Do I work from home or sleep at the office?
Do I work from home or sleep at the office?

Do I Work From Home or Sleep at The Office?

When you work from home you find yourself working from the laundry room, the kids' room, the park, garage, bathroom, and even even your car. The convenience to work anytime anywhere also makes it really difficult to get the work-life balance right.

When Every Place and Space Becomes Workspace

The location of your work from home desk for the day, is sometimes a matter of convenience or self-preservation.

Sometimes you are looking for the place that gives you energy and focus, and other times you're forced to make do with what options you have.

My wife and I got so used to trying to find a quiet place for phone calls and video conferencing meetings that you'd regularly find us sitting in the car in the garage. Sometimes her or I would walk throughout the entire house looking for the other person, and then without finding them, you'd finally resort to checking the garage. You would find the other person sitting in the car with no other lights on other than the glow of a screen from a phone or computer.

☝🏽 back to top.

My favorite place to work is at home with my family, but I can't work in an atmosphere with six little kids all the time. My wife will often take the kids to Grandma's or a cousin's house or run errands to give me a quiet place to work for a while. Today was one of those days, they went to Grandma's house and made salsa and frozen corn for most of the day.

At this very moment, I am literally at a trampoline park with my kids. They received a buy-one-get-one coupon that expired at the end of the month. So, apparently my home office today includes the trampoline park. Here we are.

While I do miss having my family near by, I am a lot more productive with fewer distractions and some quiet time to focus.

So, if you're like us, the definition and location and atmosphere of a home office is quite fluid. 

Perhaps we can come up with an acronym that communicates the idea that when you work from one place can become everything.

Instead of Work From Home (#wfh), we should start calling this Work From Everywhere (#wfe).

☝🏽 back to top.

My Work-Life Balance is More Like a Pendulum

The challenge of finding a healthy work-life balance is real hard.

I do not profess nor pretend to be an expert at work-life balance. While a good metaphor for work-life balance is a teeter totter, the metaphor for my work-life balance looks a lot more like a pendulum. 

Discussing work-life balance deserves a larger discussion more than I can cover here. However, the convenience of working from everywhere (#wfe) comes with a catch. Just because you can work from everywhere at anytime doesn't mean you should.

There are reasons that games have rules. The game of life has boundaries too. Setting some boundaries will help you find balance for your life.

The easiest way for me to evaluate my work-life balance is to measure my energy level. If I look forward to my tasks at work, if my tasks are clear and I have a vision for the things I do, then I am in a good place. If I am unable to achieve that level of energy for my work, then either I need to take care of other things or I am just flat out tired.

If I'm too tired to work, then I need to take a rest, get other areas of my life sorted out, or do something that gives me energy so I can return to my work later.

Be Self-Aware

If you find yourself losing control of where you work and your emotions running you ragged, then consider whether you're in a good place, physically and emotionally.

☝🏽 back to top.