I am a hacker and a long-time lurker of HN (Since 'Startup News'!). In a few weeks I will have a considerable amount of time away from my workplace. I set it aside to allow me to work on personal projects.
I have a simple question: When working on your own projects, where do you prefer to work? I find that the environment I am in has a great effect on my productivity, for example I struggle to get work done at home.
Home is fine, it's the disturbances that get me (cell phones, tv's, neighbours, other people and so on). I work best at night because of that.
So quiet that you can hear yourself think So loud that everything turns into white noise
Since moving home to San Francisco, I've found the coffee shops to be quite lacking as a place to work.. Probably by design since the cost of business here is twice that of Seattle for cafes. So I work on my balcony when the weather is beautiful. Sometimes I'll take my laptop to the Atrium in the new mall on Market St., or to one of the hacker or shared worker spaces. I like having other people around who aren't trying to talk to me when I work.
However, since purchasing a very comfortable Kinesis keyboard and a 24" monitor, I'm finding it harder and harder to work on my 13.3" laptop.