Editor’s note: This article was first published in September 2010, when remote work was still rare in Spain. The remark that working from home “is still not well understood” predates the widespread shift to remote work after 2020.
We talked earlier about teleworking and its benefits, whether as a way to earn some extra money or to be part of a company while working for it from your own home. More and more companies are turning to remote workers and offering jobs that can be done from home. That said, if your company offers you the chance to work from home, you may jump at it, thinking only about the benefits, but you need to consider the disadvantages, and there are quite a few.
I don’t need to dwell on the advantages of working from home, because you can imagine them:
- You don’t have to take the car to get to work.
- You don’t waste time in traffic jams.
- Depending on how far away your company is, you can sleep a few more hours.
- You work at your own pace, without your boss looking over your shoulder all the time.
- You can take as many breaks as you think appropriate.
- You can do without childcare for your children, since they can be with you.
- And, to sum up, you save money, both the company and you.
Working from home certainly has many benefits, but you should bear in mind that “all that glitters is not gold”.
Working from home can cause several problems of a psychological kind, above all ones that sap your motivation, and over time they can tend to get worse.
- Loneliness: Camaraderie at work is vital to a worker’s morale and motivation, and in this case you will be on your own.
- Lack of motivation: People tend to slacken off. Since there’s no rush to get to work, because you’re already there, you can slip into apathy, staying in bed a little longer each day and staying up a little later, so that day by day you may feel more tired and less motivated.
- Distractions: The distractions you might have in an office are one thing; the ones you can have at home are another. Television, children, the radio, salespeople knocking on your door, sales calls to your personal phone, and so on.
- Helplessness: At certain points you will need to deal with something that requires information kept at the office, so you will have to ask for it to be sent to you before you can carry on, or else hand the task over to someone at the company. Either way, if the situation keeps happening, you will start to feel not very useful or efficient.
- Added problems: Your neighbours, your spouse and your friends know where you work and know that nobody is watching you, so you can end up becoming the person who runs everyone’s errands. “If the gas man comes, ask him to leave me two butane cylinders”, “later on, slip out for a moment and buy a loaf of bread”, and so on. To many people it’s as if you had extraordinary freedom; in short, as if you weren’t working at all, because the idea of working from home is still not well understood.
Whatever your reason, before you decide to accept an offer to work from home, you need to be sure you won’t fall into any of the traps we have mentioned. Once you are clear on that, you can enjoy, in moderation, the benefits of working from home.
Further reading
- Teleworking as a new way to do business and earn extra money
- How people make money on the internet
- 12 motivational quotes for entrepreneurs
- Donald Trump and the mindset of an entrepreneur
Featured image: Nenad Stojković, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
