A few years ago my mentor Dan Sullivan taught me about the No Office Solution. It sounded so foreign at the time.

Dan’s concept is that an entrepreneur (or executive) really doesn’t need an office. “But where will I put my stuff?” you ask. “What stuff?” Is Dan’s reply. His point is that you shouldn’t have stuff. Your people should have stuff. You don’t have files. The people who work for you have files. Your entire “office” should fit into one bag and probably contains little more than a laptop.

If you follow Dan’s concept you’ll get to where your only time at the office is time spent in the area of your unique ability. In most cases that involves meeting people—in a conference room. If you are doing something else and need some space to spread out you can do so in that conference room, or at another workstation you’ve borrowed, but you really don’t need an office.

I’m almost there.

I’ve got an office. But I haven’t sat in it for weeks. It does have my “stuff” in it, just because we haven’t bothered yet to get organized in such a way that someone else has all my stuff. But we are SO close. In fact, if I had to, I could be officeless within an hour. And that is my success—-if you can be implemented in an hour, you’re there!

So, I’ve still got a corner. It’s outfitted in a duck theme…..(I’m no duck hunter but the paper looked cool). There are little ducks sitting around amid the nic naks and pictures of my family. There’s a cabinet full of files, and a desk top covered in papers people have handed me. But I’ve not touched it in a month, and pretty much won’t need to for another month.

It feels weird and wonderful to essentially not have an office. Everything I do is in my laptop (for the most part). And I only go in to the office when I am meeting with people.

It’s a good life. I like it.

I still have a job, but I am awfully close to owning a company instead.