Tag Archives: mobile office

Frugally Using The Library As Part Of My Mobile Office

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Today, I decided to give everybody an oral peak in my business settings, and in particular how I us a mobile office instead of a set location.

First off, I don’t have an official office, or at least one dedicated to my side businesses.  I guess you could call my “laptop and laptop case” my official office, because wherever I go with it, I can do work and be productive!  To be honest though, I probably spend at least 60% of my time in a spare bedroom that has a desktop computer in it as my “unofficial” office!  While I don’t use the desktop as much as I use my laptop while I’m in the room, sometimes I do have both up doing work.  When a guest stays the night, I go down into our media/library room and work there instead (I really do love having a laptop!).

At work I’m limited, my employer has a proxy server than limits me from going to sites such as gmail.com, etc…  So instead I use the local library (which is about 2 miles away) as a critical part of my mobile “side business” office!  Using the library as a mobile office has served me well for years.  I go at lunch so the crowd is minimal (maybe 10 people come and go the entire hour that I’m there), and it’s naturally quiet.  Internet access is provided, the air is perfect with heat in the winter and air conditioning in the summer, and there is even a small pond outside if I want to escape for a second and take nature in.  In may ways it’s like a Corporate Park area!

Lately, I’ve been using my time at the library to do research and learn more.  Why pay someone to teach you when you have a wireless connection at the library, not to mention all the books I could pickup and read…  The library is something that we all pay taxes to run and a lot of us just let it go to waste?  Why not take advantage of the potential to use it as a mobile office?  Plus, when you are traveling, most cities have their own library, just sitting there, neglected, waiting from someone to come in and use the great free services!

It I were retired or had enough money to stop living my life in a cubicle, I would take advantage of the great mobile office like environment that libraries provide!  I would then travel more, using the mobile office setting that is available in almost every city (and most of them provide internet access at their library too).

If your on vacation, the local Library’s mobile office is just sitting there like a  faithful dog, waiting for you to pay it some attention!

Even if you don’t like the library, perhaps go to one and try it out for an hour.  Try to think of it as a mobile office instead of a place to borrow books, you might surprise yourself and find that you can do a lot of work there!  For instance, this entire article was written at the library that is less than 2 miles away from where I work…

It’s free!!!  Try it, you may find that it beats paying big bucks to rent office space!

Bests,

Don

Using the Library As A Mobile Office

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Recently, I’ve made a discovery that’s worth talking about, “Using the Library As A Mobile Office”

To have an office and all the expenses that are associated with having such an office may be able to obtained at your local library for free!

At this very moment, I’m in a small 12 x 12 room (with five chairs and a table, not like the larger meeting room in the picture below) in my library, writing this article while enjoying the view through a 6 x 10 window.  I find myself imagining what it would be like to come here everyday to do my blogging, online website, and rental investment property work.  Why pay for a full-time office, when you “the taxpayer” (including me too, of course) are paying for the room and nobody is using it?  If you are a starting out entrepreneur, perhaps this is an option worth exploring!

Let me describe the benefits of using the library as a mobile office!

  1. There are meeting rooms that site empty 90% of the time during the “business hours” time slots per day.  I’m sitting in one right now, and I have to say, it has the same feel as my regular employer’s office that is provided to me.
  2. There are regular options here that a normal work office would have like: air conditioning, heating (in the winter of course), restroom facilities (which are even nicer than my employer’s), water fountain, wireless internet access, fax machine availability (although I wouldn’t use it), copy machines, and even a phone in the room that I’m in (again, I wouldn’t use it because I have other alternatives), and many other perks too.
  3. Silence, in this office room, it’s even more quiet than my office at work, but if I wanted some human background sounds, I could just shift to the general area instead.
  4. Access to free electricity.  Currently, this library office has an electric outlet, so I’m charging my cell phone and I have my laptop plugged in too.
  5. Mobility!  In my state, practically all of the surrounding libraries have free internet access and meeting rooms such as the one that I’m currently in.  I could call ahead and schedule a meeting room at a different library each and every day if I wanted a change in scenery, whereas with my employer’s office, I’m stuck with the same grey short walls (cubicle walls) throughout the entire building.  In some ways working in my office employer’s site reminds me of the movie “The Shawshank Redemption”.  Shoot we even have restrictions on how many plants we’re allowed in the office (2 small ones).

Now some of you might say “What about phone services”?  Well, google handles that for me!  With Google Voice, I have a number that I use for all of my calls, and the beauty of this number is that it can be setup to forward the call to four devices at once.  And once one of the devices take the call, the others stop ringing!  The kicker is that Google Voice is currently free (although this will probably change in the future at some point).

Of course, I won’t stay her the entire day.  I have a lot of the same options at home, but using the Library as a Mobile Office is an option to break the monotony of strictly working at home in an extra bedroom.

Have you considered using the library system as a mobile office?  I see a lot of advantages in doing so.  Plus if you travel to different states, why not use the facilities at the location that you are at?  Assuming many libraries are the same, this seems to be a perfect option to me.

Bests,

MR