For the record, Forrest doesn’t actually take conference calls in his underwear. I will not comment on which side of that threshold he inhabits while interacting with his clients. I’m just sayin’.
I’ve been fortunate enough to enjoy many relaxed dress codes at the offices I have worked in, and I gravitate toward business-casual dress as a rule anyway, so I’ve never really had to make a conscious decision to dress properly for work outside of willing myself to get dressed before leaving my room in the morning. It is in crossing that threshold that I find lies the foundation for a solid sense of professionalism, which for the purpose of this piece we will assume is a good thing.
My first real job, and I measure the reality of a job as inversely proportional to it’s proximity to the retail sector, was located wherever I could plop down my laptop. As my machine at the time was the peerless Dell 300m, it’s combined battery life of seven hours meant that was just about anywhere, including, weather permitting, outside. Now that’s very empowering. Should I have so chosen, I could have left a small charging station by my bed and simply never left except to eat as all my other daily functions, sleep, work, and World of Warcraft, could be localized easily to the space occupied by my mattress. Instead, shockingly, that summer I drove to and from the university library to do my stuff for people who were giving me money.
I did this because the library offered me a space that was the perfect blend of comfortable, quiet, and filled with other people trying to concentrate. I have difficult articulating exactly why this had such a positive effect on my productivity, but perhaps part of the answer lies in another arrangement I recently tried on for size. Forrest and I were both scheduled to be working from home alone the other day so instead he came over and occupied a vacant position in my study. We both felt enriched by the experience, tapping into each other on both verbal and spiritual levels to produce a very productive, moreso for him than I.
So I suppose the key elements to a good work environment are dress, location, and company. As a contractor, I have to make a conscious effort to produce my work environment with those in mind. My dream office has a couch and two reading chairs instead of a desk, and is across the street from my house and next door to a Starbucks.
Ja.