Remote work has several advantages. The most important thing is to save a significant amount of time. Some people spend 2-3 hours getting to work and then home. An average of 5 working days turns into 10-15 hours every week—the savings amount to about 20 days per year. Working at home means being your boss, approving a convenient schedule, or doing things without it. However, everything is not so simple — after leaving the office, do not think you have caught your luck by the tail because there are fewer adverse effects.
5 Challenges of switching to remote work
1. Social isolation
Remote work means you will spend a significant part of the day alone. This is a major plus for some people, but many are uncomfortable with the lack of social interactions. Of course, technology allows you to communicate with colleagues via video calls, but this does not fully replace live communication. In front of you on the screen are not real people but distant faces or icons.
It’s hard to imagine working in an office without casual conversations, colleague banter, inspiring speeches from management, coffee breaks, and socializing after the day. All this creates a sense of community, of belonging to something big. Once isolated, you will have to replace this aspect with something else or learn to live and work without it at all. The daily saturation of emotions will decrease significantly, which can result in a general feeling of dissatisfaction with life.
2. Blurring the borders
Working at home involves a flexible schedule that a person sets himself. You can choose self-discipline or act based on personal biorhythms with “floating” days. The main advantage lies in the significant time savings. You don’t need to go to the office through traffic jams; you don’t have to look fresh and cheerful. However, this is a double-edged sword. On the one hand, you are always at home, but just the same — you are always at work. There is a blurring of the boundaries between official duties and personal life.
This situation raises several problems. A person working remotely is never fully occupied or free, forever remaining in a borderline state. Visit. A F R I N I K . C O M . For the full article. Work matters do not leave your head until tomorrow immediately after leaving the office because now you live in it. It can be challenging to combine work and household responsibilities; the boundary between them is also blurred. Watering flowers, working on a project, and feeding a cat are perceived as links in the same chain. Therefore, even though a person sits at home, he may feel even more tired.
3. Violation of the sleep schedule
The flexibility of remote work guarantees disruption of sleep schedules and, therefore, many other activities. You can work late at night — this is the quietest and most peaceful time. But there is also a disadvantage: you wake up after lunch, you will come fully prepared in the evening because there is no hurry.
If you let things take their course, be prepared for periods, especially in winter, when you won’t see sunlight for several days. You go to bed in the morning, at 6-7 o’clock, when it’s still dark, and you wake up in the evening when it’s already dark. You choose the moment, make an effort, and restore the schedule. You hold on for a few days, and everything goes wrong again.
4. Self-monitoring of productivity
Working from home reduces concentration levels, which can negatively affect productivity. Everything around you seems to be deliberately trying only to distract you from work: noise from the next apartment, music from the street, or social networks and other messengers that are always open in the browser. You open the news feed for 10 minutes to rest and find an hour has passed.
About the same thing happens with the response to one message from a friend or girlfriend. Due to all the distractions, a task that can be completed in 3-4 hours is stretched out for the whole day. As a result, the salary level may decrease significantly, affecting motivation.
5. Decreased physical activity
Going to work is at least some kind of physical activity, clearly more than going from a bed to a computer desk. A sedentary lifestyle leads to many health problems. The simplest and most obvious example is weight gain. You can deal with this only by showing mandatory physical activity: purposeful walks down the street, buying a subscription to a fitness club, or regular visits to the nearest stadium. Otherwise, you will not have time to notice how you will turn into a bag full of potatoes.
