I've been working from home much of this week (except Monday which I actually stayed home sick). I love working from home. In a previous job, I did it for 3 years.
The best part about working from home is the freedom. I can work for a few hours and then go run to the grocery store or watch a movie or something, if I need to clear my head.
The other great thing is the lack of distractions. If I'm working from home, I don't need to worry about someone stopping by my cube to chat or something coming up that someone needs me for. Also, I can smoke right in place, instead of having to put on a jacket and go outside. That's a HUGE distraction at work.
While working from home this week, I started thinking about it some more. One of the huge things for me when working from home is the money I save. I started doing some numbers. If I go to work, it costs me about $6 for gas, $4 for tolls, and then usually $4-$7 for lunch. So let's say $17/day. Well, if I work from home, I can warm something up or at the most eat a $3 frozen pizza. Maybe $1 for the iced tea or soda I have while around the house. So, that's like $4/day. So, if I worked from home, I basically can save myself up to $13/day. If I worked from home 3 days a week, that's almost $40 a week I can save myself. Just 2 and it's still like $25/week. If you take $25 a week and times it by 52, that's $1300 a year. I really need to start working from home some more.
In this day and age, between e-mail, IM, cell phones, VOIP, laptops, high speed Internet access everywhere, why shouldn't anyone be able to work from home? Unless you need to physically be in a meeting or actually doing physical work, you should be able to work from home, right? I just don't understand why more people don't do it.
My biggest guess is that people don't feel they are (or just plain aren't) disciplined enough to work from home. People think they are going to spend the whole day watching TV or goofing off or something. I know I can do it, so I take advantage of it whenever I can. I usually get so much more work done when I do anyways. And now that I notice how much it actually saves me, I think I'm going to have to start doing it more.
