The necessity of a optimal working environment

Thom Wensink
2 min readMay 10, 2015

A lot of people think that because I am a freelancer my life is all about vacation. “But you can work whenever you want” is something I tend to hear quite a lot. It’s true. I plan my own hours. But this doesn’t mean I do not have to work. I also have deadlines, whiny clients and a boss. I do have a lot more freedom than ‘9 to 5’ employees yes. I’m writing this from a bench in a park in Valencia on the middle of the day, because I can.

The park where i am writing this article. Isn’t that bad eh?

I went outside and started writing today because it is one of those days that the motivation simply isn’t there. Now if I would have had a 9 to 5 job I would stare at my screen until eventually I could go home. When the motivation simply isn’t there for me I prefer to take a break until it comes back (or not, then I just try again tomorrow). But today isn’t a normal day of “I don’t feel like working”. Something is killing my motivation: my work environment.

To be more specific; I am having pains in my back because the chair I’m sitting on is just a regular kitchen chair. While this isn’t bad for 3 hours or such, it’s horrible for coding 8 hours straight on. And thus, after 4 hours of coding my back is killing me already. For me the pain in my back is a huge motivation killer. I cannot focus like I want to and instead start complaining on my work environment.

So today I found out that the life of a freelancer also has a big downside. People that have steady jobs spend a lot of time behind the same desk. For this they have good equipment. A good desk, a solid office chair and a nice desk/laptop with accessories are some of the things people with a more solid job possess. Most of these things I do not have in my current environment.

As a freelancer i word a lot from the house that I live in. Although this has some upsides, when the house you are living in does not have at least a desk and a decent chair maybe it’s not the best idea to work from home. I’m thinking about working from one of these so called freelance offices. Most of the time it’s nothing fancy but for a small payment they give you a decent desk and a comfortable office chair. In the end I think it’s better to pay a small fee and be done with the uncomfortable working environment at home.

What do you guys think?

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Thom Wensink

Freelance Front-end developer | Webdesigner | Digital nomad | Startuplife | UI & UX | Traveller | Scrum fanboy