Web Worker Daily

One of the main reasons I became a web worker was so that I could be around when my son got home from school. But I can’t imagine what it would have been like to work from home when he was in preschool. Peanut butter, meet keyboard.

Mike Gunderloy just did a post in which he suggested working at a stand-up desk might be a reasonable way to keep your work out of the reach of children. He also did a great post last year, discussing how to manage having kids at home.

We all agree that, as web workers, we’re incredibly fortunate to be able to participate in the discovery years. But you also have to admit that sometimes it’s impossible to work with a toddler or preschooler around.

If you have children, they probably have a lot to do with your lifestyle choice, so I imagine you don’t want to send your tiny tot off to daycare every day. But to get serious work done, you sometimes need a few hours to a few days a week without kid distractions.

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Coworking continues to evolve and mold to the increasingly blurred boundaries between domestic and professional life. An area often overlooked is that of childcare for remote workers and home workers.

I have colleagues and collaborators who, despite the fact they’re self-employed and work largely from a home office, still need to employ childcare. Some may see this as an unnecessary overhead, but it’s actually desperately needed in order to provide focus whilst working from home.

Enter Cubes & Crayons in Menlo Park, CA, self-described as ‘full-time childcare and office space’; think of it as coworking + creche! Cube & Crayons was profiled recently (along with New York’s TwoRooms) in a Springwise article exploring emerging trends in ‘More Work Spaces for Parents‘. Read the rest of this entry »