The Pros and Cons of Work From Home Jobs

While you certainly have more freedom doing a job from home, it is easy to develop bad habits that can work against you.

The main advantage of working from home is that there isn’t a set schedule.  Instead, the focus is on completing necessary tasks.  So if you want to sleep an hour later and make up for that loss of time by working an extra hour in the evening, then nobody is going to be there to keep you from doing it.  Unfortunately, it is easy for some workers to become complacent when they don’t have supervision.  Nobody is looking over your shoulder.  As such, they’ll start skipping hours and won’t make up for the lost time by working late.  Eventually, projects and things-to-do begin to pile up.

Workers also like the fact that there isn’t any dress code at home.  If you want to take an important call in your bathrobe, then the person on the other end of the line won’t have to know anything about it.  At home, every day can be a casual work day. The bad news is that it becomes more difficult to separate our work life from our home life.  So we may actually end up working longer hours than we would have at the office.  Because of this, many people who work at home delineate a dedicated work space within their home and also continue to dress in business appropriate attire as they go about their work day.

Not having a commute is great for saving extra gas money and not having to deal with the headache of traffic jams.  Some people miss carpooling and having friends to discuss things with during breaks.  Social isolation is perhaps the greatest disadvantage of working from home.  You have nobody to go out with to lunch.  You can’t escape a hectic day by leaving early and going home because you’re already there.  If you have a family to keep you company, then these negatives might not be as big of a deal.  For single workers, however, the isolation can become unbearable.

Successfully working a job from home requires self discipline and motivation to get up and put in the necessary job day in and day out.  For those of us who aren’t naturally self starters, this approach to work may not be as good as it initially seems.  Even worse, working from home can be messy as you often have to devote an entire room in your home to the business.  Nonetheless, it also offers a level of independence that many workers yearn for and are willing to sacrifice for in order to have more freedom.