The Journey From Office Cubicle To Home Office | The Growth Booth #88

Aidan

Welcome to The Growth Booth. This is episode number 88, and we're going to be talking today about the transition, the journey from cubicle to your own home office, or wherever it is that you're working that's not a cubicle. I couldn't think of a better person to join us on this podcast today than Chris Molnar who made that transition and has successfully been living the dream, working from home on his own terms for over 15 years now. In fact, I think it's something like 17 years. 

Chris, welcome to the call. Thanks for taking some time to be here. 

Chris

Hello. Thank you, Aidan.

Aidan

What was it that made you want to move from the cubicle to working from home? 

Chris

Would be my daughter, my first born. When she was born, I got a couple of days off, but then, of course, I had to go back to work, and my wife took parental leave. About two weeks in, it's like, every morning, it’s like, “I don't want to go back to work.” Here in Canada, we could share parental leave. So I took about three or four months and then just dived down in my business and haven't been back since. 

Aidan

I can also remember the last time I was sitting in a little office cubicle in an office building, it was around about 2005, I want to say. It's definitely not something I miss. I know a lot of people do enjoy going into the office, but I think there's also a lot of flexibility around working at home these days. If you are someone who still works in a day job, maybe you've got the opportunity to work from home. We'll be able to share some tips about things that we do, Chris and I, to make sure that we don't go crazy, to make sure that we get what we need to get done done and maintain balance. 

So what does your day look like, Chris? I mean, how do you make sure that you get things done? Let's talk about what you've sort of optimized as your setup over the past 17 years. Let's just dive into this. What does your typical day look like? When do you start? In the morning? 

Chris

Sure. I've learned pretty early on what my circadian rhythm is, the best hours I work. It's always been like this. Even in my cubicle job, I would sort of start, not falling asleep, but losing energy around 02:00PM, something like that, a bit after lunch. So when I started working from home, it's like, “Okay, the first thing I got to do is work as if I'm still in the office.” My best times were in the early morning. So I get into work at about 8:30AM for my cubicle job and do a lot of work usually till about, I guess, lunchtime, and then maybe an hour afterwards. 

So I tried to replicate that, which worked pretty well, and I actually even went earlier. I try to get up, actually, at five in the morning. A bit of an early bird there. I know a couple of other people who work at home and they're sort of the opposite, where their best time is at night, so they both work. It's what you know to be your best time to work. So for me, that'd be 5:00AM if I could, but usually 6:00AM or 7:00AM till about after lunch, stuff like that. 

Aidan

I mean, if you're getting up at that time of day, by the time you've got to midday, you've basically gotten pretty close to putting a full day's work in and that's when you really start to unlock the flexibility of being able to go out and do other things that might not be related to the day job. And that's certainly something that I try to enjoy. I know that for me, I'm an early morning person. Today I was up at 5:00AM. I would have liked to have slept a little bit longer, but my body clock wakes me up, so I get up. Come midday, I've done a lot already. 

How do you approach making sure that you can maintain that concentration throughout the day? Do you work in big blocks? Do you take a break after a couple of hours, sit down and have a coffee? Do you go out for a walk? Do you hit the gym? What's your routine like there? 

Chris

Yeah. So my optimal routine, which, of course, can't sustain every day, but try to, it's what I always work towards, would be getting up early. 05:00AM if I could. Have a cup of coffee. What I do and what I've always done is write down my schedule. First thing I do, and it's actually a physical schedule. I actually make these. I get these done at Staples.

Aidan

That makes two of us. 

Chris

Yeah, exactly. So old school there. And the reason why I like it, of course I do like the 12-week year, which you've talked about before, and so I have that on the computer, but there's nothing like having something physically there that you see all the time.

Aidan

I've seen your whiteboard as well. 

Chris

Yeah, exactly, the whiteboard.

Aidan

You've got a whiteboard like when you're diving into a big project. Chris's Whiteboard just gets full up of everything that he wants to do, and that for me is awesome. Because, I mean, what better way to get your thoughts down on not paper, but down on something that you can look at, cross things out. I think that's fantastic. Is that something you use all the time or just from certain projects? 

Chris

For certain projects. So when you have a big project coming, say you're starting a new website or something like that, you write down all the steps. If you do it on the computer then you have to switch back and forth, like I have two monitors. Sometimes I wish I had three, maybe I will, but there's just nothing as good as a whiteboard where you could just quickly glance at and say, “Oh yeah, there I am,” or even on the piece of paper, check to mark it, stuff like that. 

