Jaimie Dobson Internet Consultant

I enjoy reading the TimesOnline website which is an excellent example of a news website for a whole raft of reasons.

Whilst I was flicking through the site’s archive of articles, one from last month caught my eye. It goes into the downsides of home working which made me smile and prompted me to blog.

With the explosion of technology such as email, VPNs, web cams and the Internet comes a marked increase in the number of people working from home. The ability to maintain workers at home is an easy proposition for many companies which allows them to reduce their overheads whilst maintaining productivity. The concept also sounds an attractive proposition for the traditionally office bound worker who wishes to cut-down on their commuting or wants to maintain a good “work-life balance”.

Surely home-working is a win-win situation right?

Home Working: Not for the Feint Hearted

However what the Times article insinuates is that working from home is bad for your health in that it leaves one feeling isolated, dressing like a hobo (if one gets dressed at all), dehydrated (huh!) and losing any sense of time. In other words. Work from home and you end up one wave short of a shipwreck in no time at all.

Having working from home for the best part of the last 15 years, I can relate to this article. There’s no doubt about it that home-working is not for the feint hearted as it’s a completely different mind-set than working in office with other people to socialise with. As the recession continues to bite there’s a continuing stream of redundant office workers who are choosing to take the self-employment route and set-up on their own, basing themselves from home in the process.

However I know from talking to the start-ups that I come across in my daily activities that one of the biggest shocks to their system is the concept of working from home on their own.

Assuming such people can still maintain their sanity after the first few months, newbie home-workers tend to fall into two camps, namely;

1. Those that are ‘over driven’. In other words, those people who don’t know when to stop. It’s 11pm on a Friday night and these people will die of they don’t just finish off that e-mail/proposal/presentation/report etc in time for Monday. Such people are more likely to become successful in their endeavors but generally at the expense of something else such as their marriage, state-of-mind, friendships etc.
2. Procrastinators. Such folks never get over the novelty of being at home during working hours and will find every excuse under the sun not to do any work, whether it’s watching videos on YouTube™, doing housework, popping round to the neighbours for a chat or even knocking off early for a quick pint down at the local (fine on a Friday afternoon, but hey; it’s only Monday!) Such workers will inevitably fail at what they do and will find themselves going back into an office environment within a short-space of time. That’s assuming they don’t go “over the edge” beforehand with a bad case of cabin-fever.

Where Am I?

So which camp do I fall into? I’m not saying, but let’s put it this way: it’s 10pm on a Sunday night as I write this post. Twitch!

Work from home yourself? Where do you stand?

Like this Post? Read Others Similar To It:

• Industry Day (2)
• Stir Crazy? Are You Nuts? (8)
• Let it Snow, Let it Snow, Let it Snow! (1)
• Does Your Business Image Scream ‘Small Company’? (5)
• And What Do You Do? (0)

Tags: Business Life