Working from Home - A personal opinion on the ups and downs of ditching an office work to work from home

in #life6 years ago

Many people I meet in my life find it amazing that I work from home.

Most people believe that working from home is the best thing in the world, that you have time for everything, that you don't have to deal with anyone, that you can create your own schedules and work in peace.

They believe money falls from the sky, and that you can spend the entire day sleeping or watching videos or playing games.

What most people don't know is that working from home is nothing like this.

Now hear me out, before you start believing that I'm here to say that I hate working at home, that's wrong. I absolutely love the change in my life. Suprisingly, I actually get more work done, because I don't necessarily see a start or an ending to my work day. I can either work 4 hours and feel like it's being a bad day, or I can work for 16 hours non-stop and create amazing things. This post is to address some of the downsides of this life, and what most people looking into working from their homes should look forward to, and understand, before commiting to this.

Everything is great, until it's not.

The first thing you're gonna feel when you start working at home is the lack of co-workers. Sure you might have some other digital co-workers, also working from their homes, but talking to someone via Skype or Discord is not the same as meeting face-to-face with someone. You start to feel lonely. You want someone to talk to, but you can't find anyone. This is not something that is easily fixable or even has a fix at all - it's something you have to learn to live with. If you cannot get past this barrier, the best thing to do is go back to a regular job with other people in a closed office. That's NOT a bad choice, it's about personal preference, and not about what is objectively the best. only you know what you need.

The notion of time.

It's not easy to track time the same way you used to when you worked on a regular job. The line between Friday and the weekend becomes harder to tell apart, and you might find yourself working over-time most of the days. This is good for short bursts of inspiration, but you must remember that everyone can burn out. Spending too much time working and not following your hobbies is not healthy, and will only leave you many days without being able to advance any work.

My solution to this is to make yourown tasks on the day prior, and trying to complete them. If I complete them sooner, I will stop working for the day and go do something else. A day is only as productive as you let it be. If you managed to follow all the tasks you set out for yourself, that means your day was very productive. If you're finding it hard to follow the tasks, then you must learn to shorten your expectations, reduce tasks, and change them to the day after.

Don't crack under pressure.

Just because you're having a bad week and your productivity and emotions are at an all time low, doesn't mean the following week has to go the same way. Spend time with your family, your loved ones, give attention to your pets, go out and practice sports or hit the gym. The first step to ruining your experience is to succumb to depression. Eat healthy foods, drop bad habbits, and cut off toxic behaviours and relationships.

There is so much more I could talk about on this topic, but I feel like anything more would be hard to digest, so I will leave more tips for the next post.

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Shoutout to @dynamicgreentk for all the help he gave me to improve my Steemit experience. He is a great writer and memer, and you should definitely follow his work.

Make sure to follow @steemcafe, he is currently writing about a steemit conference in Las Vegas. I would attend personally, but sadly I live on the other side of the world.

Follow @preshey, a new Steemit user that I believe has much to offer and with great potential.

Have a great day, and let me know if my tips helped you in any way!

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Awesome! Lets see more posts like this but with pictures!

Heheh I will try to add more pictures in the future :D

Nice post, agree with everything. Skype and Discord are really a great help! No way I would survive with 0 voice chatting!
You have to mention one of the biggest perks of working from home: Saving a lot of money! (food, transport, time you don't spend traveling to work)

It depends on the situation. What I save from driving my car to work I now pay driving my girlfriend to work, so it more or less evens out. The fact that I don't have to travel to work is a great plus though :)