I work from home.
Working out of your house sounds like a great gig, and in many ways it is. I can get chores done while waiting for a file to print out, and wander in the garden while conducting business on the phone. I don’t have to start dinner at 8pm unless I want to, and I almost never have to sit in traffic, or wait in the cold for the train.
But then, last Monday I went for 5 hours without speaking.
Hunting around online I see estimates of actual productive office hours at anything from 3 to 6-1/2, taking out of the equation actual time wasting, unavoidable personal tasks, extended lunches, mandated coffee breaks, and fights with the jammed printer. Then there’s the commute.
Working from home all of your work is productive, in a sense. When you aren’t being productive, chances are you’re not sitting at your desk trying to look busy in case the boss or the office snitch walks by. Further, my productive work is more productive–I can ignore the phone, chat boxes, the co-workers and other office concentration impediments and just get shit done (GSD™, lol).
But there’s a serious downside. As I said, last week I went 5 solid hours without any human interaction. I went 4 days in a row without seeing a single human being I wasn’t related to.
Mind you, this was somewhat unusual, as I am currently in a deadline nightmare with 8 proposals for 4 clients all due at once, and all of them with various excuses for not getting information to me, including the completely unassailable, but still unhelpful, baby born 3 weeks early.
Working from home is isolating. There are weeks like this one where I feel like I’m in solitary confinement. It restores the original meaning of “stir crazy.” I keep chat windows open, and participate in twitter chats (just the professional ones, I swear). I take walks.
Here are some things to do to keep the lonely at bay:
- Work with a friend.
- If you know someone else who’s a telecommuter, arrange to work at a wifi spot with them a couple of times a week.
- Treat it like the office.
- Start and stop on a set schedule. Take a lunch break, and coffee breaks. Get dressed.