I just find that a lot more efficient too, because when you're writing stuff down you're also thinking about it more, right? So it's almost like a ritual you're doing as well, and so it makes everything more real so that you could do the task a lot more efficiently, I find. 

Aidan

I found that when I actually put pen to paper as opposed to typing on my keyboard, it does unlock new ideas around creativity and I think also cements ideas more in my mind. I think that's why I do work from a 12-week year which I've got built into a spreadsheet on my computer, but on a week-to-week basis and a day-to-day basis, I've still got my notepad. I think the process of going through that really helps me with my day-to-day management.

So anyway, you were getting in and you were just starting to explain what the day looks like. I mean, do you stretch out for a big block of time? Do you deliberately break? 

Chris

Yeah, so what I do is I do sort of the Pomodoro method, which is 20-minute breaks. It depends on the project of course and what I'm doing sometimes.

Aidan

20-minute sprint and then a break.

Chris

Yeah, sometimes I do that, but most often I just go like an hour or something like that if it's something big. Because if I'm in the middle of something, I don't want to break it up with a break because then I come back and it takes about five minutes to get your thoughts back together. I basically keep going until it's done, and then I would get up and gather my thoughts again. You have to get up because if you're on the computer for like 2, 3 hours at a time, that's not physically good for your body. I have a stand-up desk as well, so that helps. But you need to always move around, especially as you get past 40 and stuff like that, which we both are now. I'm finding that sometimes the wrists are hurting a bit and stuff like that. 

Aidan

Sorry, I'm interested to hear more about the stand-up desk and sort of what proportion of the time do you use that. I'm assuming that in the afternoon you would be pretty tired to be standing at the desk. How do you use it? 

Chris

Usually it's sitting in the morning because you're just waking up and stuff like that, and then usually after an hour or so you're getting a little antsy. You've been doing a big project, you've been typing and doing stuff. So then I would get up, walk around, then I would do the stand-up desk, which I have one here too, so I can use it right now. This one's manual, can't really show it, but you could see it going up and down. And then the one in my office downstairs is just a push button, so then you just push it up and you stand up. I also have an ergonomic mat that I stand on, and then yeah, so then I'm typing and then I could just move around and stuff like that and keep things going. 

Aidan

You mentioned you've got an office downstairs. Do you normally spend most of your time working in the office? Do you shift around the house? How do you do that? 

Chris

I have this. This is the sunroom, middle of summer right now. Usually if it's like middle of summer, it gets to 30°C, 70°F, 80°F. It just gets too hot in here, so then I have to go downstairs. But today's perfect. It's about 16°. It's kind of rainy, which is actually neat because sometimes I still have to work downstairs because the sun comes in too much. But this is sort of my happy place. It's like you have the backyard, you have nature, so you have that as an advantage of working at home as well as you could work anywhere you want. 

Aidan

Yeah, for sure. I know in the past sometimes when I've been speaking to you and I guess it's your downstairs office and in the middle of winter, you've got snow built right up around the window kind of a thing. So obviously it's nice having that upstairs spot as well. At what time of the day do you get out for a walk? You've mentioned that to me in the past.

Chris

Yeah, so I would work at least till lunch. Usually lunch goes till about 01:00 p.m., stuff like that. I put in a good day's work right then, then have lunch, and then usually around after lunch, maybe an hour afterwards, I work a little bit more. Then if I'm feeling that low energy, then I would go for a walk because I could either go to bed for a nap or whatever, but I don't want to do that because then sleep patterns, sometimes I don't sleep well at night. So then I would just go for that hour walk. I'd put on headphones and either listen to music or sometimes podcasts and stuff like that, because I want to unwind as well, but sometimes I would want to learn more. I guess it depends on my mood. It's more of like a downtime, I guess. 

Plus it helps gather thoughts. Like if I'm working on a big project and there's a little stumbling block or something like that, then I would think about that. That actually helps a lot more than just sitting in front of the computer trying to figure it out. 

Aidan

When you are doing these little sprints, these Pomodoros of 20, 25 minutes of work and then a break, is your break getting up, walking around the house, doing something else in the house? Or are you watching a YouTube video or checking some personal emails or something? How do you do that? 

