The Grunts And Groans Of Working From Home
Before starting with me grunts and groans here’s a little note:
To all those who don't have experience of “working from home” try to turn off your judgments while you read. It's a classic example of “you don't know how it's like”. And those who fancy this way of doing business well guess what? you still don’t get to be a slacker.
First off, being human, we have to socialize in some way. For most of us, just having 100+ friends on facebook or any other social network is appealing, but not the real thing. Socializing becomes a challenge when working from home amidst many others. This is the biggest challenge what I have experienced so far, and overcame it too (this part would require a separate post :P). Thank god I don't work alone now. But still, one could rot if one does not step out of the house so very often. To counter this, surely you’d socialize on all those social networks out there, but to get the real thing, here is what I had found useful:
- - Spend some good 30 minutes outside (and this is for the worst of the introverts out there, it should be an hour or so – no offence). Take a stroll in a park / peaceful place or join a gym. Some fresh air won’t kill ya! But staying inside surrounded by 4 walls will definitely do some damage to your brain.
- - Try to network up with people who are in the same line of business as you are. And meet up!
- - Keep an eye out for different events happening out there that are even mildly related to your industry. Try to show up on those. Trust me you’ll feel great when you meet the alike. And probably the best way to do that would be to join a local community. Finally! You might be able to put all those social networking apps to the right use
– I’m sure you’d be able to find your local user group through these networks.
Apart of the social issue, here comes another. People don’t tend to take you seriously when you tell them you work from home. This can be frustrating at times. People are still getting used to the idea and some just reject it. This is especially true for countries like Pakistan and I’m sure India’s in the list too. Like many other countries, we both have a family oriented environment and mostly I find people “branding” themselves based on the companies they work in a one too many times. So after having a couple of these experiences, the idea came like a lightning bolt! Yup ! get yourself a business card!, just shrink the “what you do part” in a single understandable phrase. For instance, I use “Software Engineer” that works for me. The funny part is, I’ve experienced that people don’t really understand the “software” part
they just calm down when they hear “engineer”, which is actually really cool as I’m always giggling when witnessing this. Ah! On the other hand, this always makes me wonder when the hell we are going to get out of this entire stereo-typical behavioral pattern.
The third evil is keeping loose work timings. This can be cancerous to your work! – seriously! Some people may not realize this until after they find themselves in the middle of a crisis. And I had to find this the hard way … doh ! You have to separate your work timings. Sure sure, you must be thinking I didn’t choose to work from home just so that I work strict timings. Unfortunately, to keep professionalism, discipline is important. Can’t say this for sure about designers and the more creative kind but I can say this certainly for programmers. Although, you might be one of those people who are most creative during specific times of day, then you should time yourself according to that. You see this is where working from home comes in handy. You can choose your own timings.
A few things can help you achieve discipline. You can start off by creating a separate email, IM and phone for your work. It’d be easier to discipline your work this way. Although here I would have to admit that I haven’t been able to implement that yet, but keeping in view my plans, I might not need to. Trust me, it’s really important to keep your private and work contacts separate. The next thing you’d know is that your private email is bombarded by client requests and your private phone is ringing so very often with clients on other end and your folks giving you strange looks.
In essence, the important thing is that you should find time and reflect on other important aspects of your life during the day. I think I know now why there is an 8 hour per day work limit. It helps strike a balance between your private and work life. Honestly, when you are working from home you can cross that work limit very easily without even knowing what you did till later. But there are always exceptions. People who are passionate about something won’t stop at nothing till they achieve it. If you’re not that obsessive about something, then you should strike a balance with discipline.
I’m sure my experiences are quite similar with other people. Let me know if there are any differences you find. That would surely help me understand this better




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