by DontMicrowaveCats
I’ve worked from home full time for over 3 years. I often laugh at all the ads I see promoting WFH full time as the ultimate dream. Or posts on Reddit talking about how shitty it is for employers to make them come into the office.
Yea, it has plenty of perks. And it’s often better than a conservative corporate office setting. But it’s not all roses and butterflies either.
The vast majority of people I know who have worked from home for a long period of time agree with me. The first couple months are awesome. But then the isolation and lack of motivation quickly sets in.
It’s really easy to kill your work/life balance. It becomes increasingly hard to “check out” from work. And you will start becoming more emotionally and socially isolated.
Many people’s sleep schedules get destroyed. And it can be difficult to actually leave the house during the day sometimes (like when you have stacked meetings/conference calls).
Working from coffee shops is nice occasionally, but it can be distracting, expensive, and hard to do certain tasks like conference calls. Also internet connectivity can be questionable.
Co working spaces are also often super expensive. It can be hard to justify the cost, and not everybody has easy access to one.
Working outside is often not really an option due to weather and internet access. It looks great in instagram photos, but the reality is usually sun glare and shitty hot spot WiFi making work impossible.
While some studies have show certain companies can be just as productive with WFH…there are lots of companies who experience lower productivity and creativity from employees.
When I go into the offices of my clients once in a while I feel like a new man. The in person collaboration can be super helpful. It’s great to be able to bounce ideas off people in person or have a face to face discussion. And it’s really nice to be around people you know in general (this is coming from an extreme introvert).
I think the best scenario for the future of business isn’t full time WFH as many desire, but rather some mixture of both.
Disclaimer: This is a guest post and it doesn’t represent the views of IWB.