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My first experience at working from home

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Re: My first experience at working from home

#81

Post by BSousa »

puranjay wrote: post #44
imjared wrote: post #24

I've been working at home for about a year and can sympathize with the author. I've really been surprised at what an effect its had on me socially. I'm not the most outgoing person to begin with so the forced in-person interactions (both appreciated and unappreciated) that I got in my previous office settings were probably a lot more beneficial to me than I previously believed. I feel like I have the additional chall…

Get out while you still can. Seriously. I worked from home for 2.5 years and it has had a profoundly negative impact on my social life and even my personality. I'm good with people, but sitting alone all day for such a long-time has turned me into the kind of person who thinks of calling an old friend, then thinks 'eh, why bother. Let's see what's new on Reddit instead'. Then there's the problem with setting a routin…

This will really depend on you and your home life to be honest.

I've been working from home for more than a year (with some half year stints before) and I can't imagine going back to an office. I have my kid to play with and my wife to talk with if I need to. I also chat with co-workers online but if I really want to talk to people, I can always pick my laptop and go to a cafe, gym, mall even. I wake up at around the same time everyday (well, kid is my alarm clock), do the normal morning chores with the family, then start working. I can (and do) stop every so often and do some exercise or sometimes just stop and read a bit of a book if the weather is nice outside. I'm always on time for dinner since I'm the one that cooks it, and I put my kid to bed everyday. The fact I work from home could have been an excuse to not care about schedules, slack of on the personal hygiene/appearance, but I didn't and as I said, I would probably take a large payout over going to an office again.

I think, and to be fully honest, whenever I worked in an office, I would say I actually enjoyed the company of 2-3 people and the rest were a bother (to me) and I couldn't really go: "John, no you can't come for coffee because people don't like talking to you" so having my family, some friends (have a few that also work from home living nearby) and ability to talk to random strangers gives me all the socialising I need.

Re: My first experience at working from home

#82

Post by krylon »

I would really like to work from home one day per week. But all in all, I enjoy the interaction with my coworkers. I have a strong reclusive streak, and being forced to interact with other all day has a positive effect on me.

Also, I live in the city, but my workplace is in a pretty rural area, next to a field. On my way to work, and from my office, I get to see rabbits, roe deer, horses, cows, a kestrel hunting... I would not get to see any of that if I worked from home. I do feel a little guilty at times for staring out the window so much, but having grown up in the city, I totally love that awesome view.

Re: My first experience at working from home

#83

Post by krylon »

kleer001 wrote: post #72
ht_th wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I've really been surprised at what an effect its had on me socially. One of the odd things that happened is that I've become more extrovert when I do meet people. To off-set working alone at home, I volunteer two days a week at the local hackerspace to socialize. That has been a blast.

Exactly. A girlfriend way back when introduced me to the term "People Batteries." As in it takes energy to be around people. Some people get energy from being around other people and some from being alone. If you're the alone type those batteries still fill up. I think that's a much better model than people being extraverts OR(and only or) introverts. We're more complicated than that.

That is a very interesting idea, one that I can relate to.

On the one hand, I do enjoy being around other people most of the time. When I spend too much time by myself, I feel like I am loosing proportion of my own life, like what is good or bad about my life at the moment. Sharing other people's lives helps me keep perspective. Also, a good deal of the time, it's just damn interesting.

On the other hand after a certain amount of time, I also need some alone-time to unwind. And when I've had my share of social interaction, I am happy to spend more time on my own than many people I meet at work.

Re: My first experience at working from home

#84

Post by JDiculous »

puranjay wrote: post #44
imjared wrote: post #24

I've been working at home for about a year and can sympathize with the author. I've really been surprised at what an effect its had on me socially. I'm not the most outgoing person to begin with so the forced in-person interactions (both appreciated and unappreciated) that I got in my previous office settings were probably a lot more beneficial to me than I previously believed. I feel like I have the additional chall…

Get out while you still can. Seriously. I worked from home for 2.5 years and it has had a profoundly negative impact on my social life and even my personality. I'm good with people, but sitting alone all day for such a long-time has turned me into the kind of person who thinks of calling an old friend, then thinks 'eh, why bother. Let's see what's new on Reddit instead'. Then there's the problem with setting a routin…

It wouldn't have been a problem if you had a social life outside work

Re: My first experience at working from home

#85

Post by bswen »

aareet wrote: post #78
bswen wrote: post #55

I've been working from home for almost eight years now. At first, it was just me and my dogs while my wife went to work. That was definitely hard at first, to stay focused and productive. Every day Alicia would come home and I'd be desperate to get out of the house, she'd usually want to stay in and chill, though, having just had a full day interacting with people at work. I eventually learned that walking down to th…

This is cool! I've wanted something like this for a while now, especially because the usual coffee-shop routine is to pack everything up and take it all with you to the bathroom, and bring it right back and it can get tedious after a while. It's too bad you don't have any spaces in Toronto right now.

Cool! We're hearing the same thing from a lot of folks. They want a lot of choices when it comes to spaces and they want to also find people to work with. I'll get in touch when we launch in Canada!

Re: My first experience at working from home

#86

Post by anotherevan »

jeromegv wrote: post #10
lmorris84 wrote: post #7

Agree with many of these points. I've worked from home for the last 3 years and I love it, but it definitely has it's downsides. I think the worst for me is not being able to switch off at 5pm. Without the journey home to empty my mind a little, I do find myself thinking about work for the rest of the night.

I work from home & I keep my work emails in a separate software, at 5, I just quit the software. That does the job!

Cannot plus one this enough. I use to have all email accounts in the one client. Now for work (which is gmail) I use a notifier (plus often just leaving the browser page open in Chromium).

If I find the notifier starting to bug me on the non-work days, I just switch it off. I have a cron job that starts it 9am every work day if it is not already running.

Re: My first experience at working from home

#87

Post by aareet »

bswen wrote: post #85
aareet wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is cool! I've wanted something like this for a while now, especially because the usual coffee-shop routine is to pack everything up and take it all with you to the bathroom, and bring it right back and it can get tedious after a while. It's too bad you don't have any spaces in Toronto right now.

Cool! We're hearing the same thing from a lot of folks. They want a lot of choices when it comes to spaces and they want to also find people to work with. I'll get in touch when we launch in Canada!

Please do!
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