[buildwonder]

Just got back from Quadra Island (British Columbia) after four days of no cell service and patchy wifi at best -- got a significant amount of thinking done... made me realize I really only get 2 to 3 hours of actual work done in the average day due to email, chat, and in-person interruptions... thinking working at the coffee shop next door to the office could result in significantly higher productivity... worth an experimental attempt anyway, right?

[VLM]

I found working weird hours increased my productivity, because when a 500 person mini-skyscraper only has three or so people in it at 5am on a weekend, no one is sending email, no one is chatting, literally no one is here to interrupt me. This might even help at the coffee shop next door, I imagine 8:30 am at the coffee shop might be even worse than sitting in the office... but I bet 4am is a productive time.

I can physically be at work on a friday afternoon, but I guarantee I'll accomplish nothing other than being interrupted. It got to the point that I wouldn't even try to do stuff on Fridays... I'd just plan to sit there, maybe surf the net all day, until I get interrupted (which usually didn't take long). Its too risky to try to do stuff knowing you're heavily impaired by interruption, so trying to do nothing at all on Friday actually measurably improved my overall long term productivity, which I thought was interesting.

[pyre]

It depends. I've found that coffee shops aren't a panacea. If your mind is elsewhere, or you're on-edge, changing settings usually doesn't do much to help you focus. If the coffee shop is crowded/busy, then you will probably find it difficult to focus. It's also better to stay away from the flow of people between the counter and the door (if the coffee shop is large enough, or structured in a way that permits it).

[leviathan]

> If the coffee shop is crowded/busy, then you will probably find it difficult to focus.

That really depends. I have been working from home for 5 years now. And the fact that I'm in a room with no view from the window and no human interaction drives me crazy, so the solution that works for me is to usually go to a coffee shop and work from there. I actually found that I need all the noise and crowd in order to focus, I can get a lot more done in that 1 hour at the coffee shop than the whole day working at home.