Most days I am happy to walk down to my office and savor the quiet. The kids are at preschool, husband is at the office, and not a sound can be heard apart from a soft hum from my fireplace. Most days this is just fine with me. I like myself. I like being by myself. But then loneliness peeks his pesky head around the door and starts putting bothersome thoughts in my head.

When is the last time you ate lunch with someone?

Don’t you miss actually talking to people during the week??

Aren’t you worried you’ll lose your ability to communicate and have to resort to grunts and signs???

Do you know anything at all that is going on outside your little.. insular.. office.. BUBBLE????

AAHHH! I am lonely. Working from home can take its toll. How much can one person stand being alone? I don’t even have conference calls this week.

Time to get out in the real world and make some telecommuting friends–maybe we could meet for lunch once a week, in person, that is.

I watched the video and while I can certainly see the benefit I have to admit I thought it was a little creepy. It got me to thinking about privacy issues as well. It’s easy to hear the footsteps of someone walking up behind you, however this robot is a bit like Elaine’s sidler. It’s hard to tell how much noise the robot puts out on the video but maybe a few jangly bells around its “neck” are in order.

The benefits, once you get past the silliness of talking to a robot as if it is a physical human, could be quite valuable. Despite conference calls and web sharing, it is important to have face time with colleagues. It is easy to forget or to pay little attention to someone who isn’t in front of you on a day-to-day basis. I never bought that absence-makes-the-heart-grow-fonder line. I think absence makes you forget, simple.

But the cost of a robot? There are no figures available for this robot, however using Skype a couple times a week for meetings might be a better bet. And a little less creepy.

As a work-from-homer I  agree with this . Just ask my husband. My organization skills sometimes drive him crazy. In fact one of my favorite “hobbies” is purging the house of stuff. If I haven’t used it in the last six months it’s outta here.

To maintain productivity in the home office and simply keep track of what projects I am working on I create folders for each of the three societies I manage. The folders are key to my organization, though my system certainly wouldn’t work for everyone. I have one file drawer next to my desk for Open Projects. In that file drawer are three file folders, one for each client. Within each folder is a notepad with a list of current projects, notes for follow-ups, etc. On any given day that I am working I can take out one file folder and know exactly what needs to be worked on and what needs to be followed up. I also keep a master calendar with the dates for each Board meeting I attend as well as the workshops I organize.

Each association also has it’s own filing cabinet. Each cabinet is well organized and I credit that to lack of actual paper. I could have years of membership applications stuffing the files full, however I digitize the past years materials every month, using a document scanning service called Pixily.  This not only provides greater ease when searching for a document, but I can also create multiple back-ups to distribute to the Presidents of the societies. I once heard a horror story about years worth of paper destroyed from a flooded basement where the files were being kept. No one wants boxes of materials filling their office or their basement, but a few discs are okay by most everyone.

As a telecommuter I really believe organization is key to success.