Deciding if a home office is right for you can have a huge impact on your life and impact your income, wealth, company progress, family life, and peace of mind. There are not many decisions of this magnitude in life. The problem is that most people don’t realize the size. Most people are looking for a home office to increase flexibility, efficiency, and save time to create a level of freedom for them.
Some of the advantages include:
- Define your own working hours: This freedom allows you to align your work with family in addition to the natural rhythm of your work. For example, some people work better in the evening than first in the morning. That’s when their mental engine is running on all cylinders. A home office gives you the flexibility to work well after you’ve put the kids to bed. You can create a work schedule that works for you and with you.
- Cost Control: For the most part, the biggest costs for a small business are rented offices and accompanying amenities. Most building owners require years of commitment in the form of a long-term lease plus personal financial guarantees to pay the monthly rent. If you work from home, you avoid all of these costs.
- If you’re running a small business in today’s tech world, your customer in most areas of business won’t even know that your office is in your home. If you have a website, social media presence, email lists of clients and prospects and a phone, you have a business in today’s world. On the Internet, a small business can look like a large company that has been around for 100 years.
- Commuting time: The amount of time you spend in your car to get to and from work is enormous. According to the US Census Bureau, the average commute time in the US is more than 5 minutes round trip. This creates stress and tension even before you walk through the door. A home office that enables you to work from home even for a few hours and miss the rush hour traffic can be an important option to save time and fuel.
- Attend more family events: The home office does not guarantee that you will attend all football or table tennis matches. However, it does allow for the flexibility of being away for a few hours to attend them and then back to work.
- Commit to project deadlines: In business there are only times when you need to go above and beyond for your superiors and clients. There are times, like when you’re writing a book and your editor is breathing through your neck to send in chapters, a particular home office can make the difference between getting the book done on time. . . or not.
There are certainly positives to a home office environment, but there are also negative traps that you need to watch out for as well. You may want to wear pink glasses when it comes to a home office, but there are drawbacks, such as:
- Lack of Formal Structure and Support: If you need structure and accountability for the work environment, a home office can be a challenge for you. Some need the structure of getting up, showering, and putting on work clothes to feel like they are at work. You can also check out the office assistant, phone coverage, ease of delegation, and other services that are offered to you in a typical office environment.
- Feeling isolated:Since you are not around the office environment, you may miss a companion and interaction with others. People who mostly work from a home office can feel isolated from their co-workers more easily. Unless you are a very introverted person, you need to design a system for interacting with your team at work. Many home office workers own animals so they are not completely alone all day.
- A home office environment requires greater self-discipline: Someone who lacks self-management and self-discipline usually fails in a home office setting. They often do not ask of themselves what an attentive manager in the office would ask. Time management skill and self-discipline are vital tools of the home office worker’s toolkit.
- The challenge of separating work life from home life: There are clear lines of distinction when you have to physically prepare and move into and get to your corporate office. The line of work and home is drawn boldly. If you’re the kind of person who gets away with family time to get that last project done, balancing home and work can be very difficult.
There are other drawbacks from potential childcare changes and the resulting cost, privacy, taking professionals seriously, and even isolation.