If you’ve managed to get a teleworking agreement and you’re finally free of the office, congratulations. There are however a few more hurdles that you are going to need to overcome and this section will help you prepare yourself for when they occur.
I’ve discovered several issues that creep up during extended teleworking that aren’t necessarily noticeable during trials. During trials, you still feel a certain level of connectedness to the office which doesn’t make the long term effects of teleworking apparent.
In this section I will cover a few of the problems I’ve faced and how I’ve managed to solve them. The acronym for the 3 main issues is R.I.P (clever aye), and for good reason if you don’t take heed.
- Relaxation It is also important to separate the areas which you work and relax to maintain a psychological separation of the two. Working and relaxing in the same area can cause you to feel stressed when you should be relaxing and vice-versa. This doesn’t apply in all cases, but remember this if it happens to you.
Also, try to make it a point to change to work clothes or at least get out of your pajamas when you get up in the morning and plan to work. This helps you to get into a working frame of mind.
The problem with feeling too relaxed when you’re trying to work is just that, you feel too relaxed. If your office is in your bedroom and you constantly find yourself lying down, then you might need to move your work station elsewhere.
- Isolation Better yet, take your work out with you and do it in a café or at the park. This helps remind you that there is still a world outside of your home and reduces the chances of you getting depressed.
Call up friends bound to 9 to 5 during lunch and head down to meet them or join a gym and go there every day. Social interaction is something you need to do, especially if you suddenly find yourself constantly talking to yourself.
Leave your house at least once a day, preferably while the sun is still out. Working alone can promote feelings of isolation, so if you don’t have a family at home or people who you can interact with, go outside for a walk or to a mall to be around people.
- Procrastination Set your weekly work benchmark and finish all your work before doing anything else. If you have the fear that once you finish your work you will be loaded with more work and won’t have any extra time during the week, then push the additional work to next week’s agenda.
Once you hit your benchmark, stop, take a breather, and continue with work the following week. There’s no point in doing more work than necessary if you’re going to be unhappy.
The only exception to this rule is if your company request something that really MUST been done and cannot be delayed, else the company suffer impending death and destruction. If you did your job of streamlining your work process and the people around you, these occasions would be rare, so relax.
That’s right, after all your hard work in the office this is the number one thing you need to watch out for once you work from home. Knowing you have the ability to finish your work quickly does not mean you should leave it until the last minute.
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Yasuo Long believes that all employees should have the right to design their lifestyle according to their needs in order to maintain their health, their relationships and their happiness. In pursuit of this, he quit the 9-to-5 and became a telecommuter to give himself the time and mental freedom to discover what it really means to live with direction and purpose.
