Going in to my third week here at Highgroove, I already feel like my first couple weeks have been some of my best in any work environment, both in terms of my personal productivity and my happiness at work.

I’m still completing my undergraduate degree at Georgia Tech. As any student at Tech will be quick to tell you, the school is often very demanding of its students. This can often make a good balance between work and school difficult, and juggling the two over the past couple years of school has been challening.

Enter Highgroove, a ROWE (Results-Only Work Environment).

I’ve been lucky enough to call a good portion of the Highgroove staff friends for a while, and I’d known that Highgroove works on amazing projects with even more amazing clients. This was more than enough to get me excited to work with Highgroove. But hearing more about how Highgroove is a ROWE during my interview process really interested me.

A ROWE sounds pretty self-explanatory — it’s all about results. Focusing on results rather than time spent “working” (who hasn’t checked on Reddit at work before?), allows us to work in a fashion that’s all about personal responsibility and trust. I can take a day to study for a big exam if I know I’ll have some time later on in the iteration to make sure I’m hitting my results. Reading the ROWE book (ironically, the one requirement we have at Highgroove besides meeting results) and working in a ROWE has already taught me a lot: mostly I don’t think I could go back to working any other way.

Highgroove gives me control over my time and allows me to focus on getting things done — whether for work, school, or me — in a completely guilt-free environment. And I’m loving every minute of it.