Since I seem to keep forgetting, here are some thoughts on how I work, that is, which conditions I believe are beneficial to me doing work in a productive and satisfying way. What follows is a list of commandments. In contrast to religious scripture, I motivate my commandments. I do this to enable me to convince myself of their adequacy later.
In general, the necessity of these commandments may suggest that I hate work. This is not the case. Once I settled into working, I mostly derive great joy from it. When I finish a successful stretch of work, I feel great. It is only that I am cursed with momentary weakness of avoiding work when given the chance. Since I could not come up with a way of curing myself from this, pulling a Ulysses and saving myself from my momentary desires seems like my best option.
I plan my day ahead of time, preferably before going to sleep. This motivates me to get going in the morning instead of wasting time because I feel like nothing is coming up. I need to know which things have to happen that day, when I will have to get going, when I will have to wrap up the open ended tasks to be in time for fixed events. Ideally, the plan contains a fixed end point at which duty has been fulfilled. This is just a mental help to get a good start into the day. If anything urgent comes up, fuck the plan. But I sure love it when a plan comes together!
I am mainly referring to the environment here. I do not want to exclude team work. If the working unit is a team, the rule should be "The Team Works Alone". What I mean is that the working area needs to be isolated. I need to find an area that allows me to brood for an extended amount of time, focusing only on the problem at hand, pushing aside the outside world for that time. This can be a small office, a deserted part of a library, or really any reasonably comfortable isolated space with a desk and a chair.
I seem to be easily distracted by outside activities in my vicinity. Not only do specific events distract me, but the pure presence of other people that are doing anything else than sitting still and studying puts me in a less focused state. In fact, if the number of people is large enough, even perfectly still people seem to be detrimental. More and more I come to believe that this may have been one of my biggest problems in school.
The effect of working in a less than optimal environment can be softened by especially captivating work, such as programming. From what I remember from my startup office time though, even there I preferred the early and late hours of the working day, when the office settled down.
No matter what story I tell myself: If I consider working at home, all alarm bells should ring. I do not work at home. I repeat: I do not work at home. This sentence is both a commandment, the request to leave my home if I intend to do work, and a fact, as I don't get shit done at home. Which is precisely why this is now a commandment. If I tell myself, that today it is just better or easier to work at home, I may under no circumstances believe myself. If for some reason I really need to stay at home, it is best if I just decide to not do any work in that time.
As soon as work gets tough, my mind will squirm and cling to any petty activity that allows me to stop. It might be playing guitar, eating a little something or cleaning up. There is always something to find to do at home. Which again allows the mind an escape route and it may never settle into serious work mode in the first place.