“I hate the office…”, she said as she sat down next to me on the bed.
It had been another bad day at the office and she was looking for an outlet to vent her frustration.
“Sometimes I wish I only needed to work 3 days a week”, she said as she flopped down onto the mattress.
“Usually that’s all the time I need to finish my work anyway… It’s so stupid the way they make me kill time by doing tasks completely unrelated to my job”
A short pause later, she continues…
“I’m a professional accountant and they make me sit down at reception to take phone calls and type emails whenever they can’t find anything related to my job for me to do”
“I mean… I don’t mind helping, but this has been going on nearly everyday since our receptionist quit half a year ago and they haven’t been willing to hire anyone full-time to replace her…”
“When I ask them why I can’t just take the day off if I have nothing accounting related left to do this week, they tell me it’s because they want to ‘maximize’ my in office productivity and that I’m helping them keep company costs down by ‘varying my workload’…Just hire a replacement already!!”
“When I ask them if there is training or a seminar I can attend to further my learning instead of wasting my time in the office, they tell me they’ll look into it…. and that was 6 months ago”
“Seriously, what is the point of being effective and working quickly if at the end of the day they make me do reception work…”
“I should spend more time on YouTube and Facebook…”
By now she had already buried her face in a pillow and I could hear the sound of muffled screams.
Turning to face the body under the pillow I ask, “Have you tried asking them if you can telecommute? At least that way you’d be able to fill your free time with more meaningful tasks”
The screams stopped and a moment later the pillow that was covering her face is tossed to the side of the bed.
“No… there really isn’t a point. “, she responded
“Why not?”, I ask reflexively already knowing the answer
Sighing, she looks at me and says,”I’m pretty sure they wouldn’t let me and my job just isn’t compatible for telecommuting so I see no reason to ask”
“My job is not telecommuting compatible, therefore there is no reason to ask to telecommute.”
This simple yet faulty reasoning is probably the single most deadly limiting belief that prevents most people from even considering to telecommute in their jobs.
It would be understandable in some cases if people said that they would be unable to telecommute Full-Time, but to be unable to telecommute Full Stop is simply the result of uninspired thinking.
It Is Always Possible to Telecommute Part-Time
If you took a good look at your job and the tasks you do, do you think it would be possible to batch most of your in office work tasks to 1 or 2 days a week?
Do you do most of your work on your computer and only need to get up to attend meetings or other in office only activities?
Do you see a way you can eliminate most of your in office tasks?
Can you think of virtual solutions that you can use to replace in office tasks (ex. video conferencing vs attending meetings, downloading word documents vs referring to print outs)?
Are you using the excuse that your job is not telecommuting compatible because you are afraid your request to telecommute will be rejected anyway?
Making your job telecommuting compatible is simply a process of determining what needs to be done in the office and attempting to either eliminate those in office activities or batch them so you aren’t required to do them everyday.
Take Action
The next time you’re at work, look at the things you are currently doing and ask yourself, “Is there a way I can come up with a virtual solution for this task”.
For the tasks that require a definite office presence, ask yourself, “Is there a way I can batch these tasks so I only need to do them once a week”
Deciding that your job is not telecommuting compatible is not the same as deciding that your company will not let you telecommute.
Work on making your job compatible for telecommuting first before working on the problem of convincing your company to let you telecommute.
This not only reduces the reasons they can give to reject your request in future, but it also demonstrates pro activeness on your part to achieve a solution that is acceptable to both you and your company.
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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.
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