Dealing with a change of pace.

I’m experiencing a change of pace.

Ever since I’ve gotten back from school, my productivity has been all out of whack. At first, I was making incredible time, as I had no roommate, no realistic responsibilities, and a real desk to use.

But now, at home, there is no separation between live and work. While I was at school, my makeshift office has turned (back) into storage for anything that doesn’t exactly have a place in the house. The doors of the office are also made of glass, so privacy is never an option. If your in the line of sight downstairs, you will be disturbed.

I’ve just now positioned the router to get wifi in my bedroom, but a bedroom workspace is a recipe for disaster: I always end up losing concentration, relaxing vs. getting work done. Sitting on the bed gives me awful back problems, and we’re short an office chair for my desk in my room.

At school, I had 50 escapes. The cafeteria, 2-3 common areas around school (all in walking distance from my dorm room), not to mention simply the hallway of my dorm. At school, there was a bit of an unwritten rule: if the laptops open and the headphones are on, you are working. A quick hello is fine, but after that, you move along and let the poor guy finish his paper.

These are just a couple issues I’ve come across while trying to get to work this summer. It’s been rough.

So how do you keep working even when your workspace flips upside down? Here are some of the things I’ve done.

Go with the flow
I’ve been trying to fight my newly found “summer break” sleeping schedule (sleeping from 3am-11am, yikes). I tried a few days forcing sleep, waking up early, doing whatever I could to reset my schedule (11-7). But once I stopped fighting it and just powered through, it occured to me that there was a lot more silence at night, and distractions like Twitter and Facebook calm down past 11.

Clean.
Whenever I can’t concentrate, my first reaction is to clean. A cluttered desk kills any chance that I have at productivity.

Turn the distractions off.
The best times I’ve been able to work at school is when the WiFi died in my dorm (which was all too often, unfortunately). Grab Concentrate, the Mac OS X app that will disable apps as well as specific websites for a certain amount of time.