Working from Home Downsides
Working from home is often lauded as the “golden goose” of 21st century careers, and it's not hard to see why: you set your own schedule, you don't have a cranky boss constantly looking over your shoulder, and you don't have to deal with the hassle of transportation. It's like winning the lottery, except you don't have to pay all those taxes. What most people don't realize about self-employment though is that it's actually a lot harder than first appearances might dictate. Here are some of the top reasons why you might want to put some more thought into your dream of working from home before you quit your office job.
No Boss Means No Pressure
When people say that working from home means that you don't have a boss, they're not telling you the whole truth. It's true that you don't work under a manager or a foreman, but in reality you're simply replacing your boss with someone much less experienced: yourself. To be successful at a work at home job, you have to be the one that's constantly pushing yourself to succeed. It's easy to get distracted when you're working by yourself because nobody else is there to hold you accountable. You have to be hard on yourself, and sometimes that's a lot more difficult than just letting someone else do the pushing.
Say Goodbye to Regular Paychecks
Working from home follows a “feast and famine” cycle that can be difficult to get used to, especially if you've worked in a normal office job for most of your life. Essentially, you only get paid when you complete a project, make a sale, or otherwise do something worthy of being paid. There are going to be times when you have plenty of money, and just as many (if not more) when you're scraping the bottom of your couch for enough change to buy a Cup o' Noodles. That ties in with disciplining yourself to work the necessary hours to make a living; if you don't work, you don't get paid. All job security goes right out the window, and that's a frightening prospect for a lot of people in the working community.
Regular Hours are a Thing of the Past
In my own experience as a freelance writer, the clock eventually becomes irrelevant. There's no looking forward to the end of your shift because your shift never ends. Working from home is a 24 hour job that will steal your weekends, overshadow your evenings, and wreak havoc on your social life. Eventually it gets better, true, but at least for the first year or two all of your time will be spent establishing your business and building it up from ground level. You'll find yourself at the computer at 3 a.m. finishing up that 'one final thing,' then waking up at 8 a.m. to take a call from an important client. You do this because missing one deadline or losing one client means you don't get paid that week.
You Have to Be Great
According to theU.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, there are over 150,000 writers currently working in the country, and 70% of those are self-employed. Now, if you're a writer, what does that show about your competition? No matter what industry you're in, you have to fight with everyone else out there to be recognized and attract clients. If you're working from home, you have to do that all by yourself. In most industries, like retail or design, you're not only fighting against other freelancers or entrepreneurs, but the corporations that have seemingly unlimited resources as well. If you're not excellent at what you do, you're just going to have that much harder of a time climbing to the top.
So Why Bother?
To put it bluntly, quitting an office job and working from home is serious business. It's not vacation; it's not a time to laze around the house and play with your cat; it's not a free pass to hang out with your friends in the middle of the day. Becoming successful as a self starter requires a level of drive, determination, and vision that a lot of people simply don't possess. These are qualities that can be learned, but harbor no illusions that they will come to you without serious hard work. In the end though, the reward is different for everybody, and thousands of self-employed workers are in love what they do.
