Work From Home: A Dream or A Nightmare?

Work from home has been a journey full of comfort for most of us. It brought us the luxury of working in pajamas, working while taking vacations, and let's be honest the best perk was that supposed short nap break. It seems like a norm nowadays, but make no mistake it was a dream beyond imagination. The benefits are real and numerous for working from home. We got time that employees were seemingly asking for years, some people spent the time learning new skills, some got new hobbies, some traveled, some started working out, while some of us were doing this.

               

So, Just like everything Work From Home had its positives and negatives. Let's have a look.

Pros of Work From Home:

There are a lot of pros of Work From Home and they differ for all of us. Some of us are just happy to spend time with our family, some are just thankful for the time they can use to build new skills, and others look at the money they are able to save. Let's point out the most obvious ones among a long list of the pros.

Pocket Friendly:

The most significant advantage of Work From Home is for our pockets. All the money is being saved that was readily spent on travel, rent, food, and clothes. Now all the money was ready to be invested which was otherwise being spent. This is what really happened as the Investment apps suddenly became dominant and more and more people started investing. (P.S. We hate wars)

We owned our time: 

Even though work from home model might not have made all of us the most productive versions of ourselves. One thing was sure, all of us were the owners of our own time. We played video games, studied, did workouts, learned music, read books, or just chose to spend our time with our friends. It's not about how we spent the time, but how we didn't spend our time. We didn't spend our 1 hour traveling every day, nor looking for food on Zomato for a half-hour, we were also able to refrain from many other day-to-day counter-productive activities as well.

Emotional wellbeing:

I have seen many of my colleagues hoping to get their leaves approved for Holi in 2020 just because they were not able to celebrate Holi with their families for the past 2 or more. This was not a specific scenario for my colleagues, it has been more of a norm to miss the holidays in corporate culture for many reasons. Sometimes a priority work stops us, and sometimes the organization can't give leaves to all, and there were times when we just couldn't get the tickets, and many other reasons. 

Though missing holidays can be a source of sorrow, it's not the only thing that affects our wellbeing. It is those little family rituals that we miss the most, those unplanned family moments or, when our loved ones were ill and we are too far to do anything, and many more missed out on everyday things that hurt us the most. 

But, when work from home started we could celebrate all the festivals along with all other crucial events. We could live with our loved ones while ensuring timely deliverables at work. 

Healthy life: 

Once Work From Home started, we did not have to order food from a restaurant every day now, we could eat healthily homemade food regularly. Living with family provided a great deal of help in our mental health. With all the extra time saved from traveling and other activities, we could now focus on working out to improve our health. 

Cons of Work from Home: 

Well, it's not all good. There are some very serious problems with the Work From Home model as well which affects our learning, social life, connection, health, interpersonal skills, and much more. Let's point out the most obvious once.

No more new people: 

People shape each other and the world around them. Without meeting new people who could help us improve and whom we could help to improve as well, The world around us is not going to improve either. 

The thing is ever since work from home started we lost a connection to our colleagues. Before we used to sit together with our team and use to know half of the people on the floor we worked in. We used to get to see newer faces along with new information in seminars or all-hands meets. The point is that we could reach out to the right person for a lot of problems just by going to their desk whether it is for a code problem, a general problem, or we just need to exchange new ideas regarding a new topic. 

This professional network got a lot smaller ever since work from home started. Most of us only know our project team and even the ones who know other people outside of the project do not communicate as there is no need. We are all just worried about getting it done and switching off the PC. This is the case because running an office in a Teams channel alone and communicating in a chatbox cannot stand up to the interpersonal relation people build inside of the walls.

No more hustle:

When we are doing everything from home. We are not getting to face a lot of challenges that we would have faced in the "real world". Challenges such as taking 1 metro, 1 taxi, 1 shuttle and still to reach the office at the time, trying to find nice food place to eat from, or fitting in the office, doing laundry, washing dishes, and much more. This lack of hustle can prove detrimental to our growth. This kind of daily hustle is what makes us push us to improve. So, when it all suddenly stopped in 2020, we were left without challenges, hustle, and therefore improvements in many areas of our daily lives.

Lack of independence: 

We want independence right? That's why we leave our family and go to work in an unknown remote city. Becoming independent is like climbing a ladder from elementary school, middle school, high school, college, and finally starting a job or business.

There is an independence ladder that we start to climb from the very start and we keep climbing this ladder till we start living independently on our own. We were all trying to make our way up to this independence ladder throughout all the years but, we found a slide of  WFH in 2020 and we just took the slide and went to the playground of dependence. We didn't initially realize this because we were busy enjoying the slide, but this is what happened. We became more dependent on our family similar to the way we were in school or college except for financial independence. It's not impossible to climb back but we would have to climb back up. that does mean living independently, handling all our things from chores to bills.

Lack of social connection and more social media: 

We were already in the age where we are spending a major portion of our time on social media but when work from home started it became the only way to socialize as we were not able to connect with people in person. so, this not only affected our social life as our online friends are not real friends. Spending excess time on social media also affected our attention span and a lot more. This was the unavoidable bi-product of working from home.

Value of time: 

Well, when you have something in abundance you tend to lose its value. This is kind of what happened to us when we got some excess time to work from home. We used to curse our daily routine where we were having to spend 1-2 hours a day in travel, and not to mention the time we needed to rest after the office because of travel. We wished for a system where we could save these two hours and just finish everything at 6 pm and could use the other 2 hours for self-improvement, learning, and much more. This wish was heard. But, nothing really changed right? it doesn't even seem that we have 2 extra hours a day now? In the last 2 years of working from home, we somehow lost the urgency in our daily lives which is not bad but we also took time for granted, and just it didn't seem too important of a thing now. That's why it didn't make much difference when we got 2 extra hours a day. 

Things need to change: 

Well now that we know all is not good with work from home. We begin to question is this dream becoming a nightmare? Though it's not that dramatic, we have to admit things need to change for the better once again. Work from Home was a very thoughtful decision that helped control the pandemic largely but it is not the best way to move ahead. Since we have seen that work from home benefits to both the employee and organizations. We can say that going back to the old medal would be a step down in many aspects. 

So, what to do moving forward? Another new model? Perhaps the best of both worlds. A model where the employee gets flexibility and effective learning from colleagues. A model where the organization gets the output as well as a strongly built team of employees. There are many ways to move ahead, but for now the important thing is that we need to change to move ahead