the 'Working from Home' ethic

It’s been around two years since my company implemented the ‘working from home’ concept. At first it was a little overwhelming, but now I’ve gotten used to it. Knowing that change is the only constant in life, I decided to give this change a try. Now after 2 years, working at a place without this model would be a ‘no-no’.

 The ‘working from home’ concept is often introduced as a ‘green’ solution: the one which saves traveling to office, which in turn saves precious fuel and is environment friendly, the one which requires lesser cubicle space, etc. I wouldn’t deny this benefit, especially in the winter seasons when getting from A to B could consume some or all of the day’s energy.

But it has far more benefits.  In the beginning, it was hard to grasp that you would not be coming to office daily; after all that’s what you always did. You might even get an occasional frown from your (orthodox) project manager when you tell him that you’ll be working from home the next day since he feels ‘yeah right, like anyone works at home!’. But time serves as the best healer to all of those inhibitions.

The book ‘Seven Day Weekend’ made me realize that through this and similar concepts, the industry finally treats you as an adult human being, rather than telling you what time to come, what time to leave, when to eat, décor, behavior,..! So true!

The biggest benefit of working from home for me is shutting down those involuntary disturbances that come with the office space: be it last minute meetings, reminders, questions or just occasional pop-ups, chit-chats, hi’s & hello’s. When I’m working from home, I get up according to my biological clock (without the alarm trying to drag me out of bed to catch that 07.11 train), pour myself a cup of coffee, and I’m basically ready to go. I have control over the environment (to most of the extent that is). I choose my work times, break times. I can choose to switch off the phone or not to check e-mails in times when high concentration is needed. Also at other times when I’m just going about with normal workload, disturbances are always voluntary. Questions from others are always streamlined.

I work best when I work from home. When someone asks where I go to get work done… my answer is ‘Home Sweet Home’!