PROS AND CONS OF WORKING FROM HOME

 

PROS

No commute – this in my opinion is the best part for me.

I can literally wake up 10 - 15 minutes if I choose to, before I am due to start work and still make it to work on time.

Working independently. Not that I mind working in a team, but sometimes I tend to be more productive working independently.

Great for home work life balance if you are disciplined enough to separate the two.  (I know people who pick up their work laptops at 9pm because they are “bored”). This is especially great for working parents. Think of a situation where a parent has a child who is not sick enough to go hospital, but still needs to be monitored closely, it’s more reassuring to know that you are only a few feet away from your sick child and you can pop in at any time to check in on them. Something else that really hit home for me; I woke up with a terrible headache one morning, it was so bad I had to lie back down for an hour before I could muster the strength to get out of bed. So if this was a regular go into the office situation, I would definitely have called in sick for the day, but guess what by around 10am I was feeling so much better, my headache had subsided and I was well enough to start work by 11am. So because I was home I only took a few hours (it was actually just 2 hours) off, as opposed to a whole day off that I honesty did not need if it was a regular go into the office day.

You don’t have to dress up for work heck you can choose not to shower all day, no one will be any the wiser!

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CONS

No social interaction among colleagues (think water cooler conversations, lunchtime banter etc).

You can’t exactly lean over your desk to ask a question or get a clarification on something, you actually have to pick up the phone and call or send an email. (This one gets to me).

Poor internet connection can mess up an otherwise great work day.

Distractions, depending on one’s circumstances of course. People living with families can relate to this a lot. But those living alone experience this too, that loud neighbour, those noisy kids playing outside, the delivery doorbell ring etc.

Poor work life balance. Yes it’s both a pro and con. Sometimes it can be difficult to separate the two especially if you are working in the same environment. If you do not have a dedicated room/space/area, separate from your other living quarters for a home office set up (which is most people), it can be a huge problem trying to separate the two.  In my opinion if one has a dedicated home office corner, room, balcony, attic, shed or something detached that is outside of your living space boundary, then it is easier to shut that door/draw that curtain at the end of the work day and call it a day until the next morning. But if you are working from your dining table for example, there can be that urge to send that email at 8pm that ideally can wait till morning, or finish that not so urgent task well into the night, so you don’t have too much on your plate the next morning.  Sometimes you end up feeling like you are always at “work”.

 

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WORK FROM HOME ROUTINE (PANDEMIC EDITION)

 

Before I get into what the post is about I just wanted to mention a tweet I read a couple days ago on twitter that resonated with me. Someone tweeted that work should be outcome based and not time based and in one of the replies, someone commented how the pandemic had shown them that it didn’t make sense to go into a physical office for 8 hours, to do work that can be completed at home in 3 or 4 hours. I have never related to a tweet and its comment like I related to this one. I totally agree with both people. Of course there are exceptions for people in customer facing roles, healthcare, engineering etc you actually have to be present at work to see the outcome for most of these roles. My thoughts are that this pandemic should if anything change how we work going forward. The time spent on commuting alone could be used doing something else, organisations that can, should really consider working from home full time  going forward or at least have a part time work from home option where employees only come into the office twice or thrice a week on a rotating basis. I mean some of us have been doing just fine working from home, meetings still go on as scheduled work still gets done. But as humans we also need social interaction every now and then so I actually think the part time work from home option, could actually be a viable one going forward for most organisations. Perfect work life balance if you ask me. My organisation still has what is considered essential staff, the finance, IT and administrative team, who go into the office about twice a week, but never more than three people at once. Appropriate masks are provided and there is a sanitizer station every few steps on the floor. You can’t exactly transfer all of an organisation’s systems especially sensitive confidential material or financial stuff to a home office set up, so these staff members come in once or twice a week for that purpose.

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Ok so on to the post. So my work day is typically 8 am to 5 pm but I prefer to do a 9 am to 6 pm routine unless I have an 8 am meeting or something. The reason being, that I am usually still taking work calls, sending emails or in a meeting or webinar that runs over past five pm usually until 5.30 pm sometimes. So I figured 9-6 works better for me most days. So this post will be based on a 9-6 work day.

