Stories from Anywhere Working

Share your Anywhere Workspace with us and win a Microsoft Arc Touch Mouse!

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Living outside of London, I take advantage of flexible working a fair amount. However, what I quickly found was that where I was working can dramatically affect my productivity. Apparently working from the couch, with the TV directly in front of me and a laptop on my lap wasn’t the best place for me to spend the day. Now I have a great little setup on an old bureau, perfect size, height and position for my laptop, my wireless keyboard and arc mouse. Even more importantly, it’s next to a window which I find helps me clear my head and allows a little creative freedom when I need it, simply by staring out.

However, workspaces are incredibly personal things. While this works perfectly for me, I know that other people might not find the same for them. This is one of the advantages of working away from your office every once in a while. It gives you the opportunity to work wherever is most conducive to you!

So, we want you to share with us your ‘Anywhere Workspace’. Whether it be the inventive setup you’ve got in your study at home, the serene individual study rooms at your local library, or the combination of the right tools, along with the perfect cup of coffee, at your local coffee shop. If you take a snap of your workspace and tweet it from now until the 17th February, including @Anywhere_Work and #workspace in the tweet, we’ll randomly select one person per day between Monday and Friday to win a Microsoft Arc Touch Mouse.

For those who haven’t had the privilege of playing with an Arc Touch, it’s a slim mouse that starts out flat, then clicks into place to perfectly fit your hand. It comes with one of the smallest wireless receivers that attaches to the mouse when not in use via magnets. The mouse will also work on just about any surface, including carpet, which makes it just about the perfect Anywhere Working mouse you could find.

What are you waiting for? Get snapping!

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Get Ahead of the Games.

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Friday marked six months until the start of the 2012 Olympic Games and we’re beginning to see London businesses, in particular, start to prepare.

For many UK companies, business continuity plans are front of mind. The ability to travel around an already congested city has already been widely reported on and the launch today of a new government website provides a great tool. Get ahead of the games has been created to detail expected hotspots in London during the games and raise awareness of the Olympic transport issues.

Friday also marked another milestone – it’s now just one month until the start of Anywhere Working Week in the UK on February 27th 2012. During this week we’re be encouraging and helping UK businesses and individuals to embrace new ways of working ahead of the games. Stay tuned for hints and tips, and join us in a month’s time.

The real cost of London 2012

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Hands up if you’re a season ticket holder, pay and display regular or a full blown committed commuter….well congratulations, you’re part of a 10 million strong team who take to the roads, rails and cycle lanes every day to make it in to the office.

However, with the Olympic clock relentlessly counting down the minutes until London becomes the focal point for most of the world, it’s time to re-evaluate the way we travel.

The Under-Secretary of State for Transport, Norman Baker sat down with the MSN news team to discuss what the Olympic Games are doing to tackle the expected influx of Londoners.

“If everybody seeks to travel the way they always travel every day, the system won’t cope. You can’t suddenly bring in hundreds of thousands of new people to travel in by train and expect the system to cope so the answer is they have to look at working differently,” Norman Baker said.

You can watch the full video interview with Norman Baker here: http://news.uk.msn.com/olympics-threaten-transport-meltdown-warns-minister

Productivity +1

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Stop. Wait. You’re doing it wrong. Or at the very least, you might be. Tips to boost you and your workforces productivity are endless, so before you can start, Lifehack think that you need to ask yourself 5 big questions you can about productivity in order to really get the best from what is on offer.

Those questions are:

  • What Are You Being Productive For?
  • Who Are You Being Productive For?
  • When Are You Being Productive?
  • Why Are You Being Productive?
  • The Big Follow Up Question…

Read the full post here: The 5 big productivity questions by Lifehack

Our other favourite productivity bloggers:

Unclutterer - http://unclutterer.com/

The blog of Tim Ferriss - http://www.fourhourworkweek.com/blog/

Zen Habits - http://zenhabits.net/

Pick the Brain - http://www.pickthebrain.com/blog/

£22 Billion City of the Future

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When it comes to future technology and work, you will be pushed to find a more exciting development than this one in South Korea.

The city of Songdo is a bit like Milton Keynes, and a bit like Minority Report. A purpose built city that didn’t exist as recently as 12 years ago, and was completed in 2009, Songdo now boasts a sensor-laden, broadband-fuelled, telepresence-filled lifestyle.

Residents all have super fast internet access, meaning Anywhere Working is a reality. And with Telepresence in abundance, residents are super-connected. For the environment (and bringing a bit of balance) we love the roof top gardens and the amount of green space throughout the city.

So how would you work if you lived in a city with so much connectivity?

Work on Songo started in 2000 and will cost an estimated £22billion. Image source