So it's never it's never final. I think about it and cannot imagine going to an office. Even like just down the road where we have this thing. I can't imagine it. I can't imagine spending the money on office space when I have a space in my house that I'm very happy with, but everybody's

going to be different. The opportunity is always there to, whether it's to do the hourly thing or, you know, or a monthly deal at one of these coworking places, or just find a friend. My friend, Greg, he used to have a-working space and now he is renting out an office in his wife's law firm. And law firms often have space available. It turns out that they've over-leased and they've got a room available. So, you can always do that if you decide that the home office space is not right for you, but it seems prudent to start at home. I occasionally go through that. Now I've been at this two years.

I am occasionally, you know, it's nutty having your office in your corner of your bedroom. I mean, I do agree with that. It would be a different if I was still working on the bed, I would have probably a different opinion about this than I do in my garage. There are days where I feel like I just really want my own four walls, but usually then I just get on my bike and I go down to Starbucks or whatever and get out of the house and then I feel better about it. And I feel like ultimately, you know, sadly, my children are eventually going to leave and I am going to have space. And all the benefits of being at home are so much better than going into an office. I think I'm still suffering from my post-traumatic stress of going to an office for 22 years. That said, it is not for everybody. And to go back to Greg,

Greg is a great example where Greg is a computer programmer. He could work at home. He did work at home at various points. And for him, he really likes the structure of getting up, driving in, working, being done, and going home. It works for him. I think he felt like just being at home, he was not going to be productive. He needs to be in a place and work. And that may be true for some of you and for others, it may not be. And that's okay. I would say you will learn that about yourself. And it's a process of discovery. And working at home is not for everybody. And it is not a failure if you can't and won't do it. The great thing about working at home is all the things we've been discussing. The other great thing about being an independent person is you decide where your office is, ideally, right? So if you are somebody who

needs to get that office space, you can hopefully find something that works close to you. So instead of having an hour commute to an office space, you have a 15 minute commute to an office space. And that's, you know, that's a pretty good commute too. That's, that's something you'd brag about. It's not keeping your pajamas on and walking into another room. But if you had told me, like when I was working at IDG that, oh, they're moving the offices to Mill Valley or Sausalito or something. And it's going to be a 10 minute drive from your house. That would be the best thing in the world.

Instead of a 45 minute drive or an hour long bus ride, that would have been great. That would have been, my commute is the best it's ever been. It's so amazing, right? That would be my story. So there are advantages to that, to being able to find,

you decide where your office space is in that case. You're the facilities manager. And so that can be. So it's fine if it ends up being that way. But I think you should still start at home just to find out because it's cheap. It's free, basically. And it might work for you. So you've been working from home a couple of years, Jason.

You in for the long haul? It's still working out for you. So you've been working from home a couple of years, Jason, you in for the long haul, it's still working out for you. Yeah, I cannot. I mean, I literally cannot envision why I would spend money on an external space. That's just personally, but that's because I am so happy in this space. And like I said, if I didn't have my office space here, I would probably struggle with it a lot more. I mean, I probably would have moved, like put a desk in the house somewhere, but it would be harder. It would be a lot harder. So I can't really envision it. I do have those moments where I need to change it up, but it's much more of a temporary thing where I will, and I don't need to go to an office to do it. I will go sit at the bar in the kitchen or I'll sit on the couch or I'll sit on my bed or I will

go to Starbucks. And I have a Starbucks within walking distance. I do that a lot where I am writing a column for Macworld or something and it's just the words are not coming and I will go to the Starbucks and the words will pour out and I will drink my hot chocolate and then I'll go home again. And that is enough for me right now. I could see if I was working on projects with people who were nearby, which I'm not, most of the people I collaborate with are very far away. But if there were like Bay Area people and we wanted to meet up, you know, when I was at IDG, we would just meet up at somebody's house and we would just have our thing at somebody's house and that was fine.

I would probably consider that. I might consider like renting a conference room or something if if that were the case but it's not the case that i i even need that because everything is virtual so yeah i'm in um i'm curious about how you feel given that you are still sort of stealing space in corners of your house i am even despite that and it is frustrating on occasion like i like a really clean workspace. My wife is cluttery. I mean, she didn't admit it, so I don't want to say, you know, she likes to keep things. I like to throw things away. So I think people like that always seem to find each other and get married.

So having my own four walls would be great, and someday it will be an improvement. But even sharing space for my workspace, I can't imagine really leaving. I bought a bike last year. Now I realize that most of the stuff I need is within five miles of my house. So I just ride my bike. I throw my laptop in the back if I want to go to Starbucks and work or whatever. And I really like this lifestyle of being working from home. like this lifestyle of being working from home and, you know, just being, I don't know, it's a very different thing than I've had for the other parts of my life. And I'm really enjoying it. So, I don't see myself changing either. And I think that our different reactions say something about how there is no one size fits all scenario here. And that if you can't have, if you hear me talking

about my garage and you think to yourself, well, I can't do that. That's just, you know, I don't have that space. That's fine. You know, David has a very different situation and still feels very positive about it. I'm reminded of our listener who wrote in about their very small apartment in New York, I want to say, where, or maybe it's London, where they have the, you know, fold out desk and all that. And like in the morning, the two people who work in this little apartment just kind of full unfold everything and they set it up and they do their and they have their workspace for the day and then they work and then at the end of the day they fold it all back up like you can make it work in all sorts of different ways if it's uh

if it's the right thing for you and if if uh the benefits of it outweigh the the other issues yeah agreed all right well after promising before the show that we were going to keep it short we didn't but there's a lot to talk about in this one so uh this has been this has been great let me remind everybody where they can find us uh free agents fm on twitter uh david is max barky i am jay snell on twitter you can find our facebook group it's facebook.com slash groups slash free agents group. And you can get our show notes at relay.fm slash free agents slash 16. And I think that's it.

David, we will be back in a fortnight with more conversations about being independent workers. Looking forward to it. All right. Bye, everybody.