2009/01/03
Working remotely means that sometimes I feel like a lonely little satellite out in deep space. We use a couple of Apps at Adptavist to counter this. The most useful addition I have found to be Yammer. Which is kind of like Twitter only used internally. By which I do not mean that it is ingested and the result is a telepathic level of communication between team members. Yammer allows us to post updates of what we are doing/comments and only our members of staff can see them.
My intention was not to blog about Yammer, but rather another method I have found that helps with the remote working environment. I never thought I'd say this, because many companies I have worked for would insist on time sheets and I wholly despised filling them in, but I recorded how I spent my time today and I found it really useful. I used Billings which is a little app I bought when I worked as a freelancer (Billings). It's actually not wholly perfect for the task, but it did allow me to set up little timers for each aspect of the work I do. For some reason it made me feel a sense of pushing onwards and upwards. It also helps me with some self discipline as I have a tendency to distraction. I created a timer for "internet faff" and today I only spent eight minutes on the faffing, which is way better than I thought. I must also set one up for pointless IM chat.
