My Guide to Staying Mobile as a Computer Technician – Part 1

My business and simply the way I work has changed dramatically over the past 12 months. To give a very brief overview of my current situation, I have a job involving 4 key sites and a number of ad-hoc locations, a business which looks after a number of residential and business customers, and I like to write, like I am right now. I also enjoy time with my friends and family and try my best to make that time available. In all no easy feat. But the past year has seen me develop my working habits to the point that I’ve completely moved away from my office locations and become almost completely mobile. This is how I do it, and more importantly, how I keep on top of my work.

Getting yourself completely untethered from any one location is not easy to do mentally, it’s very hard to remove the idea of having a fixed abode for the purpose of work and I was no different. Like I say this took me 12 months to get to this point. I’ve been in a career on which I very much relied on having a fixed location, it felt like having a safety blanket. Something familiar and somewhere safe and comfortable. As my career responsibilities increased and my business grew I eventually found out that running back to the safety net of my desk was hampering the quality of my work and increasing my response times in all the above areas.

For Business Owners Without a Day Job

Picture the scenario. It’s 9am, you get your first call of the day, a residential printing problem which will take you 30 minutes to get to. You’ve got nothing booked until 1pm so you pack your things, head out and arrive quickly and fix the problem by 10:30am. You head back to the office. Whilst on your way you get a call on your mobile which you’re unable to answer, on your return to the office you find it’s someone after some on the spot training with Outlook, you do the call remotely and get it squared away by 11:30.

You get another call, a small business is having problems with an access point. It’s 30 minutes away, a five minute drive from your first call out earlier. Frustration as you realize you can’t guarantee a fix today as you won’t likely have it all sorted by your 1pm appointment. That’s one hour of my morning wasted just driving about because I wanted to continue work at the office and then having to put my customer off until tomorrow. You’ve been flat out the entire morning and probably pretty worn out by the time 1pm comes around.

At first this wasn’t a big deal, it was a rare occurrence and I happily dismissed it as one of those things, just part of the business I was in. But I continued to run into similar situations and as I valued my time and my diesel more and more I slowly started to find that this just wasn’t a cost effective way for me to work. Aside from that my performance was seriously hampered, I was knackered. Let’s face it, driving around doesn’t have the same appeal as when I was 17.

For a rather crude approach to calculating this, say it happened once a week resulting in the loss of one hour each week. You value your time at $50 an hour and this is happening over the course of 1 year. 52 Weeks x $50 = $2600 and I’ve yet to include wasted diesel and car maintenance. Going back to my previous example, had I stayed in town close to my first appointment, I could have got everything done and still made my 1pm appointment. I would have felt a lot more accomplished, relaxed in a quiet location whilst I did a remote support call and saved my time for the following day for other tasks.

As I’ve mentioned it’s probably all but impossible to flick a switch and go completely mobile, getting kitted out, which I’ll get to in Part 2, is the easy bit. Making yourself hit the road at 9am and not get back in until 5pm takes a little perseverance until you see and feel the benefits after such a dramatic shift in your working patterns. So here are a few steps to get you into the swing of it and improve your out of office experience.

• 1. Have a Coffee
  Every once in a while grab your laptop and take it to your favorite coffee shop and do a few hours work. Take note of what you accomplish and compare it to what you achieve at your office. On the majority of your visits you’ll find there’s a jump in productivity, the feeling of just grabbing a coffee yet having got a ton of work done is good encouragement to be doing this more often.
• 2. Get Out and Stay Out!
  Kick it up a notch and once every two weeks force yourself out of the office all day and make sure you don’t go back until at least 4pm. I’ll warn you now the first time will be incredibly hard, you’ll forget almost everything important, you’ll find you’re missing key documents and access to the server at your office is all but impossible as you work out the kinks. This is where the perseverance comes into play, review what went wrong at the end of the day, make some notes and review these notes the day before you try again. Things will gradually improve.
• 3. Map It Out
  Because my business focuses on a particular town I wanted to visually represent the coverage and density of all customers and particularly my repeat customers. I bought a large map of the town, pinned it to the wall and stuck yellow stickers identifying my customers and using red stickers for my repeat customers. Quickly I can see the greatest density of all my customers and that of my repeats allowing me to focus my out of office activities in particular areas of the town if I’ve no need to go further afield.
• 4. Impress the Spouse
  One thing you can’t do whilst you sit at the office, and that’s errands. When you’re on the move, nipping into the post office or the supermarket is no big deal. Just be sure to have a cool box on hand for the fridge items. This will inevitably impress your other half as you clear out the weekend jobs before the weekend, keeping you in the good books and freeing up your time for friends and family.
• 5. Don’t Forget to Stop
  Being on the move it can be easy to forget about the basics, such as eating properly and cost effectively. When I started to stay out of the office I was in the habit of thinking that entitled me to eat out regularly. It can get expensive and you’ll soon put on a few pounds. Take a packed lunch and don’t forget to eat little and often, you’ll need your strength.
• 6. Forward Your Calls
  I’ve slipped up a couple of times and forgot to forward what was my home/office phone to my mobile. On these occasions I missed a couple of important calls which is why I invested in a call answering service. They now answer all my main line calls and email me all the details allowing me to respond in my own time giving customers high priority. The guy trying to renew my utility bill can wait. I’m presently using http://www.answer-4u.com, but try http://www.angel.com for a good US alternative.

