For those who don't know, I work in a home office in my basement in Maryland. I telecommute for a company in California and I manage projects with people from three continents. I am one of the 2% of the American workforce that is a full time teleworker.

Telecommuting full time is not easy. You have to communicate better and perform better than your office bound counterparts to get the same amount of recognition and career advancement potential.

I have a family to support, so career advancement is an important issue for me. So you may be wondering why I would want to make it more difficult to get a promotion.

One reason is lunch. Yes, Lunch.

I save $7-$10 a day by going upstairs for lunch rather than to the local greasy spoon for my mid-day meal. Of course that $1600 a year is not the reason I like lunch at home. I like it because I get to eat lunch with my two-year old son.

Yesterday, I gave him chicken nuggets for lunch. He ate all but two and then said, "Daddy's nuggets" and began rotating the plate so that the nuggets were closer to me. Whether this was generosity, a lesson in sharing, or a clever ploy to get out of eating the last two nuggets was anyone's guess.

In any case when he completed the 180 degree rotation, he stopped, got a funny look on his face, giggled, pointed at the nuggets and then said, "Eyes!" He realized that the 2 nuggets at the top of a blue plate looked like a funny face and was amazed by the discovery.

So there it is. In 30 seconds, I got to see my son plot, plan, execute, use his imagination, discover, and communicate his creative discovery with glee.

This is remarkable to me because last month I was amazed when he started putting together words into sentences that made sense. The month before that I was amazed when he started saying, “Yes” to things instead of the ubiquitous “No, no, no!” that was his response to nearly every previous question or request.

By eating lunch at home, I get to watch my son grow, learn, and discover. I don’t miss out on the mischief, plots and bursts of creativity that only happen in the middle of mundane tasks like eating lunch.

Watching your kid grow up is an amazing thing that I get to do more often because I am not sitting in traffic for two hours day. I know through the little things discovered over lunch that he is smart and becoming more clever everyday. This is a great thing to see, because it let’s me know that the extra $1600 a year I am putting into his college fund will not go to waste.

Technorati Tags: benefits of telecommuting, working at home, work life balance

I know I am late to this party, but here's the thing... I never saw "Lost" before this week. It always looked like an interesting show, I just didn't want to add another show to my list of things to watch.

As luck would have it, last week I had the opportunity to borrow the DVD set for the first season and I started watching it. Wow! I am about 8 episodes in now and I can't stop watching. The writing, the structure, the scenery, the acting, the twists and turns... It's incredible.

It's been such a time drain I don't know if I should be recommending it at all, but the DVDs are fantastic. Even though I missed the cultural phenomenon, I don't think I could have survived the suspense of watching it during its broadcast season. The commercials and the waits for the next episode would have killed me.

Besides the fact that the show is great, I appreciate the way the disks are chaptered to allow you to quickly skip the title page and the credits and get on to viewing more of those addictive episdodes.

This is good stuff if you have the time.

Technorati Tags: Lost, just for fun

The Baltimore Business Journal made a shocking claim. It says that employees’ reluctance to telecommute costs them a lot of time and money.

They gleaned this information from the 2005/2006 National Technology Readiness Survey.

Of the survey respondents, 25% had employers that supported telecommuting or jobs that were conducive to telecommuting, but only 11% actually took advantage of telecommuting.

If the folks that could telecommute managed to do it once or twice a week, they would save a collective $3.9 billion in gas alone. This number doesn’t count wear and tear on the roads or pollution.

The median commute found in the study was 10 miles and 20 minutes each way.

The survey was prepared by Rockbridge Associates and sponsored by the R.H. Smith School of Business at the University of Maryland.

Technorati Tags: telecommuting

What is telecommuting? What is telework? Lately we have had a number of visitors searching for the answer to these questions and I realized that I haven't answered them directly before, so here goes...

Telecommuting or telework is an arrangement where some or all of an employees tasks can be done at a location other than the designated central office or worksite.

Traditionally the home is generally used as the "other" location but it can be a hotel room, a customer site, a coffee shop, the back yard, or anywhere that the environment allows the employee to complete their tasks or projects.

Both terms “telecommute” and “telework” were coined in 1973 by Jack Nilles, a rocket scientist that became known as the father of telecommuting. Both words are now used interchangeably, but the original use of the term telecommute referred to the ability of telecommunications technology to eliminate the need to travel or commute physically to a central location.

Telework is made possible by technology, but it is the very human qualities and specific skillsets of the teleworker and the manager that make teleworking arrangements successful or not.

Technorati Tags: telecommute, telework

We've published two new articles this weekend. They are part of a series on how to build your home office network.

The first one is an overview of the entire networking process and includes a checklist.

The second one goes into detail about choosing the right internet service provider for you.

Over the next week or two we will be adding sections on choosing and setting up your equipment and how to secure your network after you have everything put together.

Our final article in the series will be an FAQ. Please start submitting your questions now. The more questions we get the better the article will be.

Technorati Tags: home office network, internet service provider, ISP