Regular breaks, books & flexible working hours make ThoughtWorks India MD productive

Sudhir Tiwari, MD of ThoughtWorks India's home office was what his family and he used to call ‘the den’. It was the erstwhile TV room that has now become his de facto office for the last six months.

"I spend most of my working hours at a weathered but sturdy work-table which has been with me for more than 25 years. I have a lot of notebooks strewn across my table. I am an enthusiastic scribe who jots down important information and ideas in assigned notebooks. My room is well ventilated with a lot of natural daylight. I have easy access to a terrace where I sometimes take my evening calls or a quick walk to get the blood circulating. My home office also sports two book shelves that I have finally found the time to organise which also helped me to get ahead in my reading," he says.

Customisation done

"I wouldn’t call my work-table particularly neat but everything here has a purpose. I haven’t customised a lot, barring the Macbook packaging box that I use to elevate my laptop. I also have a table lamp that I need to have on for my video calls in the evenings and nights," he shares.

At ThoughtWorks, they have an open office culture which means Tiwari doesn’t have a designated seat at their Bangalore premises, which is where he used to spend most of his time.

"Project teams do sit together but everyone else can work from whatever corner of the office they are comfortable in. And, I leverage that freedom quite a bit. Also, I used to travel a lot so there was never any need to set up a corner with personal effects that I then needed to bring back to my home office. My laptop is all I’ve been carrying around for a long while now," he says.

Favourite furniture
Tiwari has taken the opportunity to move his work-table from where it used to be in the room. "In fact, I shifted it out of this room for a few days, but I found the den was the best fit, especially for when I needed to take a few really early morning or late night calls. The elements that I’ve added would have to be the table lamp and quite a few notebooks and pencils that I picked up when I first realised that I will be working from home," he said.

Tiwari is not what one would call a gadget fiend. The only accessory he did get, specifically for working from home, was a backup internet connection.

"The rest of the gadgets are what I’ve had; the Macbook, smart phone, iPad and a fitness tracker that helps me stick to my daily 10k step goal. I might have to invest in better lighting. The room’s original lighting does not really work for video calls, especially at night. I’d like to get that sorted. Also, I’m really keen on getting a whiteboard for the room. No ideation session or even discussion at ThoughtWorks is complete without whiteboarding or mapping the viewpoints. It just helps to look at the entire picture in one go like that, and it’s an important part of how I do my work," he says.

Flexible time
Tiwari realised that working from home gave him a lot more flexibility than he had earlier realised. "I stopped trying to replicate my office hours at home, and started making the flexi-hours work for me. I take regular and much needed breaks as I realised it helped me be more productive in my meetings. Because I’m not travelling at all, I spend more time with my family. I have picked up hobbies like baking and gardening. I’ve read a lot of books that I had been intending to. I’ve also found the time to complete a two month online course on Indian philosophy that I had not found the time to get to earlier," he shares.

Tiwari's family is welcome to spend time in this room, but he ends up spending his work-hours by himself. "That could be because they are usually caught up in their own calls or meetings or online classes," he ended.