Working from Home: Distractions
November 22, 2013
These were my office scissors. They were some special kind of scissors which are impossible to cut or poke yourself with, which shows what management thought of our abilities.
When people find out I work from home, they often say “Oh, I could never do that. I would get too distracted.”
I admit that I do get distracted while I work from home. I do go throw in the occasional load of laundry, or stand in front of the fridge looking for snacks.
But what I don’t have to do is:
- Listen to my co-worker tell me her wedding plans down to the napkin color, shape and size
- Talk my co-worker down because that guy from accounting has parked in “her” parking place again even though we don’t have assigned parking places but he should know because she always parks there
- Spend 40 minutes reading lunch menus and arguing whether we should have Chinese food or go to the Thai place even though their food isn’t as good as it used to be and the fish tank hasn’t been cleaned in so long it makes everyone feel kind of bad to look at it
- Hit traffic on the way to work and be half an hour late, though technically early enough since I got there 3 minutes before the boss
- Walk back and forth to the bathroom, which is about 7 football fields away from my desk
- Walk the long way back from the bathroom (which, did I mention, is about 7 football fields away) to avoid that one creepy security guard who likes to talk about how the government is building camps in the desert for dissenters
- Spend multiple minutes trying to get an old paperclip stuck out of a crack in my desk
- Read all the signs in the kitchen area from people who have had their lunch stolen (again) or who are mad about the dishes in the sink
- Rig up an elaborate antenna system to try to get radio reception even though the building is apparently in some kind of electronic black hole
- Avoid the IT guy that I borrowed that cable from one time and never returned
- Check my teeth for spinach bits after lunch (at home, no one cares)
- Return my lunch back to the cafeteria after I find the ghostly white finger from a latex glove in the salad
See why it doesn’t bother me to get distracted at home? I still get 3 more hours out of every day. Honest, boss, I do.
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Suebob's Red Stapler 
I work from home at times & I am highly distracted but I would rather do that than run the risk of being talked to death by my co-worker. If I REALLY want to be productive I work at the office when I know she is working at home.
I worked with a woman who would tell me about shopping trips in real time. Like “Then I walked over and picked up a blue purse, but I didn’t like the buckle, so I put it back down and they had a red one right beside it, but it was a little too small and the metal was gold and you know I like silver, plus I wanted a bag with more than 2 pockets…” OMG
I have been working from home for the past 10 years and on the whole I like it but I was getting interrupted by my children and also kept stopping to do domestic tasks (like filling the washing machine) SO my solution was to kit out my garden shed to be a home office. It now has electricity, heating, phone and internet and is warm all year round. I get much less interruptions from my children and I am not tempted to stop and “do something domestic”.
One thing I don’t have kids is disrupting me. The dog is bad enough – she goes outside and the door stays open. I reach over to shut the door and she pops back inside as if to say “Why is the door closing?” Then she wants to go out again 3 minutes later. (I only have one door).
I work from home 100% of the time, and it is sometimes distracting, but I think more often my problem is working too much instead of too little. “Oh, I’ll just put dinner in the oven and then come back and finish this project” is better than being stuck at work and not having dinner in the oven at all, but it’s not as good as turning off the computer and being DONE for the day.