Every day, at around 2.45 pm, I get in the car and drive ten kilometers south, to the Finnish School in Stockholm, to pick up Son and Daughter. Or, every day when I’m not at the Olympics or the hockey World Championships for a couple of weeks at a time. But, as a rule, I’m at the school and kindergarten at three, and then we drive back up, singing, and talking about their day – and Star Wars.

We’re back home at 3.45, the latest, and then we hang around about an hour, before it’s time for me to start to cook dinner. When the kids are sick – I hear Daughter coughing now – or have a random Easter holiday, they can stay at home with me.

That is the biggest advantage for being a freelancer, and working from a home office in an upstairs room of a little yellow house, overlooking a sleepy little street in a Stockholm suburb.

I like working from home. Originally, when I went freelance seven years ago I did it for that reason alone: to be able to spend more time at home with Wife and Son. Once Son got a little bigger and Wife went back to work, I found myself standing at the door, waving them goodbye every morning. When Daughter was born, she was home with me a good six months when Wife got an offer she couldn’t refuse and went back to work a little earlier than planned.

I wasn’t really on a paternity leave, she just stayed at home with me. We took long walks (so she’d fall asleep), and play and eat, and whenever Daughter took a nap, I did an interview, or wrote. And then there were the late nights, of course.

The nature of my business is going from one deadline to the other, and that’s the most important routine I need. Or want. I don’t get up and put on a suit every morning, to create an illusion of being at work. I know when it’s time to work.

Of course, I do procrastinate. I spend way too much time doing silly little things that won’t help my company’s bottom line. Just the other day, I spent a good two hours writing a blog entry, then another three making a podcast of that entry. I do the groceries, go to the gym, surf the Web. I make a lot of coffee.

But it was the same when I worked in an office. There were days when I didn’t do anything at all, except surf, listen to music, have lunch, and go to the gym. At a previous job, my intra-office communication was mostly instant messaging with a colleague working across the room from me. He and I put together an alternative company newsletter that we sent to each other on Fridays, an hour after the real one, so not a lot of work got done on the last day of the work week.

Or the first, you know how Mondays can be.

These days, I still chat with Wife and the same buddies I IMed ten years ago, sharing YouTube links. (There goes the afternoon).

I don’t miss the morning commute, I don’t miss the annual reviews with the boss, I don’t miss the company emails about “THE LAST PERSON ABSOLUTELY POSITIVELY HAVING TO SET THE ALAMR!!! (Your mother doesn’t work here)” and I don’t miss meetings. At my last office job, I had my team have quick meetings at a high desk, with no chairs.

Although, I owe a big thanks for my present, beautiful, state of things to a company conference and a Christmas party.

I don’t play office: I don’t set up Skype meetings, I don’t write memos to myself, and I don’t think a lunch is wasted if I’m not spending it chit-chatting with a prospect. I do have a dedicated office space upstairs, and I like having it, but during the day, you can see me with my laptop and cell phone sitting by the kitchen table, or in the living room, or, in a few weeks, out on the deck.

Until about 2.45 pm.