The last month has been chock full of life transitions for me. I moved. And it’s been quite the challenge to combine two households. I also successfully ended my long distance relationship. By reducing the distance! And, finally, I also began working remotely from home for my current employer.
Overall, working remotely has been great so far! But I definitely have some thoughts and initial impressions that I’d like to share. I’m sure my feelings will change and adapt as I move deeper into the belly of this thing we call remote work. But for now, here are my thoughts.
20 Initial Impressions of Working Remotely from Home
1. Having a pet is awesome. I get someone to interact with and she doesn’t need to be alone in her crate for long stretches during the day. As you can see above, my new office mate has been hard at work.
2. I’m still interacting with people. We’re just not in the same place.
3. It’s difficult to stay focused when Richard comes home before I’m done working.
4. Not having to commute is great! But I’m finding that I’m putting those extra hours to use by working longer.
5. Setting up an office is the most important thing I’ve done. Working remotely from home simply wouldn’t work for me if I didn’t have a dedicated office space.
6. Getting dressed for the day is important for establishing a “work state of mind.” There are no yoga pants in this girl’s working from home rotation. At least not yet.
7. T-Mobile’s unlimited minutes cell plan is clutch. I can be on for phone for several hours per day. This wouldn’t be feasible without unlimited minutes.
8. The transition has been pretty seamless. I was kind of surprised.
9. Keeping in touch with coworkers who I don’t regularly work on projects with takes effort.
10. I have to put a lot of effort into actually getting out of the house. Whether it’s working out or going to the grocery store or some other errand, it takes conscious effort on my part.
11. Having my own car is really not necessary. I wasn’t sure if this would be the case, but so far so good!
12. As a part introvert/part extrovert, working from home is working for me. The key part is that I don’t live alone. It wouldn’t work for me if I were still in an apartment by myself.
13. Email and instant messaging and key for staying in the loop. I already knew this, but think it’s even more important now.
14. I haven’t been listening to music as much as I thought I would. Maybe I’ll make more of an effort now that I’m thinking about it.
15. I still haven’t found a way to meet new people. But that’s something I plan to focus on in the coming months.
16. Going out into the world is a special treat. There’s no reason to get all fancy or put on makeup when I’m working at home, so it’s a bit of a treat to get ready to go somewhere (even though it does take concentrated effort to actually get out of the house).
17. I still haven’t figured out how to fit working out into my schedule. I thought this would be easy!
18. Really, I haven’t figured out how to fit anything but work and unpacking, organizing and cleaning into my schedule. I think this is more about the fact that there’s a lot to do as a result of moving than remote working in and of itself.
19. Remote work is not bad! Actually, I kind of like it so far. We’ll see if that holds up with time, but I’m thinking it will.
So there you have it! My initial impressions of working remotely from home. As I said above, this are apt to change as I move deeper and deeper into my remote work experience. It will be interesting to see how things shift with time.
Do you work remotely? What were your initial impressions? How did those initial impressions end up panning out?
