Cape Town sits at UTC+2. That puts me an hour or two ahead of most of Europe and comfortably ahead of the Americas, which turns out to be an unusually good position for focused work.
My morning is genuinely quiet. By the time European clients are online I have already had four uninterrupted hours, and the overlap window with London runs from about ten until six.
Asynchronous by default
Distance forces good habits. Written updates, recorded walkthroughs and decisions logged where they can be found six months later. Clients in the same building rarely work this cleanly, because they never have to.
Distance forces the documentation habits that co-located teams never quite build.
The honest constraints
Power is not always guaranteed, so the studio runs on an inverter with enough capacity for a full working day. Deploys go to infrastructure that does not care where I am sitting. In seven years it has never cost a client a deadline.
Working on something where this applies? I take on three or four substantial engagements a year. Start a conversation. It costs nothing and usually clarifies more than it takes.
