Why I choose not to work from home as a remote worker

For the first 11 years of my career, I worked in small nonprofit organizations where the notion of “working from home” was typically frowned upon. (Honestly, I think that was the case for many companies and organizations until COVID changed the working landscape in 2020.) While many companies and managers wanted to see their employees working to know work was getting done, my organizations were so intentional with human resources that if someone wasn’t doing what they were hired to do, it was…noticeable. I think we were expected to come into the office because it reinforced the notion that we were a team, and there were so many instances of “Hey, can I get your thoughts on this” and “Hey, are you free to help me with something” that it just felt more natural to see our teammates in person.

The caveat to that model is that, sometimes, you just need to get work done without distraction from other people. What some of us wouldn’t give to have 4 hours of work, uninterrupted by unannounced visits, Slack pings, email notifications, or phone calls! Really, how much wasted time is added up when you consider constant context switching on the job, not to mention a potentially lengthy commute back and forth to the office?

Facebook’s headquarters circa 2015 - an environment that fosters collaboration, but not undistracted work

Cue the post-COVID work landscape, where technological advances and flexible companies allow certain types of work to be done completely remotely. I now find myself in that very situation - a fully remote employee that shows up in-person for intermittent executive meetings. Surely in this situation, it would make the most sense to forego a commute, save money on what I would spend on an office, and simply work from home, right? That may be tempting on the surface, but I believe that working from home is likely to tilt your work-life balance in a negative direction.

A place for everything, and everything in its place

In The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up, one important point that author Marie Kondo discusses is ensuring that every possession you own has a home. When you need batteries or a specific charging cable, you know where to find them. When you need clothes for a certain occasion, there’s no hunting. When it’s time to run an errand, you wouldn’t need a tracker because your keys are in the right spot. When things rest where they belong, we save time and we feel organized. This mindset applies to where we engage in physical activities too.

Why does it matter whether your day-to-day activities are done exclusively at home versus a variety of places? As I mentioned in my previous post, Flip Howard, the founder of Lucid Private Offices, holds firm to the notion that your location has a drastic impact on your surroundings. “A margarita in a chair on a Caribbean island is drastically different from a margarita in a chair in a motel parking lot.” If I may extend this thought, we go to a gym to work out because (aside from possibly not having the equipment at home), it may be more motivating to work out when you see others doing the same. Livestreaming a worship service ends up being a poor replacement to in-person attendance because you likely watch on the same screen and in the same room where you binge Netflix, and more importantly, you aren’t able to enter into the beauty of the church and the support of a community. 

An environment where you livestream worship at home versus attending in person

Would this not extend to how we approach work as well? If our home is where we rest and spend time with our family, letting work enter that space by routine is bound to have negative results on either our home life or our work life. Physically leaving our home to go to work helps us to keep work at work, and most especially, it helps us to give leisure its time too.

What we physically do matters

Pre-game music playlists for athletes. Workday start-up routines for Full Focus Planner aficionados. Morning routines for parents who want to wake up earlier than their kids. All of these examples are conscious preparation efforts to get the most out of the task or day ahead. Nothing listed happens naturally – they all depend on our physical action to get things set in motion. That effort matters. And the routine matters. Physically separating work from home? That matters too.

There is something tangible in physically leaving your home to go to work. When you think of a romantic date, does a microwaved meal at home in sweatpants fit the bill? Or do you want to go somewhere more conducive to an emotional connection while at the same time dressing for the event? During that date we want to invest 100% into the moment, which is why we leave the home where we would be prone to phone distractions or TV comfort food. We put ourselves physically into a special, dedicated place with a unique, specific goal of strengthening a relationship.

Edgar Wright, Baby Driver, 2017

If we want a good relationship with our work, would it not make sense to dedicate a similar type of focus and attention to it? If we choose to do our work at home in loungewear, it may feel as though work is merely something that is intruding on our day as opposed to something that we enthusiastically tackle. If we want to be happier with work, doesn’t it make sense to put more effort into that relationship? And on the other hand, if we have a poor relationship with work, wouldn’t we prefer to physically leave it and drive home at the end of the day instead of having a corner of the house permanently dedicated to that negativity?

A nice looking home office, but physically where close to where one should be getting rest

Photo by Gabriel Beaudry on Unsplash

Be intentional with your time

Ultimately, when we are intentional with our time, the focus of that time benefits. Playing with our kids without a phone in our pocket. A date night with a unique restaurant or experience. A morning workout with a specific plan and goal. All of these examples yield results that are heavily dependent on how we approach the activity beforehand. While some home offices may be conducive to good work, it’s an uphill battle just by its nature. 

The nature of loving your workspace is why I was intrigued by Lucid Private Offices to begin with. Give us a call to see just how different your approach to work will be just by changing your environment. You’ll enjoy your work more, and you might just find that you enjoy your time at home more too.