In the early 1800’s, when the industrial revolution began to speed up the march of “progress”, European working class society changed. The early Europeans left their home-based businesses for abysmal conditions making mass-product in factories. It took over a century for reforms to make this situation bearable. Except for a few notable exceptions, work still isn’t a “fun” place in most industries. Personally, I see working at home as a way more people can enjoy their work more, balance work/family arenas better, and get more done in less time. However, I can see the reservations from an employer’s view point.

There’s been some press lately on working from home. For instance, NPR recently had a three-part series of articles on it (part 1, part 2, part 3). When Unleashed started as a business it was done a little more traditionally. I was in a couple of leased offices, but within a couple of years I ended up just moving towards a home-based business. It started out because I was buried at work and didn’t want to completely ignore my infant son, so I’d take my desktop home on the weekends. Then I started taking three-day weekends because it was so much easier to get things done. Then four day weekends, and after a while it seemed silly to keep paying a lease (not to mention $700+/month for a T1 line) when I could use my home office for free and write it off as well.

That was about 4 years ago. In that time, I’ve not only thought a lot about my own office situation, but I’ve seen colleagues and clients move to a part or full-time home office situation. I thought I’d write about some of my own experiences.

The Cons:

It is a lot harder to get motivated and stay motivated if you’re working from home. I’m fairly disciplined, but it’s hard. Some things that help me are music, tea, starting my day with very brainless tasks, and making sure that I’m always working on something billable. It seems like as soon as I start to drift off onto non-billable tasks, it’s a lot harder to bring my focus back. The problem with this is that I think a lot of companies look at letting their workers freelance, and they assume less will get done because people will screw around. And honestly, that’s exactly what happens a lot of the time. The NPR articles suggested that work should be based on the amount of work achieved, not the hours worked. I think this might work in a lot of cases, but in others it’s hard to accurately predict how long things should take.

The converse of above — sometimes it’s hard to let go. I have this problem a lot, I don’t stop working. I have months where I set hours and abide by them, but when ‘work’ is down the hall, it’s too easy to just squeeze in a few more changes or reply to a few emails. Especially considering that I work with a lot of people who are working at night; so they’re trying to IM me while I’m having dinner with the family. So, not working too much is another problem.

Face contact cannot be minimized. I think video conferencing is a huge benefit. If you’re an Apple-based business this is made considerably easier with iChat, but options exist for PC users as well. However, even with video-conferencing, there is no substitute for actual face-time. I would suggest that wherever possible, people who work together should get together for a few hours a week. My primary computer now is a laptop, that helps. I can take it with me to meet clients, and when I contract for other agencies, it’s a huge benefit for me to bring it into the ‘office’ without really missing a beat.

Accountability. This is a nice way to say employers don’t really trust their employees. I’m not blaming them, it happens, some people will take advantage of a home-based work situation and slack off. One page employers could take from a designer’s play book is to have employees track all time. I map all my time spent via iCal. It’s a pain sometimes, and I don’t do it as well as I should, but it helps me to stay focused and accountable, even if it’s just accountable to myself. But that’s not a great fix, what it really comes down to is that you’ve got to have employees you trust.

The Pros:

Time. Most people I know spend about two hours a day getting to and from work. And they do so in a car where they’re the only person in it. I know there are options, but I’m the first one to admit they are inconvenient at best. You can take the bus, but that adds more time to your commute (and away from your family). You can car-pool, but that’s still not a solution, and finding the perfect car pool isn’t something that happens everyday either. Mostly, I think commuting is a phenomenal waste of time. This is one of my biggest issues with traditional work environments. If I got paid enough to live in Boulder and I could walk to work, that’d be different, but unless I made three times what I do currently, that’s not going to happen.

Work when you want. I believe humans are creatures of habit, and we do need a pattern to our schedule, I just don’t think it has to be 9-5. For instance, I might start work at 6 a.m., take one of the dogs for a run around 9, then work until I pick up my son from school around 3, make dinner, eat, then work again until 9 or so. It allows me to work a full day, keep up with emails in a timely fashion, but still have time to spend with my wife and kids.

Control your environment. Besides controlling when you work, I think it’s important to control where you work. Personally, I always had a few issues with traditional work environments. I like fresh air — I almost always have a window or door open. I like to have my dogs around — it’s fun to take 5 minutes to go outside with them and watch them play. I don’t understand people that have dogs and they only see their pets a few hours at night. I like to move around; I have a chair and desk, but spend equal time pacing outside on the phone or sitting on the porch or a couch. I like it dimly lit, sunlight on my monitor drives me crazy. Most of all, I like my music; not headphones, but better-than-average speakers playing at a respectable volume. I contracted with a company in Loveland for a while in a blue cubicle with florescent lights. The people were great, the work was great but I couldn’t take the atmosphere. For me, atmosphere means a lot. A lot of design firms have gone to great lengths to have a great place for people to work, but you can’t make 20 people happy all the time. If all 20 people can create their own spaces, I think it works out better.

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I know that this home-based office doesn’t work for everyone, I’d just encourage more clients to at least think about it with an open mind.