I work from home full-time. For editors and writers, it's not uncommon – it seems to have become more common over the last few years, possibly because I am more conscious of this as a way that people can work, but perhaps because the way people work is evolving. Skype, email, web conferencing services, smart phones, tablets and alike all make working more flexible than it's ever been – you don't need to be in the office to be working.
Whenever I meet new people or people I haven't seen for awhile, and I explain that I work from home, people are either interested in how it works, or assume that this means I do barely any work. Most often, people describe me as being 'really lucky'.
From a certain point of view, working from home is great. It can be a very flexible way of working; you can shout at your computer when you're frustrated without it coming up in the 'things you need to work on' section during your appraisal, you can listen to whatever music, podcasts or audiobooks you like without having to consider if your taste is socially acceptable to everyone in the office. (Sometimes when I'm stressed, I put on a Britney playlist and sing along. Loudly. I have no shame or regrets about this, but it's not great office etiquette. Same for my habit of talking to myself; I did this when I was working in an office too, but now it's probably a bit out of control. Probably because I'm the only person I can talk to now, but it's just as likely that it's because I like the sound of my own voice.) If you've had a glass of wine too many on a school night and are feeling a bit delicate, you can make the office quiet and dark, wear your PJs, bring your duvet to your desk . . . and no one knows. (Obviously, I've never been in this position, I just imagine this could be a benefit . . . )
But for all the amusing benefits, I think there are many more disadvantages to working from home.
I like my job; sometimes to the point that being an editor seems to define a large portion of my self (that's a thought for another time), and I can either do my current job working from home or I move to Newton Abbot . . . the English Riviera is just not for me. The idea of the Torquay palm trees really grinds my gears. There seems to be such an effort to display the 'microclimate' there that the council wrap the palm trees in fleecing so they can survive the winter – it's just not natural. Anyway, I am procrastinating, but it means that I have gracefully arrived at a big problem I have with working from home – procrastination.
I don't mean procrastination in the way you might be assuming because I work from home (see meme above). I am a highly-motivated and focussed person, some might say to a fault, and I've been told by many people close to me that I'm a workaholic (not least by equally workaholic Nick without a sense of irony). So I don't mean that I procrastinate from work by watching Game of Thrones theory videos on YouTube, but rather because I am essentially constantly at physically in the place I work, I often use work to procrastinate from doing anything else.
Some scenario examples:
"OK, I'll just finish this one last thing before I go and make a cup of tea. Oh, and this other thing quickly . . . [hours pass] why do I suddenly have a raging caffeine headache?"
First thing in the morning, I'll sit at my desk in my dressing gown to have a quick read through my emails and then suddenly it's half-past five and I'm still in my dressing gown.
I can't remember the last time I had a lunch break. I don't even walk the few hundred yards to Kilburn High Road to a cafe, or a shop to get lunch. I'll make whatever I can from the food we have in (if we don't have any food, often I won't eat). I'll eat it at my desk as I answer emails . . . my computer is just there, I can almost feel the emails piling in my inbox, cluttering up my clean email filing system.
Everyone knows I am always near my computer, I think, they'll expect an answer. I can just answer that one quickly, and another one, and I also need to do this urgently as well . . .
I'm not sure where this next particular attitude comes from, but I'm very hyper-conscious about the fact that I'm being paid to do a job, and I consciously strive to be the kind of employee from which the company feels they're getting 'value for money' . . . or that's what I hope they'll think. I have twisted this over the years to mean that I have lost the value of my own time as I've strived to be better and more efficient at my job. So I will answer an email instead of taking 10 minutes to unwind and have a cup of tea; I'll take a call in the evening rather than going out for a stroll; I'll take on more work and pack more into my day or week than I should be doing not only because I want to be seen as a hard worker, but also because I get excited about the projects we're doing, and I want to do them all myself. (This feeds into my need to control and do things myself too.)
In adopting all these work practices, I do myself harm, mentally and physically, and it has taken me awhile to connect that this also means that I'm probably not working properly or efficiently either. Perhaps the worst thing about all of this, is that I do this to myself – I have a personal choice in how I approach my work, more free than most people who have the office environment around them. Yet, this is how I choose to work.
We are about to embark on a big life change, from a 20s lifestyle living in central London with no responsibilities, to a more adult 30s lifestyle, moving to the commuter-belt life with responsibilities (mortgage!) – we're growing up! But it's got me thinking about the life I want to lead, especially with regards to work-life balance, and I've had to address some things about my attitude to work. Partly, my work ethic stems from my successful parents – Lowes work hard, "15% harder than everyone else" – and I see a similar work ethic in both my siblings as well. I also think that my work ethic is an environmental factor as well – I left university after my Masters degree into a job market that was deep in a recession. There were hardly any graduate jobs, and if one did crop up, they had hundreds of applicants. So when I did eventually get a start in my chosen career, I felt so grateful for the opportunity that I gladly worked myself into the ground because I was desperate to impress. The sense that I'd been chosen over others equally as qualified, eager and capable as me was an ever-present sword of Damocles. It was as if those same others were just waiting ice-javelin in hand, ready to shoot down one of my opportunity dragons, so they could blast through the wall and get my job for themselves . . .
So that lays bare some of my thoughts, feelings and struggles I've had over the last three years while working from home. I am concerned that I could very easily fall back into prioritising work over everything else in my life, and I worry that if I don't consciously take steps to avoid this, I will. I want to make sure I am putting things in place to avoid this. So, part of my idea (or 'therapy') is that I'll share the steps that I'm going to implement on this blog, so please bear with me. I hope this act of sharing 'publicly' (so to speak) will help me think things through and make sure I'm putting these things into place.
