Myscha talks about some of the things that she finds that she consistently uses when working from home (aside from a central location in which you can organize your things and do work, preferably with a door to close):

• Fax machine (you may think that it is outdated, but it is not. I can definitely attest to this)
• Personal Copier and reliable printer (this could be combined with a fax machine if you get the right model)
• Home Computer
• Office Supplies (this is supposed to be your office, after all, and you will have use for them. Better to stockpile in the beginning so that they are on hand when you need them)
• Organizational Tools (ranging from desk calendar to PDA/Blackberry)

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Hunter Arnold states that telecommuting is not all that it is hyped up to be and that it will really lead to less productivity than if the same people had gone into an office instead of going home:

So many modern workers are “telecommuting” or “working from home” that these days that it seems like no one shows up to the office at all.  If working at home worked was as productive as coming to the office and helped me avoid traffic, I’d be the first one to jump on the band wagon. But the problem is, there isn’t much evidence  that “working from home” or “virtual officing” is even close to as effective as showing up at the office.

Why is this?

Despite my determination and drive, I’m the first to admit that if I’m working from my kitchen, I’m probably not as productive as I am in the office.  When I’m in the office, I’m more likely to be focused and committed. There’s no doorbell or TV or pantry to distract me.  More importantly, I’m surrounded by my contemporaries, who stimulate and challenge me to give my work my all.  So why is working at home so popular?  Because it’s a major excuse not to work at all.

I would like to respectfully disagree with this blanket assessment of productivity in home vs. office as well as the conclusions that are reached. There are definitely situations and industries where people are better off in the office. When person-to-person interaction is required, there is no substitute for being the same room as a coworker. And even in industries where telecommuting might make sense, if you are someone who requires being “surrounded by your contemporaries, who stimulate and challenge you to give your work your all” in order to be productive, then you definitely should not work from home.

(And if as Hunter suggests, everyone who telecommuted worked from their kitchens, than I would have to agree with many of his assessments. A kitchen is not a place that is conducive to reducing distractions or providing an environment suitable for working productively. However, there are other places in the house where a person can work, and there are strategies and methods that one can use in order to create a place in your home that can serve as a proper work environment.)

However, if you are someone who wastes 4-5 hours a week in worthless meetings, 1-2 hours a week rifling through your desk, 5-10 hours a week in a car shuttling back and forth from the office; If you are someone who may only really accomplish 1.5 hours of solid work a day, and for you, one of the main sources of wasted time is your commute and the office environment (unfortunately, but not everyone is lucky enough to have a job and coworkers who consistently stimulate and challenge you to give work your all), and if you are in a job which permits it and you yourself are able to handle it, then by telecommuting, you will almost certainly be able to achieve higher levels of productivity and job satisfaction than if you were at the office.

Lisa Floreancig reports on NAMIC Online about a Minnesota Insurance company (Midwest Family Mutual Insurance) that has gone completely virtual.

In 2002, Boyd set the company on a business path that included no paper and all but five employees working from home… Today, Midwest is completely paperless, allowing not a shred to move out of its central location… Once the paperless strategy was successfully implemented, the next logical step was to move nearly all of Midwest’s 61 employees out of the building and into a home-office environment.

The first thing that impresses me is that they had the foresight to go paperless and officeless all the way back in 2002. MFMI implemented an impressive system (which seems to be documented in this case study) for distributing all documents electronically to different employees as needed (and this in the insurance industry, which is not exactly paper-light). From there they transitioned to a completely office-less environment, implementing technology to route telephone calls to employees over the web.  In addition to saving on office costs, their CEO reports that their employee productivity has actually gone up:

 Boyd attributes the signs of early success to fewer workday interruptions, resulting in greater productivity. “We don’t realize how many interruptions there are in a tight office environment until you get to work from home. We don’t realize how much quieter it is. We still have the opportunity to send each other emails or pick up the phone and collaborate on underwriting files. We still have meetings. We just don’t see each other face to face.”

As to the the future of telecommuting:

I don’t understand why we are not seeing more of this in this country. We are log jammed and snarled in traffic. I hear a lot about energy conservation,” Boyd says. “We are not commuting, but change is tough. And you are dealing with a certain amount of ego of some CEOs who need to be in an office. We don’t need to be in a big office to stroke our egos. Why have all this money tied up in bricks and mortar?”

Working from home has lots of benefits: no commute, you don’t have to dress for the office, play your music loud, etc. However, in order to keep up (and improve on) your productivity while working at home, it is essential to come up with and enact a strategy for dealing with distractions.

Distractions at home can take many forms:

• Children and/or Spouse
• Household chores (washing three days of dishes is a handy method for procrastination when you are really desperate)
• Phone/Mail/Bills
• Television/Video Games

The common theme among these distractions is that they are things that are commonly found at home that you would not normally encounter in your place of work. There are good things and bad things about the average workplace - one positive thing is that the normal distractions you would face at home are not there, enabling you to (at least in theory) be more productive. Thus, in order to telecommute productively, one must find a way to achieve some level of concentration in an environment that is at first glance not so conducive to it.

