Working from the Road and Afternoon Adventures

Mobile Office

I'm employed by a major US computer technology company, and I have worked from home for the past eight years.  Prior to my current role, I managed R&D teams developing products, where I was accustom to lots of face to face meetings.  With working from home, everything became virtual.  While the loss of body language cues required placing more emphasis on listening skills, I quickly found that as an introvert, my productivity shot up.  Gone were the non-work related hallway conversations, and other interruptions.  Oddly, concerns about staying connected and being available never materialized.  While email continues to be an important communications medium, instant messaging applications like Microsoft Skype have created the illusion that anyone is just a few keystrokes away.

Today my team isn't co-located at a single company site, so connecting virtually is a requirement.  Furthermore, the R&D and Marketing groups my team supports are located around the globe.  A very busy day for me can start with a team in Israel, and follow the sun, until I finish with a team in Bangalore, India.  Such a schedule would have been tough in the past, but today, because I work from home, I can take a couple of hours off to accomplish non-work related activities, and then get back online and finish my day will a team just starting their workday.  My job doesn't demand this type of crazy schedule every day, but it's handy when needed.

So what does this have to do with RVing?  When your only work dependencies are a laptop and Internet access, working from anywhere becomes a win-win for both the company and the employee.  I gain the freedom to combine vacations and work, while my company leverages my thirty-seven years of engineering and management experience at the company, across multiple teams around the world.  That type of reach and impact just wouldn't be possible in a traditional straight eight type of work schedule.  And to those that think employees will just goof off if they work from home, that's not what the data shows.  At the end of the day, you still have deliverables that are promised to someone (your manager, colleagues, other teams you support, etc.), so someone is going to notice if the work isn't getting done.  

Maintaining focus while working at home isn't a problem.  In fact, the person who underwent the biggest adjustment wasn't me, it was my wife.  She was accustomed to me being gone during the day.  It took her a few weeks to stop coming into my home office and wanting to start a discussion when I was in the middle of a phone or video conference.  Today if she sees me walking around the house or the motorhome with a headset on, she assumes I'm on a call.

Beats a cubicle any day.

Our 1996 Safari Sahara is a model 3530 with the center bathroom and mid-door entry.  The two pocket doors that close off the bathroom create a nice sound buffer when Laura is in the bedroom and I'm in the main cabin on a phone conference.  Because I'm in so many calls during the day, Laura purchased and wears a Bluetooth over-the-ears headset with noise cancellation technology so she can share the main cabin with me during the day.

1996 Safari Sahara Floorplan

I'm a morning person, so when we are at home that translates into me getting up at 4 am, in the pool at 5 am for 2500 meters of laps, and then at my desk by 6:30 am.  By the time lunch occurs, I've already been working 5.5 hours.  When we travel, the lack of a swim just pushes my work start time ahead a couple of hours.  This results in me getting off of work at 1 pm if I'm looking to only put eight hours in.  The benefit for Laura and me is that we have the whole afternoon to explore, which suits Laura fine because she isn't a morning person.

RVing versus the To-Do List

My first attempt to combine RVing and work occurred in July 2006 during a trip to Fort Worden State Park (parks.state.wa.us/511/Fort-Worden), in Port Townsend, WA (ptguide.com).  There was no Internet in the campsites, so I'd walk to the Commons building, which was equipped with free Wi-Fi, to download my email.  Phone conferences in the confines of the tent trailer, not to mention the thinness of the walls, wasn't practical, so that meant that our Honda Odyssey became my "cone of silence" for calls.

Working on the Road 2006

Despite the rudimentary tools for working remotely, they worked.  I gained the advantage of returning to the office and not facing a pile of email, and most of it was accomplished in the wee hours of the morning when I was going to be up anyway, and Laura would still be sleeping.

The biggest revelation about working remotely has been how much more "living" gets crammed into a day when compared to being at home.  Unlike being at home, where once the workday ends my thoughts change to my To-Do list of home projects, when we are RVing, my thoughts change to adventure.  Where do we want to go?  What do we want to explore?  While one could behave similarly at home, there's just something about RVing that encourages a philosophy of carpe diem, "seize the day".

Carpe Diem

A windy day after work is not typically the conditions that motivate me to leave the house, but combine it with RVing and scenery that just invites one to explore, and I'm out the door.  I headed over to the Ferry Terminal, and then onto Washington Park to check out what the wind was doing to Rosario Strait.

West side of Anacortes

Washington State Ferry Terminal, Anacortes

Looking across Rosario Strait.

Green Point, Washington Park

Burrows Channel Viewpoint.  Skyline Marina in the background.

On this day, RVing prevented me from working on my To-Do list of home projects, so the weeds got a little taller, and the lawn a little shaggier, but I definitely fit more living into my twenty-four hours.

Live well, Laugh often, Love much