The Good, The Bad and the Ugly of Working from Home
As a freelancer, one of the perks is working from home. There are so many advantages of the work-from-home lifestyle. Thinking about becoming a full-time freelancer or entrepreneur in a home-based business? This #WorkingFromHomeLifestyle article series is for you. Understand the challenges and learn tips and tricks to set yourself up for success.
However, if you’ve every done it (even for a day), you’ll probably recognize some of the disadvantages as well. But there are some challenges that aren’t obvious that can lead to real pitfalls.
THE GOOD: PERKS OF WORKING FROM HOME
The advantage of an office job is your day is more clearly separated into “home” and “work”. While work can bleed into home life and vice versa, the line is much more sharp in an office job than when you work from home.
Anyone who has worked from home, knows the benefits:
- Flexibility – Adapting your work around your own schedule is possibly the biggest advantage of working from home. It’s easier to mold your work around the rest of your life than vice versa.
- Freedom – There’s no boss looking over your shoulder. You don’t have to work the typical 9 to 5, Monday to Friday. You work when you want and no one can tell you any differently. It’s good to be your own boss!
- No Commute – There’s no drive, no traffic. Your “office” is just a few steps away.
- Comfort – You can work in your PJ’s, no make-up, no uncomfortable shoes, etc. You get to stay in the comforts of your own home.
- No People – Chit chat from an open office space, fly-by’s and drop-in’s from colleagues can eat away at your day, break your concentration, and just be a constant distraction.
- Tax Write-off – If you have a home office dedicated for work in your business, it’s possible you can write off some of your house expenses as business expenses. Make sure you have all the proper permitting and consult a tax specialist.
- Family – Working from home allows you to spend more time with your family. Shaving off the commute time alone is a benefit. If you have young ones who need adult supervision, working from home allows you to be available to your kids.
THE BAD: CHALLENGES OF WORKING FROM HOME
There are some obvious challenges of working from home, and I’ll get into those first. In general, you can boil a lot of the challenges down to distractions that easily bleed into your day. You may find an entire day has passed but little work has been accomplished. Working from home can offer too much convenience as to be a distraction.
- Family – Wait, wasn’t this an advantage just a few sentences ago? As with everything, there’s pros and cons to working from home while caring for your family. It’s easy to over-estimate how much work you can get done while you have to care for family. Whether your family is explicitly demanding your attention or their presence keeps them top of mind, family (including pets) can be quite a distraction.There’s something to be said for “out of sight, out of mind” when you go into an office. While your home life isn’t completely shut out of your mind when you step into your office, it’s a far less distraction in an office setting.
- House Chores – It’s easy for pesky house chores to eat away at your day – a load of laundry here, a sink of dirty dishes there, etc. It’s nice to get chores out of the way and not piled up for the evening or weekends. However, it can be hard to get a solid day’s work done when bit-by-bit house chores eat away at it.
- TV – It can be nice to settle into your couch and put the TV on in the background. First off, this is ergonomically bad for you. But it’s imaginable the TV in the “background” quickly snags your attention and you’re full on just watching TV.
- Ergonomics – Typically, employers invest in proper, ergonomic environment and furniture — even special equipment for you if you need it. You might easily talk yourself out of good, ergonomic equipment when you’re responsible for paying for it. At an office, you’re more likely to get up, walk around, grab coffee, walk to lunch, etc.. In a home office, everything you need is probably only a few steps away. You might even get into a real groove and find you haven’t moved from your desk in hours! This can have an impact to your physical health over time.
- Phone – Most jobs do require you interact with people at some point. When you work from home, you may end up doing a lot of that interaction over the phone or video conference. It can be hard to have a quiet space for a work call, especially with family or pets around. A landline or reliable cell service is also a must to avoid embarrassing dropped calls with important clients. But in a residential setting, you might not have the best cell or Internet service that a typically office infrastructure provides. If you just don’t like talking on the phone, this could be a real disadvantage for you.
THE UGLY: PITFALLS OF WORK-FROM-HOME LIFESTYLE
OK, those were the obvious challenges. Even if you’ve never worked from home, I’m sure you read and thought, “duh”. However, there are more long-term challenges that aren’t immediately obvious. These challenges can sneak up on you over time undetected until they become pitfalls to this lifestyle.
- Financial instability – This has to be mentioned as probably the biggest challenge that can grow into a serious pitfall. As a freelancer or entrepreneur in a home-based business, you don’t get the stability of a regular pay check. Especially when you’re first starting out, you may not have any income at all. Your cash flow could ebb and flow and experience dry spells. This can be the hardest, most practical hurdle to get over.
- Over-working – When your work is in your home, it can be hard to stop working. You may find no difference between the “work week” and “weekend” as one day easily blends into the next. With your work so easily accessible, you need to work harder to have a work/life balance necessary to keep you physically and mentally healthy. Working while your family happens to be around, probably doesn’t count as quality family time.
- Isolation – The work-from-home lifestyle can create isolation that, for some people, is a serious challenge. It’s entirely possible for you to not leave your house for an entire week and long-term that isolation can set in as depression or complacency. This can be particularly tough if you live alone and entire days go by when you haven’t even spoken or interacted with another person.
- Weight – Ever heard of “Freshman 15”? There’s a risk of putting on extra weight when you’re working from home. The combination of low-activity and snacking through the day can result in some extra unintended weight gain.
Many employers know the benefit of keeping their staff healthy. Some invest in health benefits like a gym membership, organize team sports leagues, maybe even a work-out room in the building, etc. However, when you work from home all of those things come at a cost out of your own pockets. It can be easy to see a gym membership as a “luxury”.
Combine that with the fact that food is much more accessible. Your entire kitchen is just steps away!
After living the work-from-home lifestyle, you might find yourself several pounds heavier and not realize it’s because of a deadly combination of over-snacking and low-activity. - Conflict – If you live with a partner, there may be some conflicts that arise after time. These conflicts are natural and aren’t malicious, but can present challenges. Conflicts can arise from anything – the balance of chores, your work taking over the home (e.g. a photography studio), to financial burdens.
Here’s an example: When you and your partner have office jobs, it’s easy to see that time at home is equally limited. Sharing in the house chores is probably more equal as a result. When you work from home, maybe you pick up more chores during the day. Then your partner comes to expect that and pitches in less. Then you become resentful that your partner isn’t helping out as much. So an argument breaks out and your partner thinks since you’re home, you can do these things while they can’t. And you reply that just because you’re working from home doesn’t mean you’re not working. That’s how one very small thing can build up and become a point of conflict.
A more serious conflict could result from the financial instability. It can be a stressful burden on your partner to provide the financial foundation for the family. That stress is exacerbated by potentially feeling unhappy in their own office job but feeling trapped due to their financial obligations to you and the family.
At one point or another, I’ve faced all these issues, so I can attest first-hand that the pitfalls are real. Even knowing what you’re getting yourself into, these are things that can happen to the best of us. The key is having a plan to prevent them. In our next article, I’ll share techniques for avoiding, overcoming and thriving beyond all the challenges above.
DISCLAIMER: The information and advice I offer on this site are 100% from my own experience, understanding and independent research. I encourage you to do your own research, form your own opinions and practice your own strategies and share what works with the community.