Productivity: Home vs. Office

A recent Twitter post from @ericabiz stated this: "Working out of Citizen Space has made me realize how completely unproductive I am at home. I'm biting the bullet and leasing an office."

The comment made me wonder: Am I really as productive at home as I think I am?

Granted, one of the great things about working in an office is that you are away from "your life" and the various distractions of your home -- laundry, dishes, kids. But my last full-time office job was when I was a twentysomething working with a bunch of twentysomethings, and I can remember TONS of distractions, all of them self-generated: chatting by/in the bathroom, near the fax machine (remember those?) or copy machine, in the lobby, elevators and cafeteria. I called friends from the office, my dad to see how he was doing, my husband to chat, even though I'd just seen him an hour before. But somehow I managed to get all the work done as well. (Admittedly, that was before Twitter, Facebook and all the time-sucking rest...)

Distractions are all around us, whether we work in an office or at home, whether we find them or they find us. How much you give into them ultimately determines your productivity.

What I do miss about working in an office away from my home, though -- and maybe this is what Erica is talking about -- is that you're on "office time" and have no other reason to be there than to focus on your work. When you work at home, the work/home life is forever blurred, however thick your home office door is. Personal responsibilities, instead of being a subway ride away, follow you like a cloud and hover over your shoulder, even as you try to write your latest blog post.