Remote: Find a space that fits your workstyle
‘Remote: Office Not Required’ by Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hansson
Getting your work done doesn’t mean to work in the office this can be understood from the title of the book. Staying in the office eight hours a day, common are you concentrated on at least half of the hours you stay there? Most unproductive hours a day are spent in the office as claimed by Jason Fried and David Heinemeier.

In the office you will be interrupted all the time, the offices are called by the authors ‘interruption factories’. Why chopping your day into tiny bits and not being able to concentrate. Saying goodbye to the meaningful work just because your life has been shredded into work moments that’s not fair right? Interruption one after another and you’ll find missing your creative part of yourself, the thoughtful work doesn’t exist anymore.
The ability to be alone with your thoughts is, in fact, one of the key advantages of working remotely.
So if you don’t work at the office you can work at home, working remotely from home on flexible hours, can change your dynamics in your family. The book explains how you can spend time with your family, eat breakfast with them and still get your work done. Your presence at home when your child is sick is necessary but your work is mandatory, and you aren’t obliged to choose one or another if you work remotely.
People should be free to choose their workspace.
At 37signals they have employers from different cities like Caldwell, Idaho, Ontario, Fenwick and I think now employers are from different countries too, for the company it’s important just to keep it forty-hour workweek, but how their workers distribute their hours it’s not important and days less. So they can choose to spend their time wherever they want.

The book gives you choices, if you don’t work at home you choose to work for example at a local coffee shop. The authors explain that most of the hours working from coffee shops are very productive. Yes I know, coffee shops are very loudly how can you concentrate there? It’s more logical to work in the office but the book gives us a thorough explanation like it isn’t the same staying in the office where you know people. You start chatting with your work colleagues and time passes and in the end, your work isn’t done because of your chit-chats. Quite another thing is working at a cafe where you are sitting in an unknown place with unknown people, you just put on your headphones and concentrate on your work and forget the world. For example, Mig which is a designer at 37signal and lives in Chicago uses his freedom in full advantage. He spent his mornings in different shops around the city. This way of changing the neighborhoods according to him, it’s a variety that translates to his work. As I could understand it, changing your workspace will increase your creativity level.

We all love to travel but how can we do it, if we have to do go to work. Yes, the book gives the solution to this problem and again yeah the solution is remote work. At 37signals they have full-time nomads and a few part-time nomads and they don’t have any problem with that. Travel as well as coffee shops affect the creative part of a person. Technology has made it possible to do your job and to work for a company even if you are on different sides of the planet. Creative work can be done remotely and it only requires a computer and internet connection.
Working remote has a lot of advantages but we should not overdo excitement. Just keep in mind trade-offs. Trade-offs in the book are explained in a truly amazing way. Yeah, you all thought that remote has only positive sides, but unfortunately not. At first, you can’t discuss with your managers face to face. Working from home isn’t that fun if you have kids and they demand your attention. But it’s not just that, if you work from home, you just need to focus and make a schedule and do not let your time be wasted.
So according to the book, the key is to not think this exclusively good or bad but just need to be focusing on the great benefits and reduce obstacles that are on our way.
Related Articles
Discussions for other parts of the book are done in articles below:
Remote: Freedom of remote work and Remote: Managers aren’t babysitters. Go check it out.
