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I've been working remotely for the last few years, and I don't miss the office at all. However, I wouldn't really mind driving to work or taking a train. You ge

I've been working remotely for the last few years, and I don't miss the office at all. However, I wouldn't really mind driving to work or taking a train. You get some time to listen to podcasts, or think, or just do nothing and clear your head. I have to actively make time for that now that I work remotely. Sometimes I get too busy and forget to do nothing for a while. There's also something nice about traveling to and from work, where there's a separation between work and home. I've just moved into an apartment where I have one room as an office, so that should be nice. Another thing is that when you're freelancing as a software developer, sometimes you can turn that into a pay raise. It works especially well if your plan is to have long stretches of time without paid work, so you can work on your own side projects. There's also some clients who are happy for you to work 20 hour weeks, which is very easy to get used to. I find context switching to be really hard though, so I prefer to work two 10 hour days. And sometimes I enjoy going full-time on a project for a few months, and then taking a long break for a few months. But yes, I would still be prepared to take a pay cut in order to work from home. Well, if "home" includes anywhere in the world.

mdip 10y ago
I hear ya on the podcasts. When I had a 2-hour round-trip commute for several years, I listened to a few hundred audio books. Up to that point I had read probably two fiction books over the course of my entire life (outside of required reading for school)[0]. After a few years I could hold my own in conversations about literature and found myself really enjoying some of the classics. I find it almost impossible to listen to audio books when I'm not driving or doing some muscle-memory exercise like cutting the lawn/driving/riding a bike, so without that consistent drive time, I haven't gotten to enjoy a good book in several years. It's not even worth downloading them any longer because I know it'll take two years to finish one book and I'll forget where I left off between listens. [0] I'm a speed reader (skimming/scanning style, not the "gimmicky" speed reading that is advertised these days) and find it difficult to read fiction without using my training. Speed reading fiction is like turning to the back of the book to see how it ends before starting the book -- it ruins fiction -- so the only fiction reading I enjoy is narrated to me (by Scott Brick, if I'm lucky) on Audible.

mdip 10y ago

I hear ya on the podcasts. When I had a 2-hour round-trip commute for several years, I listened to a few hundred audio books. Up to that point I had read probably two fiction books over the course of my entire life (outside of required reading for school)[0]. After a few years I could hold my own in conversations about literature and found myself really enjoying some of the classics. I find it almost impossible to listen to audio books when I'm not driving or doing some muscle-memory exercise like cutting the lawn/driving/riding a bike, so without that consistent drive time, I haven't gotten to enjoy a good book in several years. It's not even worth downloading them any longer because I know it'll take two years to finish one book and I'll forget where I left off between listens. [0] I'm a speed reader (skimming/scanning style, not the "gimmicky" speed reading that is advertised these days) and find it difficult to read fiction without using my training. Speed reading fiction is like turning to the back of the book to see how it ends before starting the book -- it ruins fiction -- so the only fiction reading I enjoy is narrated to me (by Scott Brick, if I'm lucky) on Audible.