The Making Of Explor.AI, part 6

As I had mentioned in a previous post, from March to September 2020 I was trying to launch explor.ai, at home with four kids. I eventually found my rhythm, and then we decided to work remotely for a while (because, obviously, working from home did not feel remote anymore!).

Why work from home when you can work from the middle of a forest, right?!

Working from a remote location

Obviously, the first thing we need to think about is the internet. You need a very good data plan (I was on Koodo), and limit your consumption. That means less face to face (more audio!) and there was no way I was going to work on Gigabytes or Terabytes of data!

Second thing is to work on your schedule. I was working from a trailer, inhabited by 5 other human beings, there is no way I can work while they were all in there! So every morning we would look at the weather and establish a schedule for that day.

Finally, it was important not to overdo it. I knew I would not have as much time as I would if I was home, so I needed to accept it. I would do my best while working, and then do my very best not to think of work the rest of the time.

It went very well overall, but being remote and hard to reach, I did lose some opportunities that summer.

I would still do it again though!

Recreating your work environment

The view was fantastic, from anywhere I would be looking at. But it was so different from my home office that it was sometimes hard to keep focus.

What actually worked very well for me was using my headphones with a specific playlist. It was not a noisy environment, but once I was plugged in, I felt in the same state I usually am while working in the office, so it really helped!

But, admittedly, there are still a lot of tasks I could not do well in that environment. And I ended up procrastinating on a lot of tasks I ended up doing in September.... more on that later!