Working through the noise

I am supposed to be on holiday this week. Holiday for me means I get to work from home, not work at work, then drive home and start again (if you run a home based business as well as work – you will know what I mean). I do enjoy working from home as it means I don’t have a 2 hour commute each day, so it’s nice to be able to have a block of time to get on with projects and building my own business.

This week was a little different though. Whilst I have many things I needed to do, I have a book I am trying to finish and of course need some head space to allow that to happen. Unfortunately I “chose” time off when:

• The kids and students are off school / college
• It’s the height of summer and a lot of people have taken extra holiday (or so it seems) (it's also boiling hot)
• There is a house being built on the plot of land next to my house and
• This week also saw my daughter’s 18^th birthday.

It’s a wonder I got anything done at all really.

But sometimes you just have to work through the noise. For two days I packed my laptop into the car, drove to the gym – worked out, had breakfast and then drove to the State Library where I worked for several solid hours at a time. Unfortunately you have to pack up and move if you want to take a break or go to the loo but that’s a good discipline to get into anyway. To complete significant pieces of work, you do need “bum glue” as Bryce Courtenay says. Work for a solid period of time then take a break and recharge the batteries before going back and doing a little more.

The beauty of where I was sitting at the state library though, there was a blind spot and the free wi-fi didn’t work. This was good for several reasons. I couldn’t be distracted by the normal email popping up, nor could I flit across to the Internet as I am want to do when at home.

But today is the day of the party. My daughter and her friend both turned 18 this week and the party is at my house. Well a much-scaled down version of what had originally been planned. But there has still been a lot to think about and organize. But instead of doing it all myself I delegated the inside cleaning to the girls. Vacuum cleaners, telephones going off constantly, two giggling girls and a friend who can’t make tonight’s party who called by to say hello and happy birthday made for an almost impossible working atmosphere (it was almost as bad as being at work !!).

So what do you do when faced with those kinds of issues – well you can try and work through the noise as I did. But rather than get frustrated because I couldn’t manage to carry on with the creative work I had been doing before the household awoke and the builders got going, I opted for some client work instead. The client had done the creative part, all I had to do was the technical side.

So what do you do when faced with issues like these?

1. Try a change of scenery. I brought my laptop to a local coffee shop. I’ve got a booth at the back – but the noise is horrendous. The blah, blah, blah “she didn’t” “WELLLL” of the teenage girls. The baby in the high chair in the next booth that appears to want a nap and is letting everyone know about it, and the dropping of cutlery on wooden floors, this place probably wasn’t a good idea….but it does make my house seem quiet by comparison.
2. Close the doors – if you can, and you do need some very quiet time to get through some work – then close the doors, turn off the internet and email and make sure your phones are switched to silent.
3. Earplugs. Sometimes when I can’t block out the noise on my own, I use earplugs. If you don’t need to listen for telephones, then earplugs are brilliant. Other people use MP3 players for the same reason. I don’t know what it is about using music to drown out other music and general noise, but it does seem to work for me, and maybe it can work for you too.
4. Work through it anyway. There are some days and some times when it doesn’t matter what the noise happens to be, you can get on with your work regardless. It may come down to
   1. Your state of mind at the time
   2. The work or the interest level in the work that you have to do

You can of course get angry, grumpy and start making noise of your own “to get your own back” but all that tends to do is wind you up, not other people. I don’t know anyone who has been able to get any kind of work done when they are angry, but the choice as always is up to you.