So without further ado, here are a few ideas for ways to handle these distractions:

1) Close Your Door

Make sure that your workspace is separated as much as possible from the potential sources of distraction (ie: television, kitchen, play room) and make sure that the word gets out that whenever your door is closed, you are working and are not to be disturbed. You can even set up with your spouse or children that if they need to speak with you and want to see if you are free for a minute, they should IM you, email you, call your cell phone, but not knock on the door. Take advantage of the proximity of your home office to the rest of your home, but in all other ways, treat it like a real office (where these other distractions probably wouldn’t exist and where your kids could never just come in and say hello).

2) Headphones

The idea here is that even when you are working behind a closed door (or if you are sharing a home office with the family PC and cannot have the door closed as often as you would like) there will still be distracting home-sounds that make their way into your work area and could potentially disrupt your thought process and work flow. To combat this, try some headphones, especially the type that is designed to cancel noise. For those who like to work with music, this is a no-brainer (and a good idea even if you work in a regular office). However, even if you don’t like to listen to music all the time while you work, wearing headphones can help you to focus more on the task at hand, ignore distractions and let the background noises fade a bit. (And if you do have to share your home office with someone else, wearing headphones can be like a second door - it is a sign to the other person that you are working now and should not be disturbed).

3) Schedule

The two tips above are intended to help you insulate yourself from the distraction-filled environment that is your home-office, and help you to create for yourself some thinking-space. However, there is another aspect of working from home that these do not take advantage of. One very nice thing is that you do have more flexibility to help watch the baby, run an errand, play with the kids when they come home from school or do something else that is only possible at home and would not be possible in the traditional office. Or perhaps you might need to take a break from what you are doing and watching TV or a DVD (which is done more comfortably at home and not in front of your co-workers) is exactly what you need to do. How can you make these distractions a part of your work day in a way that will improve, not hurt your productivity?

The answer is to schedule out your daily activities. You may want to have this rigidly set (ie: on every Monday I will work from 9am to 11:30am and then take a 45 minute break), or you may want to do this flexibly, creating a To Do list every day, listing the tasks that you want to accomplish and how long each will take (I have found David Seah’s Printable CEO, and Online Emergent Task Timer excellent tools for this type of informal task planning). Whichever way you do it, this will help you to set boundaries for yourself regarding your goals, and will help you to use the distractions that surround you as tools for making progress in your work and goals for completing your tasks, rather than as a means for procrastination.

John Wesley writes (Why the 9 to 5 Office Worker Will Become a Thing of the Past, found via War-N) about how the traditional work day (”9-5″) is very inefficient for many of today’s workers, and ends up with less productive, less satisfied employees.

A continuous 8 hour work day is a relic of the past. It makes sense for physical labor and manufacturing work, but with information workers it doesn’t account for the mental energy cycle…In the case of the modern information worker, nearly all tasks involve creative or strategic thinking…

I can’t speak for all workers, but I’ve observed that productivity levels generally peak twice a day — first thing in the morning and shortly after lunch. The most productive period is the beginning of the day. People are capable of creative tasks like writing and solving complex technical problems. After a couple hours of intense work, energy levels drop and workers downgrade to less demanding tasks like responding to email and tinkering with existing creations. Towards the end of the cycle, the mind is so cluttered and drained that workers resort to “work related activities” that appear productive but don’t contribute to the bottom line. The afternoon cycle is similar but the productivity peak isn’t as high. For different people the peaks and valleys will vary, but overall I’d estimate only 3-4 hours a day could be classified as highly productive. This number isn’t caused by slacking. You can’t force an information worker to be highly productive when the energy isn’t there.

While the 9-5 work day is a relic of manufacturing labor, it does also make sense if there is a need for people to all be present at one location at one time. (Though I do remember a partial solution at a company where I once interviewed: Everyone had to work 8 hours a day, and everyone had to be present on-site between the hours of 11am and 2pm. Thus there is a time when everyone can have meetings, and there are also accommodations in place for those who are early or late risers.)

Wesley suggests as a solution that the work day should be planned around times when the worker’s mental energies are at their peaks. This means that the 8 hours may not be consecutive, and will most probably be scattered in bursts throughout the day. As a computer programmer, I personally find this to be very true - I often find myself reading blogs (or playing DTD) during the middle of the day not as a way to avoid work, but rather as a way to regroup my mental energy after one task, in preparation for the next.

The solution that makes the most sense is a remote work arrangement because it reduces employer costs and allows employees to adjust their work schedule to their mental energy cycle. When a worker becomes mentally fatigued, they can go off the clock and engage in recharge activities that are personally productive like exercise or relaxation. When energy returns, the worker can start working again at a high level, effectively cutting out the low productivity period of the cycle. Employers don’t pay for unproductive time and employees get to work in a more natural pattern that adjusts to their personal lives.

A good point is made at the end of the article that the biggest barrier to larger scale adoption to telecommuting is inertia and office politics. I would contend though that there will always be certain industries that are better suited towards telecommuting (and outsourcing), such as computer programming, and certain industries that will never fully transition to this (hospitals, psychologists, universities and schools, power plants, manufacturing, etc).