Love Friday ... and working from home

It's fantastically fabulous Friday again! Hip-hip-hooray!

Today I'm working from home, which makes me Love Friday even more than usual.
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I'm lucky that my organisation has a very good flexible working program, which essentially means that when you need to work from home, you can.

And right now I have a speech to work on for one of my senior executives, so the peace and quiet at home is a wonderful thing. And the great big pile of cushions you see here? I'm resting on them with my laptop right now. Ahhhhh.....

I'm a child of the open-plan office, having worked in them for most of my professional life.

There were a couple of blissful, luxurious stints there where I was able to temporarily have an office, with a lovely door that I could close when necessary, but those were the exception rather than the rule.

So I can work open-plan pretty well, as I've had fifteen-odd years of practice. I tune out the white noise and focus on what I'm doing.

What I can't tune out though, is the interruptions. My day is full of interruptions from people stopping by to say hello, ask a question, find a fact, or just chat about life, the universe and everything. That's not conducive to speechwriting. To write effectively, I need a long stretch of time that I can settle into it.

But home, now THAT is conducive. All I have to do is write, play the occasional game of fetch with the Grimth and his battered old mouse toy (he loves to fetch), and answer emails and telephone calls. If I like, I can do the washing. But I don't have to.

And I often find that when I work from home I end up getting more done than I would in the office, because I don't lost time to interruptions and distractions. I generally log onto the computer much earlier, around 730am, and get a whack of stuff done even before breakfast. Which is exactly what I did today.

I'm feeling very virtuous now, so as it's morning tea time, I think I will take a break and sew a pencil case for the market tomorrow. I've earnt it.