Unlike the author, when I was telecommuting I was never able to be effective while working in my pajamas.<p>When I would wake up I'd go down the hall to the office and read the first 5-10 new mails in my inbox to give me something to ponder while in the shower (that's where I get my best thinking done anyway).<p>I did the whole morning routine and put on clothes I could be seen outside in, and then back to the desk to work. For some reason, I would be more prone to goof off on the Internet instead of work if I had just fallen out of bed and parked myself at the desk for the day in my pajamas.
I find it interesting to watch the telecommuting life style emerge and how people cope with the feelings of isolation and the unusual schedule. For instance: some of the telecommuters I know end up spending more time at bars and stuff like that to get that social interaction they're missing back in their life and use up their excess energy. As things evolve I'm curious to see where this leads.
In my case, it's rather extreme. I develop a Java webapp in Santiago de Chile for an Australian business. I've travelled to Australia twice (4 months in total), but I've been able to manage the last 2 years so far interacting with them via email/chat/Phone/Skype dialy.<p>It's been very challenging but it's been an interesting experience overall. In my case take breaks to be with my family several times a day and walk a lot to ease the anxiety.<p>It's way too easy to lose focus on your tasks unless you can keep at least some discipline, but in the end I think I've learnt a lot, not only technology-wise.
One thing that's not mentioned is the type of work the author does - which I do think is very relevant. I'm usually a developer and telecommuting has been working out well, but there was a situation where I ended up helping out tech support, and not being in the office has been trying.
I transitioned from an office environment at a big corporation to telecommuting for a small startup recently. Working from home has been great so far and I'm loving it.<p>One thing I have observed is that my home life is slowly merging with my work life. While I am at home, I am working almost 90% of the time. This has been great for my productivity but I'm worried that it might be detrimental in the long run. As it is, I'm starting to feel slightly guilty when I'm at home and not working. (especially since my co-workers seem to work 24/7!). This doesn't concern me so much now as we have too much work to complete, but at some stage I think I'd need to figure out how to stop work and home life from merging completely.
I've been on a telecommuting project for the past several months or so. At some point we realized that we weren't really functioning as cohesively as possible, and the solution ended up being in finding a group chat tool. The author here uses Campfire, but we went with Hipchat (<a href="http://www.hipchat.com/" rel="nofollow">http://www.hipchat.com/</a>). It certainly helped us with the sense of being isolated from the team.<p>Now as to dealing with being in my apartment for what can be huge swaths of time...