Government Executive - Authors - Jen Doll

The (Slightly More) Professional Guide to Working from Home

Jen Doll, The Wire — Tue, 07 May 2013 12:30:00 -0400

It seems that working from home — that dreamy day job to which we all used to aspire, and perhaps some of us still do — has fallen on hard times. According to a recent article in The New York Times, a paper with a long history of articles about the trend in co-working arrangements, working from home is overrated, bewildering, isolating, and in some cases downright horrid.Yahoo's Marissa Mayer may be against working from home, but she's not the only one. As a disgruntled work-from-homer told the Times, "I would get distracted by dust bunnies under the desk and end up vacuuming in the middle of the day, or look at myself in the mirror at 7 p.m. and realize I was still in pajamas." The pretzels were too tempting. The Xbox called. Bed, oh, bed. It's easily swayed folks like this who are keeping the shared office in business!

But let's just say you don't want to deal with the difficulties of finding a shared office space, or paying for it, or putting on pants in the morning. Are there ways to make your work-from-home routine a bit more productive, and you, yourself, ever so slightly more efficient, all the while remaining firmly planted upon your own couch? I talked to a few of the Internet's most skilled work-from-homers (as it happens, I am no slouch in this regard either, though I often dress like one when I work from home) for their best filing-from-the-couch advice.

Get Dressed in Some Form or Fashion. I'll admit I usually break this rule when I do find myself working from home. I roll out of bed in sweatpants and a T-shirt, move my laptop to my lap as I sit on the couch, and if it's a working-from-home day (as it was frequently during my recent book leave), I'll stay that way until maybe noon, when, yes, I might put on something a little nicer, particularly if I've ordered in food and will feel ashamed about my outfit. I have experimented with donning workout clothes first thing in the morning; this has the added benefit of making you feel sporty and energetic even if you never get to the gym! STFU, Parents blogger and author Blair Koenig tells me, "One thing I'll always remember is when I told a woman at a party that I work from home, she was super confused and asked me all these questions. She was like, 'So do you make sure to get to your desk by 9 on the dot?', 'Do you get dressed right away?' and—my favorite— 'Do you wear shoes?' Haha. Get dressed when you get out of bed. It makes you feel more alert, and it allows you to open the door for packages without scrambling for a bra." As for the shoes, is there broken glass in the house? Then you should probably go into the office. As for that woman at that party, she should perhaps get out of her own house more often.

Consider Your Resources. In the wise words of Grantland work-from-homer Rembert Browne, "Have good enough internet, but not incredible internet. You need to leave the house sometimes, and the Time Warner Cable/Internet package will see to it that you do, because it will stop working every 97 minutes, forcing even the staunchest homebody out for fresh air or even a change of location." Take these lessons further, across your entire work-from-home mantra. Have a good enough computer, but not an incredible computer. Have a good enough desk, but not an incredible desk. Have a good enough mug of coffee next to you, but not an incredible one (it would only be incredible if it was bottomless, and also full of money, right?), because whether you're in the office or working from home, it's good to get up now and again, to stretch your legs and get some air and another cup of coffee. For the prevention of blood clots and whatnot.

Take Advantage of the Great Opportunities that Have Befallen You! Because you can. Because you can. "People who work from home often don't have set hours, and therefore work longer hours, so fuck it, have a glass of champagne with your sandwich for lunch," says Koenig. Or a beer with your afternoon snack. I'd suggest, also, picking up dry-cleaning or making a trip to the post office mid-day, running out for a sandwich around 3 p.m. in your sweatpants, scheduling a non-rush-hour-timed doctor's appointment, and even taking a coffee meeting around the corner from your home-workplace when and if you feel like it, because you can. (And you can work outside, too.) If you have a dog and you work from home, pet your dog.

How to Make Working Outside Work for You

Jen Doll, The Wire — Wed, 10 Apr 2013 14:24:00 -0400

The desire comes around at a certain time of year, when it's just starting to get nice, when the office workers of America and beyond have been cooped up for far too long in the too-cold (or too-hot, depending on who's controlling the thermostat) confines of their cubicles. Working outside! Can we work outside today? It is sunny and bright and fresh-aired and glorious—in the 70s in New York, even warmer elsewhere—and we just want to break free, our laptops slung in our totes, and head to a nearby park or beach or rooftop.

