Working From Home

I do a lot of work from home... In fact the last several contracts I have had I have worked out of my home office. Before that I worked for a company 400 miles away as a remote employee. All told I have about two years of experience working from my home. It is an interesting situation, and I am going to outline some of my personal findings.

Who Can Work From Home?

Working from is a very strange dynamic. If you want to work from home first and foremost, you MUST be a self motivated person. You have to be the person who does not need outside accolades to keep you moving. The completion of a job and self excellence must be your major motivators, or you will not succeed working from your house.
You have to be the kind of person who is OK with being alone for very long periods of time. In the same vein, you have to be the type of person who doesn't mind that the only people they interact with in person are their family members.

Loneliness

When you work from home, loneliness is a constant theme in your life. When you work in an office, there are always people around and things to do. If you get crazy and just want to goof off for a bit, you can always find someone to talk to for a bit, or you can find someone making coffee, or you can just do something other than work. At home, your distractions are much more dangerous, and there is nobody around. When you get up to do something besides work, there is nobody around. Nobody.
You miss all of the daily things that happen in people's lives when you work from home, however you will know that these things are happening through your normal office email. You can't see Bob's new car, but you will be invited to take a look at it at 10am today!! You won't taste Marry's famous lasagna, but you know what room your coworkers are eating it, and you will see all of the thank you and accolade emails that come afterward. You won't see Jon and Sally's new baby that they brought in to meet everyone. And you certainly won't go to HuHot for Jenifer's birthday. You won't be there.

Out of Sight Out of Mind

If you are set on moving up in your company, you will want to avoid Teleworking like the black death. Even the lazy guy in the mailroom will get more exposure and face time with the bosses than a Teleworking employee. You aren't there. Everyone forgets you even existed. When the bosses are thinking about who to give that new kick ass position to, they will not be thinking of you. Even if you turn in your work on time, and it is awesome, you will not be considered.
This goes for the cherry new projects as well. You aren't there, you won't be called in to the spur of the moment meeting where the project suddenly gets assigned. The only meetings you will be a part of are the ones where you are scheduled to attend and they actually remember to call you.

Dangerous Distractions

Home has the most dangerous distractions. That is where your TV is. That is where your bed is. That is where you keep all of the stuff for that hobby that you love so much. All of that stuff is just a couple of steps away. A distraction at work, is still at work. It doesn't really distract you for long. A distraction at home, will suck away at your time for hours.

Unrealistic Expectations

People, especially managers, will expect more out of you because you are working from home. It is important that you manage expectations so that you can deliver your work on time and with consistent quality.

How to Succeed Working From Home

It sounds stupid, but it is very difficult to do. To succeed working from home, you have to treat your home office like you do your office at work. You have to treat your work time specifically as WORK time, and you have to let your self off of work at the proper time as well. It is just as easy to work too much, when you work from home, as it is to work too little. An example I give is that I used to get up in the morning at about 6am, work until about 7am, go work out, come back home start working again, break just long enough to make a sandwich, work until my wife got home at 6pm, hang out with her for a while, then go back to work from about 8pm to 10pm or later then go to bed. On the weekends, I would get bored, and work for several hours. In the end I was working 80 hours or more a week. That is not good for you.
This is what I did to keep sane while working from home:

• Create a set work schedule, just as you would in the office. Show up on time and LEAVE on time.
• Constantly send emails and instant messages out to managers and project leads to make sure I was working on what needed to be worked on, and that I was kept in the loop with all decisions.
• Cut out all dangerous distractions while at work. Treat work time just as I would in the office. If you have kids or pets, they have to go on the same schedule as they would if you were in the office. They are very dangerous distractions.
• Time and expectation management is vitally important. Give yourself enough time to do your projects working a normal 8 hour shift. Manage expectations with management to make sure that they are not asking more of you because you are working from home.
• Make time to do something outside the home at some point during the day. In other words, take a lunch. Go talk to somebody. Go do something. Personally, I go to my gym everyday. I have a group of guys that I work out with, and that I can talk to. It gives me some personal contact and keeps me sane.
• Embrace the fact that you will not be there for the little things that happen in the office, however make an effort to go to the events that you are invited to for the major events. Birthdays of teammates, office project celebrations, retirements, new employee get to know you lunches, these kind of things help you keep connected to your office and keeps you in everybody's mind.
• Treat your work time just as you would if you were in the office. If you have to run an errand, let your boss know, just as you would if you had to leave the office.
• If you are sick, take a sick day. Don't work on the days where you wouldn't go in to the office. Not only do you let your body recover, you let your soul recover as well, and you will turn in your best work.
• Keep the same grooming habits that you had when you went in to the office.
  • Get up, and take a shower
  • If you shaved everyday going in to the office, shave everyday.
  • I know that women may have an elaborate makeup scheme that they would do for work, you don't have to go that far BUT you should do the minimum makeup. If you have to go somewhere during the day it will cut down on your "get ready" time, AND you still want to keep a routine that prepares you for your work day.
• Get dressed for work. Do NOT start working in the clothes you wore to bed. Get dressed. It can be more casual than what you would wear in to the office, but get dressed. You want to create some separation between your home life and your work life and getting dressed is a BIG part of it.

Working from home can be very rewarding, but there are many pitfalls. Know that if you fail in your teleworking arrangement, it won't be just you who suffers. One bad apple will spoil teleworking for everyone. Supervisors and management HATE teleworking. It is understandable, as they are controlling type of people and teleworkers are very difficult to control. I have seen entire teleworking programs get scrapped because of a single person who took advantage of the freedom. Do the right thing by everybody and recognize that if you can't resist the dangerous distractions, STOP teleworking.

Allowing remote employees is also a big plus for companies as well. The biggest advantage is that when you are hiring for a position, you no longer have to worry about talent in your specific geographical area, rather the entire world is available for your hiring. Of course, there are time zone considerations to think about. If you are on the east coast and your employee is on the west coast, contact and meeting times have to be specifically mapped out.