[ericdykstra]

For me, the best place to work is where I can be in a "work" environment, but without worrying about anyone disturbing what I'm working on.

Living in a studio and a half apartment means I'm either in the room I sleep in or the room I do everything else in. It's not a good environment for me to work, and I really don't like bringing work into that environment, either.

Working in an office with a certain kind of culture can mean that you're expected to be available and to respond to any inquiry via email, IM, phone, or someone walking over to your desk at any time. This really doesn't work for me, either.

So working at that kind of job means I really find I work best when I'm completely disconnected (phone off, email not open, not signed into IM) in a cafe. I have my laptop, and that's all. No distractions, pure focus.

The absolute ideal for me is an office environment where I can work in blocks of at least a couple of hours without being expected to respond to any non-emergency immediately.

Does anyone else have a similar experience?

[pyre]

I have to agree with the idea of being in a place where you can be isolated to focus on work. When working in an office, I've often found that the best times to work are either early in the morning or late at night when the office is basically empty[1].

That said, I think that if you are disciplined enough, you could work in the same place that you live (even as someone that finds it difficult to keep work/home from blending). If you set up a routine that you do when you wake up on a work day, and stick to the routine, you could 'trick' your brain into differentiating the space based on what you are doing. The thing is that you would need to have a certain level of discipline to pull this off.

[1]: It also helps that I find the sound of an empty space with just the HVAC noises as background sort of soothing. I liked just stalking empty classrooms, etc at university too.