This is the first in what I expect to be a series of blog-posts about stupid noob indies. It will be one man’s opinion of how you can screw up indie development and some ideas on how to side-step them.

In this series, I will avoid picking on failed indies or creating theoretical companies that will then fail spectacularly in my fantasy land.  Instead, I will focus on what I have been doing wrong.  I founded my company with the expectation of making mistakes which I would learn from, so I might as well share the lessons I learned.

So, without further ado…

Why Working From Home Doesn’t (Often) Work

This topic actually covers a multitude of issues, some which touch on issues from later discussions, but let’s look at an overview of the main issues I have encountered.

• I’m always late for work
• I get distracted
• ‘Can you just help me with…’
• I get to play nurse-maid if my daughter is ill
• The postman always comes right when I get into ‘the zone’
• I need to work more flexible hours
• Working in bed

This is not exhaustive and I am sure there are dozens of indies out there who can make it work, but I know it has never been easy for me.

I’m always late for work

This actually follows from a problem I identified back when I was a regular employee.  With a few exceptions, the most punctual people always seemed to be those with a reasonable length of commute.  The closer you lived, the more likely you seemed to find yourself in at 9:35 instead of 9:30.  Yes, you’d get the people who were at the mercy of M25 traffic and could find themselves an hour or more late, but I think their total tardiness over a year was still better than those who were 5 minutes late three days a week.

If you work from home, it gets even worse.  I plan to start at about 9:30 and yet I have days when it is after 10 before I get any work done.  I put off starting work until as close to 9:30 as I can, which inspires me to do ‘other stuff’ instead of starting early.  It can be as simple as checking my email at 9:25 and spending half an hour replying to one of my friends.

Thankfully, I enjoy my job enough that I can usually convince myself to start whenever I am ready.  On a bad day though, when the bugs are piling up, it can be hard…

I get distracted

Any employer knows the dangers of Facebook and Twitter.  To be fair, so does any employee whose IT manager doesn’t block them.  I used to be a little too eager to check my Twitter feed every time I saw a new tweet (in fact, I had to switch off my Twitter client just now to avoid distractions) and simultaneously scared of getting caught.

At home, working for myself, I am not scared.  This is not a ‘home-working’ so much as a human nature one, but working from home gives you many more options.  If my wife is in the house, I can easily get involved in an irrelevant conversation.  A TV left on by accident is a disaster, as it’s too easy to get drawn in; ‘I will just watch the end of this advert / news story before switching it off’ I might think and yet it is one more little waste of time.

This is one-hundred times worse if you are writing a Facebook game, as I was, because you end up seeing the notifications pop up if you are testing the live version.  You can turn off the IM function, but I could never resist finding out what the three notifications were… (1 friend sends you a cow, one person you know in America has invited his entire f-list to a party in Vegas and the third is a wall-post asking you why you playing FB games during work hours)

I do much of my work offline now, with a local version of the Facebook API which lets me work without having to log into Facebook itself.

‘Can you just help me with…’

The bane of any home-worker is a busy house-mate or spouse.  It is not so much that they want to distract you, but the requests are usually reasonable.  “I need to use the toilet, so can you stir this white-sauce I am making?”  my wife might ask.

Deep down, I know that this is ‘working’ time, but I actually welcome the distraction and so I get involved.  I start looking for ways to help and it is ten minutes later that I slink back to the PC and try to regain the ‘work’ mindset.

I get to play nurse-maid if my daughter is ill

It’s a sad fact of life, but kids get ill.  They have to take time off school and one or other parent needs to take time off to look after them.  I work from home, so I am in a better situation anyway.  Heck, I am the CEO / head of HR / High Lord-Commander of the company, so I can just declare a company-wide paid holiday named ‘Chickenpox Tuesday’ if I want. 

This can also be a part of the ‘indie games development is not a real job’ mindset, but that in turn is often more about compassionate leave being unpaid and so the lowest-paid parent takes the day off.

The postman always comes right when I get into ‘the zone’

One of my personal bug-bears, since it is seldom for me.  I am sure I am not alone in this, but I have a neighbour who orders large car-parts to be delivered before noon the next day and then goes off to work.  I am all-too-often dragged from my desk to sign for an 8-ft long box or something which feels heavy enough to be solid lead.

It is worse when it is for me or for my wife, as I can never wait to open it (or see it opened) and that kills my focus just as much as murderous intent aimed at my next-door neighbour ever could.

I need to work more flexible hours

In the bad old days, I used to work 9:30-6 according to my contract.  Any developers out there will be unsurprised to know that it was more like 9:15-7 and so my wife got used to that.  If I worked late, dinner would either be later or a portion would be left in the oven.

These days, I have to commit to a 6pm finish because my wife got used to my being home.  By 6, she is back from work and either my daughter or my kitchen is going to be waiting for me if I want any dinner.  Just as the start of the day becomes tighter (see: I’m always late for work), so too does the end and so any late start is no longer apt to be balanced by a late finish.  My daughter wants her daddy and her dinner.

I do try to work in the evenings, but working overtime at home (inspite of what people say) feels more depressing to me than doing it in the office.  I see my wife as she brings me cups of tea, but I know I am not allowed to let her distract me.

Working in bed

This is a mistake, no matter how easy it seems. 

Unless you are a better developer than me, something about the combination of a reclining position and pyjamas will sap your focus.  It is so tempting not to bother pulling on a shirt and a pair of jeans, but the very act of getting up and getting dressed switches you to ‘work’ mode.

This is typically a result of checking my email in the morning before I get up and then thinking ‘I can just stay here all day; nobody will know I am undressed…’

Thankfully, I usually get volunteered to take my daughter to preschool and my wife to work.  By the time I am dressed, I might as well sneak off into ‘office’ tucked under the stairs.