Except for my new neighbors, of course.  They moved in last week and, since then, it’s been one loud evening after another.

The first thing I attempted was to talk to them.  When they opened their door, it became evident that there were no serious adults to talk to.  The people spread out in the living room looked at most 20 years old, and there were a few beer bottles lying around.  The karaoke machine was on at full blast, blaring out “Close to You” by The Carpenters.  I asked for the owner of the house and a young woman, I’m guessing she was 17, came up to me.  I said the little speech that I’ve been practicing in my head:

“Listen, I don’t want to cramp on your fun, but I usually work at around this time and the rest of the neighbors are asleep.  I know parties are fun and everything, but this has been going on all week.  Do you mind toning it down a little so I can get some work done and everyone else can sleep peacefully?”

She gave me a blank look and said “Why don’t you just work in the morning?”

“I would, but it’s noisier in the morning because the neighborhood kids are running around, all my pets are awake…Uhm, where are your parents?”

At around this time their little party starts quieting down a bit and the others start looking at me.  Then she agreed to lessen the noise.   As I walked away, I overheard one of her guests making a quip about how I was overreacting.

The following night, it became evident that our little conversation didn’t work.  In the Philippines, calling the police because of neighborhood noise won’t be taken seriously, so that option is out.  This time, I resort to headphones and Puccini.

It works out well – at first.  Then I realized that the music was too powerful for the piece I was writing, so I played some acoustic jazz.  But as the hours wore on, I realized that I was spending too much time rearranging my MP3 files to complement whatever it was I was working on.

Here’s what didn’t work: my first solution was to try and get my neighbor to change.  This left my peace of mind in their hands. The trouble with this approach was that I still had no control over how to fix the problem, and they don’t care about my problem even if they are the ones causing it.  After all, I’m not giving them any inconvenience.

My second attempt was to fight fire with fire.  I was hoping that by playing my own music directly into my ears, I would cancel out the neighbor’s karaoke machine and loud voices. What I actually ended up doing was creating more distractions for myself, giving myself more stimuli to fight.

Today I’m trying something new.  I remembered that on a recent trip, I got a pair of complimentary earplugs from an airline.  I took those out of the drawer and placed them on my ears.  While I can still hear a slight murmur from the neighbor’s karaoke machine, it’s not too distracting.

This solution is the simplest, since all it involves is the earplugs, which I can take out of my drawer anytime I want.  I’m letting the neighbors go on with their lives, while I go on with my work.  I basically found a solution that is within my control, no matter what the outside world does.

In “The Art of Learning”, Josh Waitzkin introduced a chapter with this quote: “To walk a thorny road, we may cover its every inch with leather or we can make sandals.”  I guess that’s what I’m doing by wearing earplugs.  I’m making sandals.

How do you cope with noisy neighbors as a web worker?  Are they understanding of the fact that you work from home?  Do you have any suggestions for other web workers with noisy neighbors?

Image by Peter Suneson from Sxc.hu

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The Wall Street Journal reports that most people eligible for this potentially lucrative deduction probably don’t take it:

“It is questionable whether most taxpayers who are eligible to take the deduction actually do so,” IRS National Taxpayer Advocate Nina Olson said in a report to Congress last week. She urged lawmakers to offer taxpayers a simpler, optional method of calculating the home-office deduction. [subscription required]

Why don’t more people deduct home office expenses? The WSJ identifies a number of reasons: the law is quite complex, requires extensive record-keeping, and is perceived to raise a person’s risk of being audited.

What might be the ultimate barrier for many home-based web workers, however, is the law’s requirement that, in order to deduct expenses for your home office, you use that part of the home exclusively as your principal place of business. Very few people use their home office only for work, even if it is their main place of business.

This law hasn’t kept up with the reality of work today. If you set up a comfortable home office with a nice computer, filing system, and workspace, you’ll probably do your personal work there — paying bills, for example. You might play games on the computer or use it for socializing too.

The law could allow a proration of time based on how the office is used; for example, allowing you to deduct 80% of costs if you spend 80% of the time in your office working. While this would add to the record-keeping burden, it would have the great benefit of allowing home-based businesses the opportunity to deduct actual expenses, just like other businesses can.

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But by 2006, according to data collected by the Dieringer Research Group, a marketing research company in Brookfield, Wis., more than 28 million Americans were working from home at least part time — an increase of 10 percent from just the year before, and 40 percent from 2002. The American Home Furnishings Alliance reports that 7 in 10 Americans now have offices or designated workstations in their homes, a 112 percent increase since 2000. And a recent survey by the National Association of Home Builders found that home offices ranked as the fourth most important feature in a new upscale home, just ahead of security.

Some of those home offices are pretty fancy:

The office, which Mr. Cappello said cost $300,000 to $350,000, holds three dozen antique chess sets, several hundred globes, 1,800 handmade canes from around the world and thousands of antique books. The paneling came from a castle in the south of France, and the Empire-period fireplace, he said, was built for one of Napoleon’s residences. A billiard table from 1849 and a large partners’ desk anchor opposite ends of the room, and 19th-century military and animal paintings adorn the walls, along with two big plasma screens, “for watching football games with my buddies,” he said.

Most would content themselves with far less luxury than that, but having a well-appointed, well-organized home office sure makes working at home easier and more pleasant.

What if you don’t have a dedicated workspace at home? You can make do.

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