How To Become Uber Productive While Working For Yourself
Wow, I feel like I could have written this a year ago -- I was doing exactly this. To-do lists, three coffee shops a day, 1-2 hour breaks in between, super-productive, as I've been bootstrapping my software product.Then I ran into problems:1) Wi-fi problems. Wound up getting a cellular dongle for the laptop, but there are still a surprisingly number of places it doesn't work reliably. When you need to push something to server ASAP, this is a killer.2) It's exhausting. You only have so much mental energy. Finding suitable coffee shops online, finding them in person, exploring, walking, figuring out what to do for food -- this stuff is basically going to take up your entire day outside of work, no joke.3) No "zone". If you have lots of bite-sized pieces of work to do, that don't require massive amounts of concentration, it can work really well. If you need to write a new database wrapper that is really just a sustained 8 hour stretch, you can't do it.Then, there's the little details. Outlets for laptops. Spotty reception for phone calls. What to do with your laptop while you use the bathroom and there's a line, but you can't see your table from the line. The café that has the A/C pushed to arctic temperatures when you're in shorts and sandals in the summer. The café that is freezing cold in the middle of winter. And so on.And above all, the last week here in NYC has been like 15-20°F. Forget about walking around outside. So I'm actually learning, there's something to be said for working from home, in a reliable environment. And then, to get out of the house, I schedule lunches with people, go to the gym, "extracurriculars" like basketball, music groups, that kind of thing. It actually works pretty well.