Could you work from home?

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Sometimes I think I would love a work from home job. I'd get away from the people I don't like at the office, be able to work in my pajamas, maybe watch Netflix while I work, etc. I'd save a ton of money on gas. But then other days I feel like being stuck at home all day would make me depressed. Like, home is where I go to retreat from the world after work is over. What happens when work and home become the same place? I honestly don't know anymore. Could you guys do it?

I was working in retail, but I left 3 years ago to write my novel full time so I was working from home. I ran out of money and am now looking for part time work but I am hoping to combine the two as I think that's best for me, as I live alone. If I had a partner then I would love to just write at home again, because I am very home orientated and other people exhaust me. Talking to a partner in morning and evening would be plenty of conversation for me. When I am completely alone, working from home, after about 6 months I get a bit down. Everyone would be different though.

I wouldn't mind as I don't have my driver's license yet. My hours would be more flexible if I could have a work from home job. I wouldn't be so drained from being around people.

I did for a while, but with my live in partner so we had each other to talk about it with and hold each other accountable. Trying to keep it going alone took to much willpower and it got really lonely. Work forces me to go out and interact and I hate it all the time. I literally cry on the way there sometimes because I don't want to go and face people. I do think overall it's better for me to go to work and see people. If I don't I don't ever see anyone accept the occasional cashier and I get really depressed. It's nice to be a part of something, even if it is hard for me.

I would try if I got the chance, but I'm not sure if I'd be able to concentrate properly at home. There'd be no other people to bother me, sure, but at home there'd be so many distractions (undone housework and whatever nicer things than work that I could do) that I'm not sure if I could work properly. It would also cause a lack of human contact... I'm not a social person, but even I need to talk to people from time to time. Working three days a week at the office and two at home (or the other way around) might work, though.

I work at a company that allows flexible work options. In general I get to work from home 1 or 2 days a week. If I could choose I'd probably flip that on it's head to working from the office one or two days per week. I'd probably go in on Mondays because it's a good day to get caught up and plan out the week with co-workers, and then on Wednesdays because there is a standing meeting on that day that most of us usually attend in person.

As for how well I could focus or not focus. I find that if I am busy, it's not a problem. In fact working from home generally leads to me forgetting to take a lunch if I am busy. However, if work is slow at all then I have a tough time focusing. If it were a day where I only had about 3 hours of serious deadline-approaching work, then I'd have a tougher time filling in the other 7 hours with the same amount of productivity that I would at the office. It's not that I'd just stop working all together, it's more that I seem to get much less efficient at the busy work stuff, which I am already no good at.

As for people, I think a 20-40% mix of my week having me where I have to interact with people would be perfect. This way I could plan my in-office days to be low task-oriented work and leave myself more open to interruptions and then do my deep focus work the rest of the week.

If i was working as a programmer or something that could be done remotely - yes.

From people who do work at home, i have heard that you have to arrange a specific work area, go for a walk when you "go to work" and also when you "come home" and also go out and eat at 12:00 so you feel like you are a part of the working people. Or else you could just get the impression that even if you get a paycheck, you are alone, unemployed, sitting at home writing job applications in your pyamas while watching netflix

I work from home. Not having other places to go to bothers me, but I don't have places to go because I live in a small town, not because I work from home. You would still be able to go out for entertainment, hobbies, exercise, and whatever else you like if you worked from home. You might even have more time to go out.

I had the option to work from home but I went to the office anyway because I didn't like the idea of doing work from home. (I just want home to be home.)

Then the company was acquired and the office changed locations to a place that more than doubled my commute (and doubled the expense of commuting) and the combination of that and the new office setup (open spaces!) made me dread going to the office and prefer working from home. I still kept my work area in order, made sure I was decent (teleconferences) and avoided watching television. It was only WFH for, at most, 2 days a week. I preferred it to the office by this point. I had set up a workstation to power through tasks and had a laptop stand/tray and small couch on which I could lounge when I had less demanding tasks. I liked it. If I wanted to chat with anyone or they wanted to chat with me, someone would schedule the call.