For Business Owners With a Day Job

For those with a day job, the idea of becoming un-tethered may seem unrealistic or even impossible but remote working is a growing trend which is being understood by more and more employers. My job is a little different to some in that I’m expected to be able to move about the offices and various one man locations in any given working day so when it came to asking for a remote working trial it was easily accepted. No point in making my way back to the office if I can drive five minutes down the road, grab lunch and continue working. It just made sense. My productivity shot through the roof and I found that I had numerous hours to spare doing other work that I wanted. It didn’t matter what I was doing in these spare hours because I was out performing my colleagues who insisted on getting back to the safety of their desks.

For those of us tied to a desk things are very different. The general working society dictates that you need to be at your desk, visible and contactable throughout the 9 to 5 working day. Suggest anything different to almost anyone with a job and you’ll be met with puzzling looks. This is normal, but it is possible to break free.

• 1. Do You Trust Yourself?
  Before you even think about approaching the boss you need to know that you can trust yourself to actually do the work. If you got told to work at home all day, would you remain productive and get everything on your to-do list done? Or would you start cleaning the house, perhaps play a little Xbox? It’s hard to resist these little distractions and being out and about can have the same effect. I’ll just do a little TV shopping whilst I’m passing. Or I’ll just pop in to see my dad for two hours. Be honest with yourself, can you buckle down and get on with key tasks if the benefits I’ve described actually exist?
• 2. Find Out, Do a Trial Run
  Use up one of your holidays and take a Tuesday or Wednesday off but still do your usual midweek work whilst bouncing across a couple of locations. At the same time doing a little work on your computer business making a few calls, respond to email, perhaps a little remote support. Review your results at the end of the day. Did you get everything done? If not you need to ask yourself why but the majority will realize that you’ve probably had one of your most productive days for a long time. If you’ve been productive be sure to document your office work to gather as evidence to show your boss later.
• 3. Take a Sick Day
  Call in sick and spend the day at home working yourself to the brink of a real sick day. Show your manager that you perform strongly out of the office under the pretense that you should be in bed. “I was sick as a dog but was concerned about project x, just take a look at what I got done”.
• 4. Propose a Trial
  Once you have all that quantifiable proof of your performance when out of the office you should then, and only then, take it up with your boss. Show the proof and pitch your idea of working out of the office one day a week. You should suggest mid-week to avoid it looking like you’re wanting to extend your weekends and you should push the idea of a “Trial”, nothing permanent. Cite various reasons such as in office distractions and productivity and make sure they feel in control of the situation.

If you find your manager blocking every attempt for a remote working arrangement then you first need to ask yourself why. Perhaps your job cannot be done remotely? If you have tasks that require your daily presence then investigate what you can do to solve this problem. If you haven’t been able to prove your productivity adequately spend the coming months gathering more evidence and resubmit your proposal at a later date.

Sometimes however, managers simply don’t want to know. My previous employer roared with laughter every time I tried to broach this subject. After this realization we have but two choices, stay and continue as you are, or look for a different employer, one that’s not interested in holding you back. That choice I leave to you.

In part 2 I’ll be doing a quick write up of the hardware and software that I utilize to get all my remote work done and dusted. Hopefully this list will give you a clearer idea of my remote working day and the great things that can be accomplished with only a few items. Remote working is a mind-field of ideas, technologies and various processes in getting work done. So share yours and together lets get liberated from the shackles of our offices.