What Does Working From Home Feel Like?

Sharing my decade long journey of working from home

The last time someone told you they worked remotely, did you think to yourself, “that must be nice, I wish I could do that”? I’m here to give you the good, the bad and everything in between about being a person who works remotely. Hopefully when you are done reading this article, you can answer the question you asked that person, “That must be nice?”, for yourself.

When I say “work remotely”, I’m talking about a person who doesn’t work in a traditional office environment. One example of working remotely is a “digital nomad.” Someone who travels all over the world, or stays in a specific location for a certain amount of time away from their home, working while they travel.

Another example of working remotely, the one I am more familiar with, is a person who works for a company but doesn’t work in the same city and tends to generally work from home. In this article, I’m going to focus more on what I know, which is the work from home.

Home Life vs Work Life

Working from home is an acquired taste like drinking coffee or sipping tequila. You need to be able to focus and try to remove all distractions. In simple words, you need to separate your home life from your work life. This is easier said than done. Most people see all the chores they need to do around the house like laundry or dishes and get distracted. While working from home, you need to set certain hours to work and, in that time, it’s about work and not your home tasks. Usually creating a space to work, like an office, can help separate you from your home obligations.

The idea of working remotely becomes even more challenging when you live with a partner. You need to make sure your partner has the same understanding, that during the times you are supposed to be working, it’s not time to get you to do house chores or go pick up packages in the mail because you are at home. Having a mutual understanding that the time you dedicate to work is for work will lead to fewer disagreements. This is not to say you can’t have appointments or attend occasional engagements outside of work, but you have to treat work hours like you would if you worked in an office environment.

Isolation and Your Sanity

Maybe it is nice that I don’t commute or carpool or work in an office and constantly am distracted by co-workers…but there is always a trade-off. A big aspect most don’t think about when someone works from home is the isolation.

For the most part, when you work from home, there is no one around you, no face-to-face and hardly any social interaction. It’s you and the work in front of you. Yes, you will get calls and/or chat with co-workers, but the human interaction isn’t really there.

What about roommates or your partner who lives with you? Good question. Yes, they can help mitigate the isolation. Although, it’s important to remember that it’s not their responsibility to be your sole social interaction of the day. A great example of this scenario was when my partner came home from a long day of work, tired and just wanted to relax. Meanwhile, after my long day of work at home, I was ready to be social and interactive, but she wasn’t. This caused friction between us because I was trying to use her as my outlet for my lack of human socialization and she had enough during the day.

Working remotely means that it’s my responsibility to find social outlets that want to be social at the same time as myself. Outlets like joining a club or recreational sport. I found joining a recreation softball team helped create a great environment where I could be social with others, have competitive fun, and provide a good source of physical activity.

Fitness…is It Needed?

Which brings me to my next important point…fitness. Not only is it a great tool to solve the need to be around people but a necessity when it comes to working remotely. I often work long hours, without getting up from my chair or even leaving my house. When you work remotely, you feel comfortable and possibly lazy. You tend to lose track of time and just keep working.

Just like you need to draw a work/life balance when it comes to doing chores during work hours, you also need to compromise the other direction. Through my journey working from home, I gained a lot of weight and became complacent in the fact that I wasn’t active and this was my life. One day it just clicked while getting winded walking up a flight of stairs at my home, I realized the importance of staying in good health, especially having no outside motivation to be healthy.

The key word is “motivation”. At home, there is no real reason to get up and walk around. You don’t have to go out for lunch, you don’t have to walk to and from work. So, you need to be motivated to stay active, stay healthy. As a personal example, I take time out of my lunch break to walk to the post office to get my mail (since living in a more rural community, my mail goes to a P.O. Box at my local post office). I am also able to start work a bit earlier to give more flexibility hours to go to the gym. It’s really up to you to motivate yourself, to keep yourself in working order so you that you stay healthy and fit while working away from the office.

Conclusion

Hopefully, I have given you a glance into what working remotely is like. Though, the question still stands… “That must be nice?”. The only person that can really answer that question is you. Working remotely isn’t for everyone. You need to know yourself and be motivated to get up and start work when there is no one else around. From my experience, it just worked for me. Even though I went through a lot of trials and tribulations, I learnt so much about myself and keep learning more wonderful things every day.

Do you think you can work remotely? Does working remotely sound as “nice” since reading this article? Let me know.