Here's the deal: I've embarked on an experiment where I plan to take at least one Friday of every month and move my office from the 4th floor of an office tower at Thurlow and Melville out into the wide world. I've dubbed it Freewheelin' Fridays and the basics of it are that I drive to some form of a public space in the Lower Mainland in the morning and work remotely for the entire day, tethering internet from my phone to my laptop thanks to . My intention is to shake things up a bit in my own routine, inspire other people to do the same, and also to share some of the great public spaces that we sometimes take for granted. Join me?
This past Friday I started out as I usually do, doing my morning One Awesome Thing feature on . I spent some time at the station with James Sutton and Cory Ashworth then drove out blindly towards Port Moody in the Acura ILX hybrid that I still had on loan for review feature. I didn't really have a spot in mind until I hit the furthest Eastern end of Hastings Street and remembered that Barnet Marine Park has a bunch of picnic tables. It's also near the ocean (a major plus!), and I imagined it'd be pretty quiet on a weekday. I was right.
I set up shop at the picnic table above but as the glare got to be a bit much I moved to a nearby spot out of the sun. Here's the view of the "ceiling of my office" that I tweeted - I document Freewheelin' Fridays through my personal Instagram account at as well as tweeting from our main account.
So far the most interesting thing I've learned from this experiment is that even though I'm finding myself out in perfectly distracting environments ( is the Deep Cove edition from last month), I'm getting so much done. It's actually boosted my productivity. On a Friday I often find myself distracted by social media and by the afternoon I have semi-tuned out from actual work getting done (sound familiar?), but by placing myself outside of my usual box for Freewheelin' Fridays I'm finding it easier to hone in on tasks. Case in point is that for a couple of weeks previous I'd been working on the case study for our year-long project that just wrapped up. I had everything I wanted to say, I had all the numbers and all the facts and most of the pieces of the puzzle that I needed to assemble but had found myself so distracted and bogged down with emails and managing our social media that I was having a hard time pulling the trigger and laying it all out as a coherent PDF. By 2PM on Friday I had all but finished the thing! Then I ate a sandwich and watched this insane cuteness...
http://vimeo.com/66946414
I explored the park further and stumbled upon this thing below, which I would like to dub The Great Pyramid of Burnaby. Wayyyyy back in the day the park was the site of a logging mill camp, and industry lined the banks beyond it leaving more than a few leftover relics like this thing to discover.
After exploring it was back to my "desk" where I wrapped up feeling like I had accomplished a lot, as opposed to that feeling I sometimes get when I still feel buried by the time the weekend rolls around. It felt good to not carry that around with me on Saturday and Sunday, and to return to the office on Monday morning ready to tackle a new week.
Learn more about Barnet Marine Park and join me again next month for another instalment of Freewheelin' Fridays!
