The information in this article is current as of February 7, 2002.

My previous article on telecommuting focused on setting up and managing telecommuters and virtual teams. It was written from the perspective of managers, not the telecommuters themselves.

This month, I’d like to focus on the experience of people who have made the transition from work offices to home offices. My comments are based on several years of working from a home office myself, seeing many colleagues make the transition to home offices, and on the literature on telecommuting (cited in the previous article).

The benefits of virtual work are wonderful – reduced travel time, more flexibility, and less exposure to office politics. However, it’s not easy to move from a set of work skills that we’ve spent most of our lives developing (since kindergarten we’ve been commuting to a separate building at regular times of the day, working in groups and being supervised by a boss or teacher.) You have to develop a whole new set of skills and rules of business etiquette to be successful in this new situation.

Expect the following experiences. If you’re lucky, you won’t go through all of them, but if you do, you can be more prepared.

You set up your home office and nothing works.

The computer has some intermittent glitch that technical support can’t figure out, the phone company can’t seem to find your house to install a second line, your email is disappearing and your printer is malfunctioning. The people in your office, or your clients, are getting impatient because they don’t understand why it’s taking you so long to get things working. You don’t understand it yourself.

Suggestions: Count on this happening! You will have technical problems for the first few months. If at all possible, set up your home office several months before you plan to make the full transition, and use it regularly (at nights or if possible one or two days a week.) This will give you time to fix the inevitable problems before you’re relying on your equipment full-time. If you’re serious about working at home, and you work with information, you need separate lines for voice and internet access. I recommend Sympatico’s ADSL service for the Toronto area. It’s high speed, always on, doesn’t require a second phone line, and in my experience is way more reliable than cable. (Warning ì their technical support is terrible, but so is everyone’s.) If you can’t get broadband access, get a second phone line. If you must sign up for cable, ensure you can dial up to internet access when the cable service goes down. Incidentally, I’ve heard that in other regions, cable may be more reliable than ADSL. Ask around to find out other peoples’ experiences. And use an email address that is independent of your internet access provider (i.e., don’t use yourname@rogers.com or yourname@sympatico.ca). If and when you switch internet providers, you don’t want to change all of your business cards. Get a permanent email address, preferably using a professional domain name, not hotmail. One good possibility is to buy your own domain name (try the new .name addresses).

You can’t concentrate on work.

It’s hard to wake up in the morning and start to work without the structure of an office. It’s especially difficult if you are working on something you dislike. You have to wake up, sit at your desk and force yourself to begin using sheer willpower. It’s easy to get distracted by errands you have to do, like washing dishes or cleaning out the closets. You have to develop a discipline to replace the stimulation you get from being in a workplace surrounded by other people working. Actually, you may be almost as distracted at a formal office but it’s easier to delude yourself that you’re really working if you’re ‘at work’.

Suggestions: Create a routine around “work hours” and stick to it as much as possible. Build in frequent contacts with other people, clients or colleagues, including phone calls and meetings. Accept that there is a natural flow around concentration and switch activities when you’re blocked as long as you can keep your deadlines. In other words, if you’re having real problems concentrating on a specific project, this may be a good time to do your taxes (using the horror of one project to provide the energy for doing only something slightly less horrifying) or going out with a friend. If this is a constant problem, you may need to build in more formal structures. This can be done by setting up many short term deadlines or taking on projects with at least one other person (this seems to reduce blocks for some people).

You can’t take time off.

This problem is the reverse of the one above. Most people suffer from both, alternately. Work starts to take over your family and leisure time, and you can never get away from it. (I’m writing this at 10pm, for example.)

Suggestions: Very similar to the previous suggestions. Build structure into your life to ensure you’re getting family time, leisure time, exercise, etc. Learn to estimate the time you’re spending on projects so that they don’t take over your life. And take advantage of the flexibility of home working to grab mini-holidays when you can.

You get depressed and demoralized.

All work involves occasional bouts of the blues. When you’re alone in a home office, it’s harder to get social support from co-workers. When you’re feeling down, you’re not inclined to call people to ask them to go out to coffee with you so you can share your miseries. (Lily Tomlin says that humans created language out of their deep-seated need to complain.) If you’re trying to set up a business, you may think you have to present a cheerful confident face to everyone. It can be rough. Remember, every day you have to wake up and start work with nothing but your own discipline to motivate you.

Suggestions: It depends whether you’re experiencing a temporary fit of the blues, or going into a serious depression. Occasional blues are a part of life, and you can plan for them. Sleep deprivation and overwork will make you feel overwhelmed and discouraged. You need physical energy to be able to create and maintain the mental energy you need for working at a home office. If you’re prepared for being down in the dumps once in a while, you can build this natural flow into your work life. For example, after the end of a major project, I’m usually ‘flat’ for a couple of days. I catch up on my reading and return my phone calls, and that’s about it. It’s not exactly a holiday, because I’m not in a mood to enjoy anything, but there’s something comforting about a brief, comfortable convalescence without a guilt trip.

The signs of a serious depression or illness are ongoing lack of energy, problems concentrating, sleep disruption, weight loss and so on. If this is happening to you, see a doctor. Working in a home office will not cause major depression but it might prevent people in your life from seeing that you’re in trouble.

You get lonely.

See many of the suggestions above. You absolutely need to work in social time. Working in a home office can be isolating, but it doesn’t need to be. Instead of spending time commuting, block time for meeting people in coffee shops. This is a vital part of your job if you are a consultant: it keeps you connected to your network so that you can find out about potential projects. But just as important, you need to recognize that much of our social life happens at work, and you have to replace it when you aren’t getting it ‘automatically’.

Feeling of freedom and personal control.

If you’re able to achieve the transition to a home office, particularly if you’re self-employed, the whole concept of work changes. The idea of having a boss is weird. You control your own schedule. The thought of asking permission to see your child in a school play becomes as alien as asking your supervisor if you can go to the bathroom. Your overwork is related to your own personal choices and miscalculations, not demands by someone who ‘owns’ your time. If you’re lucky and you’ve built a network of clients and/or part time jobs, you’re not dependent on any one job. It’s a different form of job security.

There are definitely disadvantages to home-based working. Many people prefer being with others, and feel too isolated in a home office. We’ve found that virtual work is not a good place to mentor young workers; they don’t get the benefit of watching more senior people, and picking up the culture of a workplace. It requires a different set of work skills than an office environment, and many people are not going to be willing or able to make the transition. I love it, and most of my colleagues at RealWorld Systems love it. But we’ve built our whole organization around people who want to work this way, and it doesn’t fit everyone.

Gillian Kerr, Ph.D., C.Psych. – President, RealWorld Systems

gkerr at realworldsystems.net

Read my weblog at http://blog.realworldsystems.net