It’s safe to say that most people hate waking up in the morning and going to work. Even if you love your job, it’s rough some days–especially if you have kids that you never get to spend time with because you are at work.
But, working from home can be just as much of a hassle. With that much freedom, you have to be able to control yourself.
It’s like students that go to cyber school. They get to graduate early, sleep in, and goof all day, but they forget about their actual work that needs to be done. Then, they don’t learn anything, and they are going to the real world, or college without the necessary skills.
There are both pros and cons that come with working remotely, and if you are interested in pursuing a career of the sort, then you should probably understand them.
Pros
Location
Working remotely comes with a well-known stereotype, that person in either Starbucks or Panera Bread, sitting on their laptop by themselves working.
Now you may heckle this person at the moment, but the fact that you can wander off wherever then sit down and begin to make money is a great convenience for a lot of people.
This also shows you that there is human contact involved in working remotely. This goes against the common misconception that working remotely means sitting alone on your computer all day.
But working remotely also allows you to live wherever you want without being tied to your job. Remote workers could live in a house in Vancouver but work for a company in San Francisco.
Saving money, and the environment.
The average American worker spends $10 on gas daily. That’s an annual fee of $2,600 just in commute. For most people, that’s a fairly significant slice of their paycheck gone only in their method of transportation.
This is not to mention the amount of air pollution that much travel can cause. Scientists say that we only have 11 years to undo the damage we have done to the earth before it’s too late. Maybe if more people started working remotely, it could help solve the problem.
Cons
You can’t make friends.
Many friends are made through office relationships. Just look at Jim and Pam. For people working remotely, it would be hard to develop those relationships.
Some of the best memories are made at happy hour after a long day of work, and now that you are working remotely, you can’t make it there.
You have to have self-control.
Because you are at home, you have to make sure you wake up, get on the computer, and work. It can be tempting some days to sleep in and forget about it, but you have to push through.
For the people who are heavy procrastinators and like to push things to the side, this may not be easy for you. FInd a way to get yourself up and ready to work.
Conclusion
As you can see, both the pros and cons need to be considered while choosing to work remotely or not. If your situation calls for you to work remotely, then that is what you should do.
But, if you are better suited to work a 9-5 job, then that is the route you should go on. Working from home isn’t ‘everyone’s cup of tea–especially if you need to be held accountable for your time, and supervised.
You ‘don’t want to end up like the kid that was too lazy to come to school and failed out of cyber school.