Later in the season it will be too hot; we'll need the air-conditioned cool of the indoors to concentrate, but for now, it's perfect. And it does sound ideal, a dream within a dream (minus, maybe, the "working" part, but a person's gotta eat, right?). Still, is working outside ever really possible, or is it but a pipe dream? What do you need to work—really work—outside? I investigated.

Don't Set Your Sights Too High.

Later in the summer, or when you take a vacation, there will come the time that you travel to a far-away beach locale, and you have in the back of your mind the "idea" that you will get a little work done while you're there, sipping daiquiris and staring off into the blue waves. You should really quash this idea, don't even allow it to creep into your head, because it's ruining your vacation. If you really, really must do this, sit under an umbrella, and bring the laptop with the half-dead battery so you can only do about 25 minutes of work before, of necessity, falling asleep or reading that new novel you are so excited about.

What Your Email Inbox Count Says About You

Rebecca Greenfield and Jen Doll, The Wire — Thu, 13 Dec 2012 07:00:00 -0500

What's the number of unread emails—right now, at this moment, without changing anything—in your inbox? That would be 3,487 in the case of Jen here; 1 in the case of Rebecca. More about what that means in a second, but first, a bit of backstory: The New Yorker's Silvia Killingsworth has embarked on an exploration of what she dubs in her headline as "Zero Dark Inbox," or having absolutely zero unread emails in one's inbox. She writes, "I have four e-mails in my inbox right now, but I’m aiming for that number to be zero. Like many practitioners of the 'Inbox Zero' system, I treat my inbox like a to-do list, with each e-mail representing a task...." She's adhering to a method promoted by Merlin Mann, a lifehacker and proponent of Getting Things Done; essentially, it's the digital version of opening all your letters (what letters?) and bills when you receive them and dealing with them then as opposed to setting them aside and waiting for the bill collectors to start bugging you to pay up (not that we would do that, of course).

Killingsworth took on the pursuit of Inbox Zero for herself, calling it "exhilarating and terrifying"—fortunately, like many a process-and-detail-oriented person, "I am addicted to the gratification that comes from tidying up," she writes. Inbox Zero is a coping mechanism, a way to move on with conversations throughout the day; on the down side, entire threads may be forgotten, no longer staring you in the face. "And what about when you actually reach Inbox Zero? It doesn’t feel like winning. It feels like staring into the abyss," she explains. But there are at least many like-minded or attempting-to-be-like-minded commiserators with whom you can share your attempts to get there, so that's fun, sort of like a support group.

But if Killingsworth and her ilk, wholeheartedly and diligently attempting to get to Zero, are one example of an email-lifestyle, what are the others? We undertook a brief investigation of the staff of The Atlantic Wire to find out What Our Inbox Numbers Say About Us (and therefore, perhaps, you too; remember ourbook readers diagnostic?). As for our unread email counts, here's what we found.

There's Nothing Lazy About Working from Bed

Jen Doll, The Wire — Wed, 14 Nov 2012 14:00:00 -0500

There is hope yet for haters of the treadmill desk, for people who despise cubicles, or, simply, for folks who don't really enjoy getting out of bed in the morning, much less commuting. Enough people are working from home in their beds (and, no, this is not a sex scandal thing) that Sue Shellenbarger has addressed it in a piece in The Wall Street Journal. "Is clacking away on a laptop while sprawling on bed sheets more comfortable and productive than hunching over a desk?" she asks. Of course it is! (Full disclosure: Writing this while hunched over a coffee table nowhere near a bed.)

A couple things to note. There have been real live studies done on this stuff. The researchers say that since so many of us now in the workplace have been brought up with our mobile devices, we're increasingly prone to using them whichever way is most comfortable—"while propped against pillows, lying down or in a fetal curl." Personally, I like to read Twitter on my iPhone while reclining on my mattress, though often the hand holding the phone will fall asleep, and sometimes I'll drop the phone on my face, which is not entirely pleasant. Despite these difficulties, I am not alone, even if I'm alone in their peculiarities. Lots of people are working from bed.