Chris

I usually try not to because then that's the one thing that other people have been telling me, is it's like there's no way I could work from home because there's all these distractions, right? I'm the same way. So when I go for a little break, I don't usually check anything. I just walk around the house, grab some water. I try not to eat because it's just I have had my breakfast, have lunch, dinner, so I try to keep with that. If it's summer, I'll walk outside. Maybe if I want to do like maybe a half-hour break, if I've been really working a lot for a couple of hours, go out to the garden or something like that for a little bit. 

I try to stay away from technology, distractions and TV and stuff like that, so then I can know that after half an hour. Sometimes I even time myself on my phone. I'll actually have a timer for 10 minutes, 20 minutes, whatever. And then it's like, “Okay, time to go back to work.”

Aidan

It's a good idea because you can lose track of time and 15 minutes can turn into 45 minutes and then an hour has gone by. What about the discipline that a lot of people are forced to have when they go into an office versus at home? I mean, at home you can work from your pajamas if you want to. You don't have to set an alarm. You can do anything. Is there a risk of that spiraling out of control or resulting in some other negative side effect? Any thoughts on that?

Chris

It has happened to me. So I did work in an office, worked in the cubicle. It was a really nice place too. Don't get me wrong there, but it is an office. It's downtown. I did have, like everyone else, you have deadlines, you have monitoring and stuff like that. I tried to replicate that as much as possible. I would set my deadlines, I would write down my projects and stuff like that. You'd do the 12-week method or whatever. 

There's a couple times where I slipped and things did spiral out of control. There was a month during one summer, I think it was 2007, 2008, where things just weren't really working out. I'd spend like two weeks basically playing a computer game, and then I felt awful afterwards. Because it's like I'm supporting my family now. By then, I think my wife was pregnant for a second child, so it's like I got to get this. Before that, I was sort of winging it, but still doing well, but then with that two-week crisis or whatever, it's like, “Okay, I got to get back into this. I got to build new websites, do this new thing, study this new course or whatever.” That's when I started this pen and paper thing and writing things down, writing projects down. 

Ever since then, I have this routine where every Sunday I would write down what I need to do for the coming week and sort of split it into days, but not really, so then I have that flexibility. And then Monday, it's like, “Okay, this is what I'm doing,” and when I'm finished each weekday, so Monday to Friday or Monday to Thursday, I would write down what I'll do the next day.

So depending on what I've accomplished, then it's like, “Okay, I got to do this, this, and this,” so then by the time Friday is finished, then I would look at my weekly schedule and say, “Okay, what did I accomplish? What did I not?” And that just completely turned me around, and I started seeing a lot of progress again. You need that discipline. You need that time, that structure, in order to really make this work, treat it as a business, not as a hobby, not as a seat of your pants sort of thing. You got to treat this as a business. 

Aidan

I think also an extension of that is you could work all day in your pajamas if you wanted to, but I think that's also a slippery slope to go down, because I feel like there's something to getting yourself in your working attire and just getting in that zone, getting that feeling, which is maybe harder to do, especially when you're working from home. So, like you, I've got the luxury of working from home, but I've also got my office, which is in the building right next to where I live.  There is a little bit of separation. I certainly wouldn't walk here in my pajamas, but if I'm at home, there's no reason why I couldn't do something like that. 

However, I sort of feel like it's part of getting yourself mentally geared up on a daily basis and knowing that, “Okay, one thing has stopped: my sleeping, my morning routine. The next thing is starting, and I'm in work mode now.” Is that the same for you? 

Chris

Yeah, especially in the earlier years where I still had that fuzziness of not as much discipline. I would work in my jammies and stuff like that, and yeah, it would feel like the day, even though you got stuff done, it still felt like it wasn't a workday just because you weren't properly attired. So then for the next couple of years, I made sure, “Okay, I got to get dressed.” 

Back then I also exercised early in the morning – should probably get back into that again – but exercised early in the morning, took a shower, then sat down with my day. Today, because I've been working so long, I have this structure that I know to keep that right now, I do work in my jammies for maybe the first 2 hours, then when the rest of the family wakes up, then we have breakfast, take a shower, then I'm in my workflow. It's almost like the second part of the workday is now starting.

Aidan

That's also a nice break right there as well and it's a chance that to sort of break the big long cycle of a day. It's another sort of natural break there being able to have breakfast and get changed and have a shower and so forth. 

