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Many
people aspire to work from home. No time
wasted commuting, you get to set your own hours,
no boss looking over your shoulders...
Yet, those who are currently working from home
or who have experimented working from home would
tell you that it is not for everybody.
Although it has its advantages, it also carries
a few disadvantages that can be very hard to
overcome. For one, working from home means
that you will not be able to interact with
others on a daily basis. As human beings,
we are meant to connect to others and to live in
society. Staying home all day and
repeating the same routine week after week can
lead many to experience depression.
Further, work from home means that you will not
be able to learn from others or ask them
questions face-to-face. If that is the
case, how are you supposed to upgrade your
skills? How about your own personal demons
such as procrastination? Being by
yourself, what will prevent you from being
inefficient? How will you have a sense of
how well you are doing with nobody to compare
your work with?
The
above is not meant to discourage people that
want to work from home, but is meant to portray
an accurate picture of the challenges that
working from home represents. Working from
home may be a good thing depending on the
circumstances. Specifically, if you have
children and want to spend more time with them,
it would make sense for you to work from home.
If you are in a creative field and do most of
your thinking on your own, it also makes sense
to work from home. If you have worked for
20 years, know what you are doing and don't have
much more to learn from others, work from home
may also be appropriate.
That being said, it is not recommended for
someone starting in his or her career to work
from home initially. Early on in your
career, you need mentors and need guidance from
others. You need to see how people work,
how they do things, learn from the mistakes that
people around you make, learn from their
strengths, debate ideas with them, network, etc.
Again, it's about temptation and the ideal that
working from home may represent can be very
tempting. Although something can be
tempting, it doesn't mean that it is good for
you. Study your options carefully and make
an informed decision before you choose to go
"in-house".
One of the options that is open to you may be to
work at the office part of the week and at home
the rest of the week. This would give you
the balance that you need. One
disadvantage however is that if you choose to
spend less time at the office, you will have
less visibility and this will probably affect
your career advancement... that is, if you care.
If you have decided to put your personal life
first and career in the backburner, then go
ahead.
Few qualities that most people who work from
home have:
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They are disciplined.
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They are result-oriented (If you work from
home, the only way that your employer would
know that you are doing the work would be to
actually look at the work that you did, so
there might be more scrutiny in that
respect.).
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They have a circle of friends and have an
active social life (They don't need to go to
work to meet people. They will
organize their own activities and will make
sure they don't feel "trapped".).
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They are self-motivated.
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