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(Editor’s note: this is not exactly a Productivity post, more of a personal update. Skip it if you like, or if you want to learn about the next exciting chapter in this journey we call life, read on…)

I have been Tweeting about “John Galt” quite a bit recently, as the lovely bride and I have been preparing to simplify our lives and try something new. As of 31 October, and for the foreseeable future, we no longer have a permanent physical address.
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Tammy Erickson has a thought-provoking post at Harvard Business entitled Do We Need Weekends?

From a purely pragmatic perspective, as the costs of commuting rise, it makes sense for many individuals to travel to a common physical place only sparingly. For some, it may be worth skipping the log-jam of the Monday morning commute. Over the last month, a number of organizations have instituted a four-day work week to reduce commuting costs for employees. That’s a great step – but why not allow the individuals to determine how much time is optimum to spend in the office?

As a productivity question, she mentions that many of the new social media tools that are available today make it possible for people to plan and coordinate activities and business functions asynchronously. Tools like Facebook and Upcoming make it possible to manage not only social events but also meetings and conferences.

I personally used Upcoming to organize a meet-up with people that I had never met in person, in a city that I didn’t live in, to get together and network (and shop) before a conference. We were able to communicate with each other on our own schedules before the get-together, without ever talking on the phone or having a face-to-face meeting.

Do You Need to “Go to Work”?

Here are two things for you to think about:

Would you be able to do some or all of your job from home?

I realize that not everyone has this option, but for those that do - how much of your work do you think that you could do from home? I am transitioning into a full-time consultant and right now I am working for a resort as the Banquet Manager. Obviously I need to be there when the guests are present for the event, but there are a few tasks such as scheduling and planning that I can do from home on my computer or phone.

I would think that the same might be true for many people that work in offices. As we have seen business operations like customer call centers get shipped overseas, it occurs to me that someone like a PBX operator could theoretically work from home.

Have you discussed that idea with your employer?

Once you have thought about some of the business activities that do not require your “official presence” in the office or cubicle, it is time to talk to your boss about actually doing it. Taking that work home and saving yourself the commute. Tim Ferris does a great job of explaining how to do this in “The 4-hour Work Week“.

What steps do you think you can take to make this idea a reality?

I can definitely relate to this post by Jay Fleischman - I Do Not Have A Home Office. I generally work at any hour, in whatever location I happen to be in. As long as I have my bag of tricks and a place to sit, I can do something for work: read a book for a review, write a post or two, and if I have the internet I can of course hit Twitter or read my RSS Feeds.

This is what Jay says about offices and self-employment:

We choose to have an office so that we may have a work-life balance. But self-employed professionals and knowledge workers do not have a work-life balance; their work is their life, and their life is a part of their work. It’s like saying you have an “eating-digesting balance;” sometimes you eat, sometimes you digest. but it’s all part of the same organic whole, the yin-yang that makes up who you are.

Richard Kershaw has some thoughts on this topic as well, including a list of the tools and methods that he employs when going mobile:

Like many self-employed geeks, working remotely is pretty straightforward. Forgive the cliche: the hard part is deciding to do it. …Since I arrived in Berlin last week, I thought I’d give the lowdown on my mobile office.

Do you work from home, or a “mobile” location? Are you non-virtual too?