Chris

I was going to say also working from home, whether you're an early bird or a night owl, also working odd hours, like for me it's like five to seven in the morning, I get so much work done because everyone's still asleep. You absolutely have no distractions. You can't turn the TV on because your kids might wake up. You can't do the coffee grinder and stuff like that. You got to make sure you do it that the night before. But yeah, so I try to be as quiet as possible. I get a whole bunch of work done then. If you're a night owl, same thing, right? Everyone goes to bed and then you have a good chunk of couple of hours to do your work. 

Aidan

What about your work overflowing into your personal area? I want to learn a little bit about how you set the boundaries, if you do that, if that's something you even think about and then I can share a little bit about what I do. So what's your take on that? 

Chris

Right here, I have my desk in my sunroom, and the only time I'm here is during work hours. So after hours, I don't read a book here or something like that. I have the couch behind me and I have some other stuff. Similar downstairs, I would have my office and pretty well only work there during work hours, if I play computer games or whatever afterwards, I make sure that there's a good hour separation or a couple of hours because after work, I usually go for a walk or I do this or run errands, have dinner. So then any personal time in the office there would be that couple of hour separation, so then it doesn't feel like I'm messing things up and blending them together. 

Aidan

And then how about overflowing of work items? For me for example, before I had an office set up, I would work on my laptop on the dining room table kind of a thing, and I would find that I would have stuff lying around that I didn't really want lying around when I wasn't working. The laptop being the main one sort of taking over the dining room table or the kitchen table or something. I remember sort of a before and after. First, I set up a specific home office, a space in my house, which was the office and that's what it was used for. And then beyond that, when my kids were born, or my first kid was born, I still had my home office, but I also had an office outside of the house as well, in another building. 

And that was when I was really able to properly separate things, and for me it made a huge impact because I felt like I had physical separation, which I'm sure you've got with the downstairs office, for sure, but also that mental separation as well. You mentioned that you don't sit where you are right now to read a book. To me that sounds like mental separation because you might still be in the same room, you could sit on the couch sort of behind you or something, but you're not sitting in that spot because I think that's a psychological thing there. 

Chris

Yeah, exactly. I have that psychological separation and it has taken a couple of years to make that solid. I'm saying if someone doesn't have that physical separation, like if they have to work on the kitchen table, what I would say is during your workday, buy a box or something even maybe. And then when you're finished your workday, just put everything in the box and just leave it to the side knowing that your work day is over. Morning, take everything back out, but just make sure you have that because it's not just a physical, yeah, it's a mental separation as well. 

Aidan

I think that's a good tip, especially for people that live in smaller spaces. I used to live in a really small, very small apartment when I was getting going. In fact, when I was starting my online business, I was living in a 28 square meter apartment. That's around about 280 sqft, which is very small, and then you have to be extra careful. Now, obviously, when you start living in a bigger place with more rooms, it's easier to get that physical separation, but I think you can still create it. If you do live in a small space, or even if you don't, I think it's worth exploring co-working spaces. 

So in Buenos Aires and a lot of cities and towns around the world, you can go in each day to a place that's got a kitchen facilities, it might have lounge facilities, and it might have different desk spaces and you can just choose any of them to sit down and work. This was something I did a lot when we were living in Barcelona around about 10 or 15 years ago and that was useful. The same kind of co-work spaces often have designated offices. So this office or this desk every single day is mine, and obviously you pay a little bit more if you've got a designated area. 

Co-work spaces are good. I've mentioned in the past that living in Buenos Aires, we've got an amazing cafe culture and within a five-minute walk of me, I've got probably ten different really good cafes that are set up really nicely for me to be able to go in with a laptop. That's a great way to break up the normal workday as well. Just mentioning this because not everyone has got space in their home to do something like this, but it's not the only option. Renting office spaces as well, like a dedicated office space, is an option, or co-working or even working out of cafes and cycling around them has proven to be a pretty good option for me. 

Chris

Yeah, and I do that too. My mother in law doesn't drive, so she often asks me to go to dental appointments and doctor's appointments and knowing that I work at home, it's like, “Hey, can you do this?” What I do is she usually asks me a few days in advance, so that day I think of something that doesn't need video editing or anything heavy. Then I would take her to the dental appointment. Usually, there's a cafe nearby, and so something like maybe doing a blog post or something that doesn't involve even an internet connection, though I would use my phone if I would need an internet connection, but something that's not too hard on the computer or whatever, like video editing or anything like that. I still have that option of being able to do things but still get some work done. 

