You know what they say; the grass is always greener on the other side. When you’re working from the office, you wish to work remotely; at your own pace and suitability, and when you’re working from home, you feel like you’re missing out on something important; you reminisce the jokes with co-workers and the coffee that tastes out of this world.
Human beings are just not happy with whatever situation they are in, in life, are they? They always find happiness on the other side –at least the cynical minds do.
But at the end of the day, it’s essential that you work in an environment that you thrive in – some people work best when they’re working remotely meanwhile others are more productive in the office. What might boost productivity in one person’s life might easily induce distractions in someone else.
The last year has given a serious reality to check to us – we’ve come to understand what works for us and what doesn’t. We’ve acquired some valuable life skills along the way that will help us in our career in the long term.
Due to the pandemic, most offices started working remotely – which worked in favour of some. We need to emphasise this because working from home is not ideal for everyone. Sure, we got to spend a lot of time with family and work flexibly. But there is more to remote working than just those advantages – and we’re going to go through them in this blog today.
First of all, to work from home, you need willpower. Imagine this scenario; you are trying your best to put together a project. You’ve gathered resources and crafted a plan that is literally jammed by minutes. But as soon as everything is in order, you get a notification from Netflix that your favourite series has uploaded a bunch of new episodes.
Now in a hypothetical situation, this scenario ends productively. But in reality, you’ll have to find inner strength and motivation to finish the work before binging episodes of your favourite show.
In addition to this, you have to stay organised and do things as per the schedule. And hey, it’s incredibly hard to stick to a routine. You can imagine all the wonderful scenarios in your head and think about the bountiful possibilities – but none of them works when you’re at home. You have to put in work to make things go as smoothly as they usually do in the office. Managing work and personal life is hard, especially when they’re so intertwined.
Another point that no one seems to factor in is this: You end up missing so many meetings! Sometimes technology is just not working in your favour. And sometimes, the universe conspires against you and ends all the doors for you. Your phone loses battery; it goes on a “Do Not Disturb” mode by accident, you miss the alarm, your Wi-Fi becomes a pain to use – there are so many ways!
One minute you could be waiting for the meeting to start and the next minute you could easily just miss it by memory default because human beings are prone to making errors.
Power naps are honestly the best. But despite the numerous advantages, you can’t help but consider the possibilities. Sometimes, the 45-minute nap could last two hours and make you miss that important meeting with the line manager. Maybe it’s better to skip that Thai soup for lunch, don’t you think?
Now we’re about to make an extremely critical point. Working from home is exhausting because a lot of managers take the liberty of adding more work to your already burdened schedule. They just assume that working from home is easy and so they can manage to add in a few more hours to work. That’s absolutely vicious because working from home doesn’t make you a corporate junkie. People have lives and that concept needs to be acknowledged.
Sadly, in the last few months, companies have failed to view this as a disadvantage. You are not a slave but companies treat you as such. You are not working from the office, so of course, you have to add in a few more hours to your day and benefit the company without expecting any compensation in return.
Another fact that should be counted in is that those offices have this strange energy. There’s an environment or energy in the air that makes you want to work. You don’t have that same energy at home. At home, you have other responsibilities that get in the way. You’re surrounded with either chaos or boredom – there is no midway. You miss the stories of your co-worker’s cats and you miss the gossip sessions that you have with your peers. You miss the lunch hours and the long time you take to decide what you want to order.
When you work from home, there are a thousand things that can go wrong and most of them are caused by your poor Wi-Fi connection. When you’re in the office, you can easily contact the IT person to help you solve the Wi-Fi problems. What do you do at home? Look, these problems are often looked upon as excuses by managers and that is the worst because you’re already struggling to finish your work before deadlines and now you also have to deal with the judgment.
Oh, and the last problem that is often faced by people who work from him is this: waiting. Sometimes, you have to wait for hours to get the work. You could’ve woken up on time, feeling motivated to finish everything on time, but since your management delegate work later than it should be, you feel drained and disinterested by that time.
It doesn’t matter what profession you have and where in the world you work in – you could be providing dissertation writing help to students online – but you will face these issues no matter what. Let’s call them universal problems, shall we?
