Is Working From Home Right For You?

In the modern busy world, everyone has to work hard and smart to emerge as a winner in the rising competition levels. Somewhere in their minds, everyone wishes to take a break from work to sit and relax at home. But you need to earn a living for which you need to keep working. And thereby, everyone envies people who work from home as they still earn decent compensation.

Lately, many people, especially women across the globe have opted for working from home as they want to utilise their time productively. Often, people have perception that working from home is a damn easy job and it can be pulled off effortlessly. But only a person who works from home actually knows what kind of commitment is truly required to work from home based office.

Ask yourself if you want to work from home? If yes, then you need to give it a deep thought so that you don’t regret your decision later. Ambitious people who want high career growth in life and have many dreams to chase, then working from home may not prove suitable for them. Of course, working from home is a boon to many people, but you must not be hasty in setting up your home office and design your work ambience, before analysing the merits and demerits of working from home. To know if working from home right for you, you need to read these compiled list of pros and cons so that you prepare your mind well before starting your work from home:

MERITS

1. You Will Enjoy Greater Flexibility

When you work in the conventional workplace, you need to adhere to proper formal dress code, sit properly for the whole day and you cannot take frequent breaks for feeling refreshed. On the other hand, working at home means that you can sit in front of your system in t-shirts and pyjamas and you can work while listening to music too. You can also take casual breaks in between and can even sit in the way you wish, as per your suitability.

2. You Don’t Have The Need To Commute

While working in the corporates, a major portion of our precious time goes wasted in travelling to the office and then coming back to home in the evening. It is in fact so stressful, when we have to wait long hours in the traffic jams while commuting during the peak hours. This dead investment of time and energy can be saved to a great extent when we work from home. We can rather utilise this saved time in some other productive task.

3. You Can Save More Money

When you are working in an office, you unknowingly indulge in some petty expenses such as the conveyance expense, purchasing some snack or juices and you may even head for an impromptu lunch party with your friends. You can save these petty expenditure by working from home. You hardly have any investment when you work from home and thereby, you can save more money.

4. You Don’t Feel Much Stressed

At office, you need to keep your focus in your work and you may even have to sometimes sacrifice your breaks for completion of urgent work. You have a manager sitting in front of you and directing you to get the work done. You find it a lot stressful when you are unable to give a short respite to your mind from the chaos of the workplace. In case of working from home, as soon as you feel stressed from work, you can leave the desk for a short walk or nap or for some stretching exercises.

5. You Will Have An Apt Work/ Life Balance

Employees today struggle in striking the right balance between work and family life as they have to give more than 8 hours to work and in the competitive world, they even have to complete pending work at home in the evening. When you work from home, you are in a better position to segregate your work and family life as you are aware how much time you need to invest in work while allotting time for your family and friends too.

6. You Can Be More Attentive Towards Work

It is true that at workplace, you may have many distractions. For example, you may get into endless conversations with colleagues and you may forget that you have taken a long break, you may be distracted due to the noises and if you have a window seat, then outside world will attract your complete attention. However, even at home you will have distractions but they are obviously of controllable nature. You can set up your home office at a place where you are sure of minimum distractions.

Recommended: Working From Home? 4 Tips for Staying Productive

DEMERITS

1. You May Feel Lonely

You actually don’t realise that a proper working environment provides you with the necessary kick to start your day productively. The feeling of competition triggers the determination to give your best to your work. When you have colleagues and subordinates around, you tend to get inspired to give positive inputs and that gives a boost to your self esteem. But when you are working at home, you may miss this kind of motivation and you may start feeling lonely.

2. You May Feel Overworked

When you work from home, you are not in a position to clearly distinguish between work and personal life. Owing to this, you may not have a proper time for work and a proper time for spending with family. You may not get the count of hours spent on work and thereby, you may end up overworking due to improper segregation of time.

3. You May Find Lessened Space At Home

You are well aware that for being productive, you need to have an organized working environment. This is the basic thing that gives you inspiration to work enthusiastically. But when you create a space in your home for work purpose, then you are actually congesting your home.

4. Maintaining Professional Relationships Will Become Difficult

When you have a proper office set up, then you are in a better position to represent yourself as an integral part of the company. You can have face to face discussions due to which the clients will have faith in you. But when you are working from home, you don’t have a proper corporate infrastructure and even you don’t have face to face conversations. Therefore, you will find it difficult to maintain professional relationships.

5. You Need To Be Disciplined

When you work in an organized office structure, you need to have a proper schedule for waking up and managing yourself to reach office on time. But when you are working at the convenience of your home, you may not have a proper time of waking up and getting ready for work. You may become lazy and may lack the discipline required.

6. You Will Have Less Learning Opportunities

At workplace, you are surrounded with many seniors, subordinates and colleagues from different arenas and working in different departments. You get to learn new insights about new job roles and you are exposed to so much knowledge that you automatically upgrade yourself on professional front. But when you work at home, you will not have such extensive learning opportunity.

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