Working from home is awesome. You can work without constant supervision, and you don’t need to worry about that pesky commute. However, you should probably find something to commute to anyway.
Photo by Kevin Utting.
As business blog Entrepreneur points out, there are some hidden benefits to a commute that are lost on people who work from home. When you don’t commute, you can lose some much needed physical movement, you interact with fewer people, and even some daily rituals can fall by the wayside. If you’re missing out on those basic needs, find a place to commute to every day, even if you don’t work there.
Even something as simple as getting dressed to go out can lift the spirits, along with the good feeling you get from grooming and preening yourself. Make it a point to get in the shower every morning and dress for work, even if you don’t leave your home. It will make a huge difference in how professional you feel, and act, in your office, and you’ll be ready to dash out the door at a moment’s notice when a friend or new client wants to meet you for lunch.
Finding a commute doesn’t mean you need to work away from home, of course. You can take a daily trip to a coffee shop, petrol station, or somewhere else you might frequent regularly on a real commute. Maybe when you take a break, you can go for a walk or a drive to a nearby park. If you can find a space to work outside the home for a bit, that’s great, but even if you can’t (or don’t want to), just getting outside of your house as a daily routine can help improve your life.
5 Benefits of Getting Outside the Home Office Every Day [Entrepreneur]
Comments
2 responses to “If You Work From Home, Create A Daily Commute Anyway”
So I know different things work for everyone or whatever, but for me when I’ve worked from home NOT commuting has been one of the biggest benefits. You recover that time (hours a day for some people) as well as eliminating the stress of having to navigate public transport with the masses.
The human contact factor is valid, I’ve noticed without fail that people who work from home have severely impaired social skills.
“people who work from home have severely impaired social skills.”
Maybe they chose to work from home because they realised it fitted easier with their impaired social skills. Perhaps working from home is something preferred by introverts, rather than constantly dealing face-to-face with the masses.
A friend of mine who moved to working from home found that he was kind-of doing home stuff during work hours and kind-of doing work stuff at all hours, ending up doing neither well.
He finally bought a shipping container and outfitted it as his office in his back yard. Then he’d go out the back door and “commute” to his office. At lunchtime and the end of the day, he’d “commute” home and put work behind him. He said it was the best investment he ever made.