8 am - 9 am

I do personal stuff. A quick 10-15 minute light workout while listening to a TED talk. Followed by a 15 minute Spanish lesson on Duolingo as I drink herbal tea, juice or some sort of drink it all depends on my mood and the weather that morning. I spend the rest of the time before 9am watching a short vlog on YouTube. I actually choose what vlog to watch based on the minutes I have free before 9 am.

9 am - 1 pm

Work day officially starts so I check on any emails and respond to those that need responding to. Take action on those that need action taken. Then I proceed with whatever tasks I have set up for the day. I usually take a 15 -20 minute breakfast break in between usually around 10am, which I eat at my desk.

1 pm - 2pm

Lunch break. I try to take my lunch break between midday and 2pm as much as possible, because most afternoons are either filled with a meeting or two or some webinar or the other and since I am home, I am either preparing a sandwich, reheating leftovers or making fresh food and I don’t want that process to interfere with my afternoon schedule. Besides I don’t want to make a habit of eating lunch at my desk while working (yes I can log off an hour earlier if I do this), but that one hour eating lunch and watching something on YouTube is a welcome break.

2pm – 6pm

Like I mentioned above most afternoons are filled with a meeting, webinar or something of the sort. Once these are done I continue with my daily tasks and log off at 6pm. My last task for the day is filling in my timesheet which we do online, I prefer to do mine daily since my tasks are still fresh in my mind. it’s just easier than waiting until the end of the month to fill in everything. And that’s it work day done.

Of course I take short five to ten minute breaks throughout the day to stretch my legs, give my eyes a break from the computer screen or when the weather is good get a few minutes of much needed sunshine.

It’s a good thing I have a personal laptop and a work laptop, so once I log off I don’t touch my work laptop until the next day. I don’t touch it at all over the weekend, once I log off on Friday evening, the next time I log on is Monday morning.

I go for a 30minute to an hour evening walk thrice a week, I try to make it Monday, Wednesday and Friday, so I can get some fresh air and human interaction. These walks usually coincide with a grocery run that I do on the way back. Nothing too heavy, usually a few fruits and vegetables that I can easily carry back home.

 

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THRIVING IN A PANDEMIC!

At the beginning of the pandemic sometime in late March for me, when all the news that came out worldwide was tragedy after tragedy, I told myself I was not going to let the negative news affect me, but instead I would thrive in this pandemic. I even sent a message to one of my friends to this effect screenshots below. My timeline was full of tragedy, loss and despair at the start of the pandemic, people were being furloughed, taking massive pay cuts, businesses were closing down, people lost jobs and loved ones. I found myself absorbing too much of this negative news and it was starting to affect me, so I took a short social media break. When I came back the negative news was still there on my timeline, but in the midst of all the tragedy going on in the world, I would come across the odd person who had signed a new contract, got a new job etc. It was such a crazy time for some and a blessing in disguise for others. Of course we all know that industries like aviation took a beating and tech and healthcare sectors thrived. So I choose to focus on the positive, I told myself that I would thrive amidst the chaos. And thrive I did. In June I self published my very first book, which you can find at the end of this post. I had been sitting on the idea to write a book for years, but never did anything about it because I didn’t quite know what I wanted to write about back then.  Every time someone would ask me a personal question that I didn’t feel like answering, I would always say one day I will write a book about it, and never thought much of it after that. And then one night when I couldn’t sleep I woke up a few minutes to three o’clock in the morning and started writing and didn’t stop until five o’clock in the morning. I wrote 2000 words in two hours and that was the beginning of my career as a published author. I started my YouTube channel around the same time.  A couple of weeks later I signed a short term contract with a multinational non profit organisation and also got some work from home online opportunities, that I did on the side. Deep down I believe all these opportunities and blessings that came my way did so, because I not only spoke them into existence but believed without a doubt that I would thrive regardless of the negative circumstances in the world at the time. The power of the tongue and manifestation was definitely at work here. My motto was “thriving in a pandemic” (still is) and believing that I would and I did. 

Edited to add: I actually drafted this post after my interview and before I got the offer and signed my contract! Ask, believe, receive! I just knew deep down in my heart that this contract was mine so I went ahead and wrote this post before signing the actual contract!

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