The huge problem was that the job itself got worse and worse to the point that just passing by the office area in my home during off hours gave me something akin to PTSD. That and folks kind of milk the flexibility of it like because WFH was granted it meant that I should be able to shift my hours on certain tasks.

i hope i can get this out before losing people's interest....

i worked for a company for about 12 years and had my own office there.
i was the only programmer and the company was large so i took a lot on.
our company "infohouse" had about 300 customers.
they paid through the nose in their yearly invoices for the reports we tailored for them.
the turnover was about $20 million. great times.
they knew i had aspergers so i got a lot of accommodations (since i was valuable).
the company used free supermarket scan data that i analyzed and wrote forecasters around, as well as any tailor made requirements for each client.
then the government made it illegal to obtain scandata for free. we were providing our customers with not only their own product ferformance, but that of their competitors as well.
the company had to shut down because our free resource was now hideously expensive.

when infohouse closed, a lot of their clients turned to me to continue their service on my own as their employee.

i turned most of them down because it would have been too much, but i accepted a large distribution company's invitation to look at their system.
i did and said i would reprogram most of it to speed it up and make it more versatile and more powerful and easier to use.
i stipulated that i must do this from home.
it took me 3 months, and that project was over (i charged $130,000 for the job), and then they showed me a number of ideas that they wanted me to do for them.
they wanted me to write programs and generate reports every month.
so i wrote the basic programs and generated 430 reports every month with their suppliers data.
for this i charged $10,000 per month.
so i then was determined to automate my system so i did not have to do anything much.
people at work never knew the ease which i did the job and assumed i must be working hard all month to get the reports ready.

so, every month, i got separate emails with sales figures etc all in the same format (which i designed), and then when they emailed me the last file, they rang me and said "we are ready now".
i then fired up the system (on the last day of the month) and i programmed it only for my use so i had no interest in aesthetics.
there were 4 buttons.
1. impdata
2. rebate reports.
3. reconciliation reports.
4. oddities report.

it imported all the files automatically into a database that was sent through a complex error checking mechanism before incurring a myriad of procedures, all automated, that produced the reports.

the entire job took 10 minutes.

i then sent them the reports, and went back to bed (i took my phone to bed on that day due to possible problems).

they were always correct and that was it.
so i worked about 30 minutes per month on average.

if i was at a workplace and people saw how easily i did it, i am sure they would have been ingratiated by my exorbitant fees.

i did as i pleased for all but 1/2 hour per month (usually)

good stuff.

i am retired now because i have enough money.

^This made me laugh, not at b9 but at the contrast. I'm a fiction writer, I work long hours and get paid nothing. Thank God it's better to fail as a writer than to succeed at anything else

really?
i loved the challenge of programming so i enjoyed what i did as you must also enjoy what you do.
but i think it is better to succeed because you set yourself up for a very easy life.

god i can not make sense of why you said that.

I write because I love the feeling of having created something brilliant. But even if I get published, the pays very low for almost all fiction writers. I use that saying because it's important at the stage I'm at with my work not to think that getting published will solve all my financial problems. A lot of authors think that and aren't prepared for the reality of average full time published author £11,000 a year. Also, I may never be published so I prefer to enjoy the success in my own view of having had the bottle to try over and over and over. But yes I would rather succeed, I could live very comfortably on £11k and could just write

well i have no capacity for thinking how to write a fictional story in a way that is crafted to appeal to the senses.

i have often wondered how they do it, but i don't spend long wondering because i just can not do it.

i have had some interesting skeletons for a story, but just how i would pen it is not something i can conceive of.

i had a though about a tyrannical king who slaughters a whole town but just as an 8 year old boy is about to be slaughtered, he utters a comment that makes the king think, and he spares the child in order to be executed later.

anyway blah blah blah, but he gets into the head of the king in the end, and the king is in awe of his wisdom and changes his ways.

but where do you start?
what filler material has to be imagined.
too much for me.

it seems to me that wealth will come with recognition, and in the grand scheme of things, you could write a script eventually that makes some hollywood movie makers pay attention.

no movie has ever been made about queen boudicea.
if you research her (just an example), you can put your own artistic license into it and maybe convince someone like mel gibson or russel crow to try it.

anyway i do not know.

but i also got pleasure from my work.
ceo's of major companies relied on my reports in their monthly board meetings.
like nestle, and cadbury and eveready and mars confectionery.
i felt kind of powerful as i considered my status in the world given my narrow range of talents.

good luck with your work.

b9 Yes, that last bit is absolutely spot on, my writing is brilliant (after I've gone over it a lot of times) but at everything else I struggle to be anything but rubbish.

Your story is great, except for the part where it's similar to mine, but as an FTE working in the office. I've optimized several tasks from 50+ hour tasks, to things that can be done in a matter of a few minutes... The problem is... it's always been from a full time job, while in the office, and everyone knew that I optimized it... :p

Then again, the output probably wasn't as important... and my automating things has been a big part of climbing the corporate ladder at my current job.