People keep asking me how it is that I’m able to work from home, and they generally don’t mean it as in “How did you get a job that allowed you to work from home”? * They generally mean: how are you able to be in your house all day, and yet also get work done?
Well, let me tell you:
It’s not for everyone.
So, in case you’re wondering to yourself, “Self, would I be able to work from home everyday?” (and why do you continually refer to yourself in the third person ?That’s weird), here are some questions you will need to ponder.
1. Are you very VERY comfortable being alone most of the time? If you can’t stand the sound of your own voice, if you’re super social, if you need to have people to talk to during the course of the day? You might not want to work from home, where you can go for long stretches without talking to anyone other than yourself – unless, of course, your job requires that you spend a lot of time on the phone, in which case you will spend all day talking to people who may or may not be completely irritating you, at which point you will find that you have no one to decompress to, except for your cat, who probably doesn’t care.
If you’re a very social individual, working from home can be an exercise in torment and isolation. You might want to keep that office job.
2. Are you okay with the fact that you don’t have a support team? When I worked out of the home, there were things like supply closets and IT support and accounting. When you work from home, there is no fun closet that is kept stocked with supplies like printer ink and paper… YOU have to go to get those things. Out of pens? Sucks to be you! That ink cartridge finally gave out? Guess you’d better get to Staples, because you’re going to need ink. Is your computer acting weird? Internet being funky? Have you downloaded a virus? Did I mention that you don’t have an IT team? Suck it up, Buttercup, because you’re going to have to sort this one out on your own. Need a purchase order or something? Hope you can wait a few days, because you can’t just walk down the hall and ask for one. It’s going to take a while for anyone to get back to you with that – unless, of course, you’re working from home for your own business, in which case you get to figure out the financial implications of your order and then go from there.
If you need stuff now, immediately, and you need other folks to get it for you? Yeah. You need to drive to work.
3. Can you concentrate if you don’t have a visible supervisor? Some people need the pressure of knowing someone is looking over their shoulder. Some people don’t. The ones who do sometimes go off the deep end when Big Bro is not keeping an eye on them and then find other, non-work things to take up quite a bit of their time while their work piles up … and up … and up … and goes unattended. This is bad.
If you need someone to keep an eye on you, you might want to work someplace where that can happen.
4. Can you channel your ADD in productive ways? If you can use your attention related quirks to help you to multitask and work on 18 projects at once, Yay! You can work from home! If you can’t, and find that it makes you wander around your house, doing different, non-work things? You can’t work from home.
See, the thing about working at home is that it is work. In fact, it might be MORE work than working in an office, because in an office, there is a clear delineation: That’s where you work. Home is where you live. When you live AND work at home, you have the constant knowledge that your work is there, just behind that door. It’s easier to start work early and leave late when you know you don’t have a commute, when you know that you won’t be able to relax while that project is still sitting there, lurking, chortling evilly in the dark. It’s harder to relax. (It’s also harder to justify a sick day when you’re already in your jammies. I’m just saying.
How am I able to work from home? It’s not easy, and it’s not for everyone. You kind of have to be super focused, kind of antisocial, and determined. (It helps if you’re prone to getting into car accidents, so the temptation of getting an out of the house job isn’t, actually, very tempting at all; it also helps if you already have a tendency to talk to yourself and or the cat out loud, because you’ll probably be doing that a lot.)
I like it. Mostly.
But that’s just me.
*Answer: COMPLETELY by accident.
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