Pre-pandemic, if you weren’t working from home, you might have longed to stay at home instead of going to the office. After all, staying in pajamas all day, avoiding traffic and coworkers, and taking Netflix breaks on your own couch sounds ideal.
But then, we all got a chance to see what that life is like.
And, well… we love it!
I mean, parts of it.
I mean, there are a few things that are nice.
I mean, actually, let’s get real. We’re going out of our minds. We can’t take it any longer.
Here are working-from-home “perks” that are actually the worst.
Everything Happens at Home
We love our homes! They’re comfortable, cozy, and just the way we like them. So working from that comfort seemed like an ideal situation.
For a while.
Soon, we discovered that it’s hard to transition. How do we know when to stop work? How do we know when it’s okay to take a break and play with the dog? Should we start earlier in the day since we don’t have a commute?
With everything taking place at home, it’s hard to draw boundaries between work life and home life. After all, home life is now work life and work life is now home life. This is tiring, unmotivating, and demoralizing.
We’d like an office somewhere outside our house now, please.
We’re Close to Everything We Love
It sounds so ideal to work alongside your kids while they do school. After all, family togetherness is what life is all about, right?
Not when family seems to be existing for the sole purpose of distracting you. We knew everyone had needs, but we didn’t realize those needs would interrupt our workflow 17 times an hour.
Not only that, but it sure seemed like we’d get a lot more chores done if we were working from home. Switching laundry in between conference calls, sweeping the kitchen while brainstorming — this all seemed totally manageable and ideal.
Turns out, humans need a time and a place for certain activities. Work is not the time nor the place for laundry.
We know that now.
We Manage Our Own Time
It was so exciting to be the authors of our own schedules — to take hold of our responsibilities, look them in the eye, and tell them we’re the boss.
Unfortunately, as time has gone on, we see that it’s difficult to find motivation to follow our schedules when work is home and home is work.
If motivation sometimes lacked at the office, that’s become the rule now. We can’t stop looking at the dusty baseboards when we’re trying to write our reports. We keep finding ourselves staring in our fridges when we should be examining spreadsheets. Need creative solutions? We’re fresh out.
We miss the buzz and hum of an office, and we had no idea how important that factor was in our motivation and productivity.
We Don’t Hear Annoying Coworker Gossip
We sure were excited to get away from the coworkers who pop around just to flaunt their successes in our faces. And we were happy we wouldn’t have to hear long stories about subjects that didn’t interest us.
At first.
Now that we’ve been away from the office for so long, we’d give anything to be back next to Chad, regaling us with stories of the invasive dandelions in his lawn. We’d love to hear from Brenda about her seventh cruise of the year.
Frankly, we’d love to talk to just about anyone.
There’s something about being part of a community that really helps us at work. We feel like we belong, we work harder, we stay motivated and interested longer, and we enjoy our days.
Without those in-person interactions anymore, we’re just sitting around with a big case of FOMO. What’s everybody doing without us? We have no idea.
And surprisingly, we’d really love to know.
How to Make Your Own Working-From-Home Perks
So what are we to do? Wallow? Languish for yet another year?
I mean, that’s an option.
But if you want to feel more productive, more included, more focused, and less tied to your home, a coworking space checks all the boxes — sometimes even better than your original office. In a coworking space, you’re surrounded by productive people, but they aren’t your coworkers. In this way, you can separate interoffice challenges from your own work, while allowing the productive buzz to keep you motivated, on task, and successful.
Coworking Connection in Murrieta and Temecula can give you that fresh space and community you need. Give us a call at 1-800-762-1391 or stop in to learn about our affordable options.