Aidan

You just reminded me of something I'd completely forgotten about, but when I first started building out my online business, I think a lot of my friends and family didn't really take it seriously. They looked at it like a bit like a hobby, and all of a sudden Aidan was like on demand. “If you need something, you call Aidan. You need to handle something, call Aidan. Aidan can do it. Aidan doesn't have a 9-5 job. Yeah, just call Aidan, he's free anytime,” and it got really frustrating to the point where I was like, “No, look, sorry, I can't do that.” It was actually building up some of those barriers and making sure other people knew that, “Look, I'm not available at the drop of a hat kind of a thing.” It's nice to hear at least your mother-in-law gives you a couple of days warning so that you can get bits and pieces lined up. 

Chris

That’s right.

Aidan

Actually, I'll tell you mine, tell you a couple of my favorite things, but I'm going to ask what are a couple of your favorite things that you get from working at home? I'll share a couple of mine just while I'm waiting. So in my office, the one that I'm sitting in right now, I've got a fold-down bed, which is pretty cool. Most of the time you wouldn't even know it was there. It doesn't look like a bed or anything, it's like a secret wall and it folds down. I don't use it that often, but if I want to have like a 30-minute power nap or something, or I just want to lie down and I need to read something and I just want to be lying down reading it, I put the bed down and away I go. I think that's pretty cool. 

And then obviously beyond that, just having my own space and having the freedom to come in here, and not just here, but wherever I am and work on my terms. I wouldn't really trade that for anything. I think that's one of the true joys of being an entrepreneur, having built my own business and having the freedom and flexibility of working from home. How about you, Chris? What are the things that you've learned to love from working at home? 

Chris

Yeah, for me it's definitely my family. I probably wouldn't even thought of working from home if I didn't have my kids. I remember they were in preschool and they needed volunteers all the time, so I would volunteer like whenever it came up. It's like, sure, so volunteer whenever I want. Kindergarten as well. Got the recitals and stuff like that, and the school plays and even going on school trips. Being a volunteer there, I could do that. My kids are sort of like, “Dad's coming again,” stuff like that. But yeah, I absolutely love it. It's memories that I'll cherish and that they'll cherish as well even though they're teenagers right now, so they probably don't appreciate it as much, but they will when they're adults. 

Aidan

Yeah, they don't want you going on school camp with them anymore. 

Chris

Exactly. 

Aidan

It is cool though, just on the parenting front quickly, I feel pretty lucky that I can drop my kids off and pick them up each day and just the way it is. It just so happens that I'm one of the only dads that's able to do that in my kid’s class and being present for sporting events. Obviously, this is not just to do with working from home, it's also from having my own business and so forth. But yeah, certainly something that I don't take for granted. 

Chris

Yeah. One thing that's funny is integrating home life with work life. I actually had a website on baby slings. I was one of the first dads in our neighborhood to actually go around carrying a baby, so I had something called an Ergo carrier so it would just fit on. 

Aidan

I had the same one, Ergo carrier, and my one lasted two kids, so it probably lasted about four years. It got to the point where I was carrying my daughter around on it and people would sometimes actually say to me, “Don't you think she's a bit big for that?” And I was like, “Yeah, she probably is, like, pushing the limits. But while I can still do it, I'll do it.” 

Chris

So I built a whole website around that and did pretty well with it. You have the authority, right? Because I tried another one called The Baby Born, and my back started hurting, and so I wrote about that as well. So that's pretty neat, too. I could do both. 

Aidan

Fantastic. All right, guys. Well, this has been great, Chris. Great to have dived into a little bit about how you've set up your home working life and hear about your journey from the office cubicle to working from home on your own terms. 

This is episode number 88. You can find it at The Growth Booth. Head over to thegrowthbooth.com navigate to number 88. Head over to YouTube if you want to see the video version of it, which you can also find at The Growth Booth along with show notes and everything else. I look forward to seeing you again on the next episode of The Growth Booth. Thanks for tuning in. 

Chris, thanks again for being here today. Always a pleasure to jump on these calls with you. 

Chris

Thanks. Take care. 

Aidan

All right, guys, that's a wrap. We'll see you on the next episode of The Growth Booth. Bye for now.