After living in Manhattan for about nine years, I had just moved to Austin when I started working at Business Insider in 2010. I had just had my first daughter and wasn't anxious to move back to NYC, and they were OK with me working from home, so I stayed here. I have been working from home for about five years now.
While I know this sort of situation doesn't work for everybody, for me, I absolutely feel more productive working from home. The big things are that I no longer have a commute to worry about and my office and computer are always close by.
But there are also little things I have noticed going from a cubicle to home. There are fewer distractions (most of the time). In an office setting there are a lot of little "time-sucks," such as just organizing your desk in the morning, or getting coffee and chatting with somebody along the way, or somebody asking you to go get lunch. Those little distractions add up in an office, and I rarely have stuff like that at home.
There has also, for me at least, always been more pressure to be productive when working at home. Let's face it: In an office there is an art to looking busy. You can't do that from home. You can't pretend. You have to produce or people will notice; and in fact people are probably watching closer because this type of situation is not for everybody, and some may take advantage of it.
Personally, there are also big pluses. I get to spend more time with my kids, and I feel like it is easier to detach and take quick breaks during the day. If I need a quick break, I can go work in the garden for 15 minutes or take the dog for a quick walk. You can take breaks at an office also, but there is something comforting about doing it with personal things at home that really help you relax for a little bit.
But while there are fewer distractions, when there are distractions they can be bigger. Both of my kids are in school, so I am usually home alone when working. But occasionally one is sick or there is a school holiday that may not be a work holiday. For people who work in offices it is definitely an inconvenience, but they just cut the cord and take the day off. For me, I always feel a pressure to keep working on those days because I am still close to my office and there is nothing wrong with me personally. But at the same time it can be hard to work and have one or two kids running around with constant needs.
It is also hard for me to turn work off sometimes because my office and computer are always so close. There is a sense of always being on call, which is, of course, part of the job. But even beyond the big stuff, work is sometimes just a constant presence because it is always right there.
One of the biggest challenges for me early on was the lack of social interaction with other people. I definitely missed that at first. I feel like the team messaging app Slack has helped with that a lot, and I try to video chat with the other members of the team on a regular basis. So that no longer feels like a downside, but is definitely something I would think a lot of people need to adjust to early on.
It is also a lot harder now to get my 10,000 steps in every day. I think my FitBit just laughs at me.
At the end of the day I think successfully working from home just comes down to whether or not you love your job. If you love it, it works, because you'll never have a problem getting motivated to do the work. If you don't love it, it won't work.
—Cork Gaines, Business Insider's sports editor