RV Office and After Work

RV office.

For most of my career, the nature of my assignments required I sit with my engineering team and the groups we collaborated with when developing products.  Even if the technology had supported working remotely, I would have chosen to be in the office.  Today I'm in a different role at my company and it has me supporting worldwide teams.  I can start a day with a team in Isreal and finish with a team in India.  Since my work is no longer tied to a specific site, I can work from anywhere as long as I have an Internet connection.

When I moved into my current role I had an onsite office, but I quickly found that I was in conference calls all the time.  Between the confidential nature of information I was discussing in the calls, and the noise in the office, I was finding the office was negatively impacting my productivity, and my ability to collaborate with others.  Despite claims that open concept offices promote collaboration, any introvert can tell you, and lots of studies show they don't.  They might look cool, and cost less, but they don't create the levels of productivity, collaboration, and a sense of belonging that the "cubicle generation" demonstrated with the Silicon Valley offices and cubicles that began in the 80's and created incredible levels of innovation and wealth for the next thirty years.

My answer to the onsite problems was to work from home, something I've been doing full-time since 2009.  While the nature of my work assignments made working from home an option, it was only possible because HP's IT organization had deployed the infrastructure to allow HP's employees to have secure access to everything inside the company's network.

Many people think that folks will just goof off if given the option to work from home.  The truth is folks can, but eventually, they are going to fail to deliver on whatever metric their manager uses to measure productivity.  In my experience, my productivity shot up once I got away from the distractions of noise in the office, or folks just dropping by to casually chat.

One of the downsides of going on vacation was coming back to a huge backlog of email.  Buried within the emails were typically lots of questions for me to answer and lots of homework assignments.  Shortly after starting to work from home I decided to try working while on vacation.  The challenge would be, would I actually feel like I'd had a vacation.  The results were awesome.  Not only did I feel like I had returned from a refreshing vacation, but I was current on all my email, and most project requests had also been satisfied.  My work-vacations started with my Coleman tent trailer, expanded to both my Catalina 30 sailboat and my Bayliner 38 motor yacht, and have continued with my Safari Sahara motorhome.  Today, Laura and I have graduated beyond vacations.  We will relocate the motorhome to some favorite destination, I will work full-time, and then we'll play after work or on the weekends.

As I explained in my WiFi Signal Booster and Celluar Signal Booster projects, getting a good Internet connection is a must for me to be able to work away from home.  Since most WiFi in RV parks is notoriously unreliable, I mostly rely on my Verizon mobile data plan.

The view out my office window in site #118, Fidalgo Bay RV Resort.

After Work

Our practice after work or dinner, when staying in the motorhome, is to go for a thirty-minute walk.  When in Anacortes, we often choose the Tommy Thompson Trail heading out over the old train trestle because it's flat, and it makes for a nice two-mile round trip.

Laura multi-tasking.

Laura talks to her niece who is housesitting for us.

The view north from the trestle.

Sunset over Anacortes as we head back to the motorhome.

Today had been a regular workday on a Tuesday.  It had been a gorgeous day in paradise, and I wasn't on vacation.  Something about working in paradise, and getting to go for a walk with my sweetheart after work made everything feel right.

Live well, Laugh often, Love much