It's funny you mentioned working-from-home companies, because that's exactly how I deal with this problem. :) And it's something everyone should ask about at an interview; these days, a company had better cough up a VPN to hire me.
It's simple: I know that I'll think of something at midnight on a Wednesday, and want to log in to flush it out (or sometimes, when I wake up on Sunday). So I work at home at least half the time; and if I'm feeling even slightly lacking in energy, I don't even bother logging in. I know that eventually the drive will return (probably later that afternoon or evening). I have a cell phone, I check E-mail and office voice mail now and then. And I've been finishing at least as much every week as I did years ago when I was in the office all day long, except I'm a lot happier.
The VPN has always been available, but I have only used it extensively in recent years. It probably helps that teams are now spread further around the world, because it has forced people to restructure their work to deal with large gaps in communication. We'd already been sending messages and waiting hours for a reply, so people no longer expect to be in constant contact. So I didn't really have to convince anyone, I just reminded key people that I do work at home a lot, and to call me by cell when necessary.
Though, I've seen certain managers have a real problem with people working at home, and they even managed to fire people based apparently on that. Fortunately, those managers are no longer here, because that same intolerance made them ineffective managers.
It's funny you mentioned working-from-home companies, because that's exactly how I deal with this problem. :) And it's something everyone should ask about at an interview; these days, a company had better cough up a VPN to hire me.
It's simple: I know that I'll think of something at midnight on a Wednesday, and want to log in to flush it out (or sometimes, when I wake up on Sunday). So I work at home at least half the time; and if I'm feeling even slightly lacking in energy, I don't even bother logging in. I know that eventually the drive will return (probably later that afternoon or evening). I have a cell phone, I check E-mail and office voice mail now and then. And I've been finishing at least as much every week as I did years ago when I was in the office all day long, except I'm a lot happier.