I spent (and am still spending) the week in Ottawa visiting my friend Jon as sort of a working vacation. I wanted to get out of my house but I still have a whole bunch of app-related work to do, so I figured I’d do it somewhere else.
One of the most refreshing things I discovered when I arrived is that Jon doesn’t have cable. He barely gets CBC on over-the-air HD and consumes content solely from his Boxee Box. Seeing as there weren’t any TV shows for me to watch I basically had no choice BUT to work. Where I would normally find myself taking breaks every 45 minutes to watch BNN or a recorded show at home I was instead just working right through it. The end result of this magnificent, distraction-less environment is I completed the stat-tracking feature for my BlackBerry Briscola app (Free | Paid) in about 3 days.
The interesting part of those 3 days is I also managed to find my way downtown twice to skate on the frozen Rideau Canal. So, in 3 days I managed to complete more work and perform more physical activity than I accomplished in the entire month of January. The 25km I skated (4.6km each way on Monday and 7.8km each way on Wednesday) on the canal in 2 days outweights the 4 men’s league hockey games I played that entire month by a long shot.
Now, where does this leave me? It is clear that I can’t control the urge to watch TV when it is available to me, even when I’ve got stuff to do. I’ve been looking into some co-working facilities in Toronto that rent out desk space to startups and independent workers who want to work in an environment outside their house that isn’t a coffee shop. So I may pay a visit to one of those in the next week or so to see what that’s like.
In any case, this week (not quite) abroad has been very productive and I got to catch up with a friend at the same time. The only thing left to do now is figure out where my NEXT working vacation will take place?
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