Adventures in home working

I just posted about the tough decsion I had to make choosing between an IPAQ and a Blackberry.  Maybe I should have waited for one of these!

- Posted by Steve Richards - 2:05:43 PM - comment []

I have recently given up my Blackberry for economic reasons, and spent the money I saved on an IPAQ which I convinced myself would be more, "life enhancing",  after a month I think I made the right decision but I do miss my Blackberry a lot and still feel it would add a lot of value to my work/home life if I still had it.  A recent report brings the issue into clear focus:

Research In Motion has today published the results of a survey it commissioned with Ipsos Reid into the benefits of using BlackBerry handhelds. Among the report's conclusions is the compelling statistic that employers recuperate on average 188 working hours a year, or more than a working month(*1) for every member of staff they provide with a BlackBerry handheld. Employees also benefit from the improved productivity enabled by BlackBerry, salvaging on average more than 108 hours a year in personal time. This is the equivalent to more than thirteen days extra holiday a year (*2).

A 2004 DTI survey highlighted that 87% of employees would like more time to spend with friends and family and that nearly four in ten adults (38%) between the ages of 35 and 55 feel they currently spend too much time at work, at the expense of other commitments (*3). Two-thirds of respondents to Ipsos Reid's survey agreed that using the BlackBerry recovered personal time and improved their work/life balance.

The study was conducted with 210 BlackBerry users and 490 IT managers responsible for managing BlackBerry in their firms across the US, Europe and Asia Pacific. It found that the average BlackBerry user sends and receives 2,750 time sensitive emails a year while away from the office using their handheld. BlackBerry is having positive impact on team work within companies as well. Respondents almost universally agreed to the statement "BlackBerry has enhanced my workflow efficiency" (99 per cent agreed) with teams equipped with BlackBerry on average 29 per cent more efficient.

So as a home worker, why would a BB still be useful to me:

1. One of the benefits of home working is that you can choose your hours, often I find I prefer to walk during the day, (I need ti walk a lot as it helpsmy AOSD condition), and work at night for example.  The BB lets me keep in contact with people when I am walking, shopping, cycling etc.  So the collaborative interactions and immediacy inherent with working the same hours as office workers is retained, but I can get on with personal work, like research or writing when it suits me.
2. I often like to sit and read in the garden, the BB lets me keep an eye out for important emails
3. I have to go places, mainly doctors and hospital quite often and sit waiting for ages, not only would a BB keep me productive during these periods, but again time critical emails could be processed keeping the workflow moving.

- Posted by Steve Richards - 2:00:37 PM - comment []

Every month or so someone tells me my work is too detailed, or that I am a perfectionist.  Ironically every week or so someone also tells me that I have not covered some topic or other in sufficient detail.  However the, "its too detailed", or "too complex", audience tends to be the one that pays the bills so they are more important to listen to.  I came across this nice little post on the subject, and I have extracted a snip from it here:

One important lesson I've learned about designing software is that sometimes it pays to smother one's perfectionist engineer instincts and be less ambitious about the problems one is trying to solve. Put more succintly, a technology doesn't have to solve every problem just enough problems to be useful. Two examples come to mind which hammered this home to me; Tim Berners-Lee's World Wide Web and collaborative filtering which sites like Amazon use.

However I am not a person who likes to compromise so I am gradually working towards a way of solving this problem, and its pretty simple and obvious.  Stop writing documents and start writing web sites.  This post is an example, (although not a very good one), short and direct but with links off to more detailed supporting material.

- Posted by Steve Richards - 1:07:37 PM - comment []