Top up home working levels with blogs
A quick way to boost home working inspiration
We’re all well aware of the potential home working has for making you feel isolated and out of touch, and an easy way to help counteract that is to keep your inspiration levels topped up.
I like to look at blogs, not just work ones, but ones relating to my interests, and I read them every day, as part of my home working routine, and when I have a break.
San Sharma introduced me to Instapaper at the Top 10 Tech Tools event last summer, and it’s the perfect way to bookmark pages you stumble upon but don’t want to look at immediately.
I keep a collection of interesting looking pages in my Instapaper account and turn to it, coffee in hand, just as I’d open a newspaper or magazine. But the beauty of this is that I want to read all the content and not just bits!
Lately, inspired by back-to-back viewing of Borgen and the first two series of The Killing, I’ve discovered Designs on Denmark by a British Journalist living in Copenhagen. It makes you want to go there immediately, until she mentions prices, which are seriously eye-watering.
I’ve always liked the writing of Justine Picardie, and I liked her too, when I was a writing student in Cornwall and interviewed her when she came to speak at the Fowey Festival. Her blog gives an insight into a writer’s life, with glimpses of more personal bits too.
How did I find out recently about Tired of London, Tired of Life? Whether from the net or a friend it’s a brilliant resource of unusual things to do in the capital, and I’ve bookmarked it for easy reference on our next trip.
This may veer towards the girly, I know, but I’m not sure if chaps use blogs in the same way as women. Certainly when I ask A for his suggestions, they’re all very work-oriented, apart from SurfHog, and I think that might be a minority interest here!
Even with plenty of outside input, the grass can get greener surprisingly quickly when you’re home working, especially if things aren’t going as well as you’d like. So if you’re ever feeling a bit down, I recommend you get in the car and drive into town at peak time, pay a fortune for parking, watch the workers streaming into their offices – and then turn round and come home again, feeling deeply thankful that you are home working and don’t have to do it all again tomorrow!
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Great advice and something I’ve been doing a lot in the last two months. It’s a great way to network and find out what’s going on internationally as well.
The home worker’s window on the world, Kaitlyn!
have you seen… shitlondon.co.uk yet ? it’ll make you laugh, it’s pretty vile but so funny.
That’s got to be an Ian find, surely? And thinking about it, it’s probably Ian who put me onto Tired of London, Tired of Life. It was around the time I tweeted asking for pub suggestions in Vauxhall and I got lots of response so hard to remember.
It is so true sometimes you need to actually read blogs that you like and not just for work. Otherwise what is your blog even really for.
Ha ha, it’s a hard life, Penny!
I share lots of kinds of blogs – everything from hard core geek to hard core foraging. It gives a lovely balance to the day and connects me with people right across the globe.
This morning I read a post about eating ferns, and it was a real connector with where we are in the 21st century to the dinosaurs, 2 million years ago who ate those same ferns. Fiddleheads if you’re interested.