Shellenbarger writes that "half of 1,000 workers polled this year by Good Technology, a Sunnyvale, Calif., mobile-security software company, said they read or respond to work emails from bed. A study of 329 British workers found nearly 1 in 5 employees spends two to 10 hours a week working from bed, according to the 2009 poll by Credant Technologies, a London-based data-security company." Further, "Market research by Reverie, a Walpole, Mass., maker of adjustable beds, suggests as many as 80 percent of young New York City professionals work regularly from bed, says chief executive Martin Rawls-Meehan."

Read the full story at The Atlantic Wire.

Image via Shutterstock by fotoedu.

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Don't freak out about the possible Election Day nor'easter just yet

Jen Doll, The Wire — Fri, 02 Nov 2012 16:08:51 -0400

Let's all sit down for this: The National Weather Service is predicting more weather of the extreme variety. A Nor'easter is "possible for Mid-Atlantic/New England states by Election Day into next Thursday," per the Hydrometeorological Prediction Center of College Park, Maryland. Nor'easter sounds like something we're not quite ready to deal with yet, but it will not be as monumental, it appears, as a Snor'eastercane. There may be a bit of snow, and some rain and wind, in the Northeast Wednesday and Thursday of next week, which is hardly ideal given the problems Sandy left the city and beyond, but it's also NOT a Frankenstorm, as the meteorologists are careful to warn us. Still, it's going to get colder, and we've still got people without power—and, even, without homes. Breezy Point does not need snow right now.

Tom Niziol of The Weather Channel explains, "Two important points to make here. At this time it looks as though coastal impacts would be farther north along the New England coast than we saw with Sandy. Snowfall would be confined to northern New England. Also, this system will not be anywhere as impactful as Sandy." AccuWeather Expert Senior Meteorologist Henry Margusity says, "The weather pattern remains volatile for another storm to form on the East Coast, but nothing like Sandy." It's "a storm that would be more normal for early November."

Workplace Whiners and the Other Coworkers You'll Know

Jen Doll, The Wire — Wed, 12 Sep 2012 11:47:00 -0400

Today in The Wall Street Journal Sue Shellenbarger discusses a type of coworker you've surely had the occasion to work with, assuming you've been working in an office environment for any time at all. This is, Shellenbarger writes, the "workplace whiner." Not only are such coworkers an inherent productivity problem—did you know that just listening to someone complain constantly can undermine your own performance?—but also, God almighty, they are annoying. You're just trying to complete that spreadsheet peacefully, a bagel and coffee by your side, and suddenly you have to listen to innumerable gripes about the office water bubbler temperature, really?

Shellenbarger points out, though, that it's not always so easy just to shut your ears and try to ignore. Listening and nodding can backfire and make you the subject of the complainer's next complaint. Telling someone they complain too much rarely goes well. And while the experts recommend "setting an example" and attempting to bond, that's not too appealing in the fifth hour of your coworker's screed about his or her latest perceived injustice. You can buy headphones, of course, but will they even work? All of a sudden, you're complaining, too!

Tips in Shellenbarger's piece to combat all this include changing the subject, zoning out, asking your whiny coworker what he or she plans to do about the issue or suggesting taking it to a superior, moving your desk to a complaint-free zone, and so on. Some bosses have even incorporated cash reward programs for workers able to keep from complaining or gossiping for a certain amount of time. But this got us thinking: Is the workplace whiner the worst sort of office inhabitant? There are plenty of others, too, and they are indisputably grating in their own ways. The list goes on and on, but here are a few.*

The Employee Who's Never Had a Bad Day in His Life. Arguably worse that the workplace whiner, this coworker is insufferably happy. Really, just thrilled, rainbows and teddy bears and cupcakes and roses, about everything. Mr. Sunshine, you call him, behind his back, but you could say it to his face because he wouldn't mind. He takes it all—compliments, criticisms, the fire drill, the fact that the only available coffee is hazelnut—in stride, and he has been known to laugh at his own jokes as hard as he laughs at those of others, but mostly, he's just a big grinning fool always on the verge of another positive statement or belly laugh. Especially egregious on a Monday morning, the EWNHABDIHL is, however, probably your best bet for happy hour drinks, and can stop a workplace whiner in his tracks because his mood cannot be felled by anyone. (You may have no idea what this person's job is. It doesn't matter.)