What It Is Like To Work Mostly From Home

image; fxgallery.com

That's exactly what I look like most days, from morning to night! Could have posted the picture but then I'm not as nice looking as that guy so I decided to stick with his since it passes the message approximately well.

I hear a lot of people complain that it is impossible for them to get any serious work done from home. So even on weekends, they go back to office to get important work done. Some even take their school work to office on Saturdays as they believe they can achieve more there than at home. I am thankful to God for my case being the reverse.

I get a lot more done at home than I can ever get done out of home. And I have tested it multiple times to be sure. I can stand, sit, lie down. There is no interruption from colleagues or someone asking me for help. There is no getting dressed and getting ready for work/office. I simply get off my bed, work, work, go brush my teeth, get back to work, go to the kitchen, go back to work, go get something outside, get back to work, take a short rest/sleep and get back to work before closing for the day at around 12:00 midnight. Oops, I forgot to mention that I squeeze in a shower in between the work.

And that is how the days I don't spend going for client meetings or doing a full day training go.

And the amount of work I get down? 

To put things into perspective. Since my second job in 2011, I have had a reputation of doing as much as 2 to 4 people's work and on time. And that is when don't you factor in that there some part of my job that I do a lot more efficiently than other people. Especially the Excel related ones. I have my superb Excel skills and automated Macros making me do in one day what will take a regular person 3 days to complete. In my last job I ended up working for 3 departments at once and in one of those departments I was the only one there as the others had been sacked/resigned. Yet, I managed to not lag on any deliverable.

So back to the question: what is the amount of work I get down from home?

Phenomenal! Way more than 3x what I used to crank out even at my busiest period in that last job. And how? I work longer hours now and as the bulk of my work are in my core specialization area of Excel, I get a mighty lot done. And what even reinforced that conviction is that I have seen people who even complain that their work is time consuming and are proficient in Excel spend a whole day doing what I would get done in one hour. And I am seriously not exaggerating. When I am working in Excel these days, I am constantly doing a mix of advanced tricks to get things done very fast. I frequently create temporary macros to generate some of my analysis steps. My brain knows what to do without much thinking when I'm in Excel. So I just keep pounding away. Mixing complex stuffs with regular stuffs and doing what people don't consider possible in Excel. So imagine doing that like 12 hours a day.

In a month I can end up doing as many as 5 complex projects mixed with my many other training activities. And webinar. And video recordings. And content writing. And administrative activities.

The days I am least productive are the days I leave the house. And that is why you will hardly get me to come visit you or schedule a physical meeting time. I would rather we meet online -- Skype.

So if you ask me what it is like to work from home. I would say it is like heaven. I wouldn't want to trade it for anything else. In fact, what is killing my having to build a technical team is that love for working from home.