A couple of months ago my circumstances changed and I was lucky enough to work for a flexible boss who allowed me to change from full-time work to part-time. As part of this arrangement I now work from home two days a week and only come into the office on Mondays. It seems that a lot of people have a hard time understanding how this situation can work so I thought I'd answer a couple of the more common questions I have heard recently.

How does your boss know that you're actually doing the work?

This is probably the question I get asked most often which I think is probably a sad indictment on the way people think. Obviously, when working away from the office there has to be a certain level of trust that I am doing what I say I am doing. But, at the end of the day, I am assigned certain tasks which need to be done and we generally have a good idea of how long these tasks are likely to take so I don't really have the choice of slacking off even if I wanted to. If the work isn't getting done it's going to be pretty obvious.

How do you have the discipline to sit at your desk all day?

Personally, I really don't see any difference between sitting at my desk in the office or sitting at my desk at home. Basically, I make sure I'm at my desk by 8:30am and I just start working. And I usually end up working longer hours because I am less inclined to take a lunch break. The fact that I am at home or in the office doesn't really enter into it. Although, I have to admit that having the refrigerator nearby can be a bit of a problem some days, especially if the wife and kids have been baking recently. But from the point of view of getting into a work mindset, I've never had a problem.

Don't you get lonely at home by yourself all day?

I have always been a bit of a solitary person so I have never had a problem with being by myself. But the fact is that my job is one that requires concentration and thinking through problems so I find that, even in the office, there is often not a lot of chatter going on as people get on with their work. Really, the only thing that is missing when I work from home is being able to sit down and discuss a project with a colleague face to face. Despite all the available communication channels such as Skype, email, phone etc there is really no substitute for being able to look someone in the face and work through an issue with them. We get so much meaning from non-verbal communication that I can't see any technology being a complete substitute for talking to someone in person. This is the reason that I am still in the office one day every week and I cannot see this changing.