I’ve been working remotely for a couple of years now and I love the flexibility and convenience it offers but there are also some down sides that I’ll cover in this post.
The biggest challenge is the work-life balance, which is especially true if your are working from home instead of going to a co-working space or a personal office. It’s hard to create clear boundaries between work & personal life as you’re always tempted to work longer hours, or respond to work-related messages outside of regular working hours.
The timezone difference never really bothered me a lot, untill I started trying to improve my sleep habbits. I wanted to try waking up at 5AM but as I’m mostly working till 2AM, that is not an option for me. However, I make sure that I get a good 8 hours sleep and my room is dark enough to not get disturbed in early mornings. Having a good night sleep greatly helps with the quality of the day and productivity.
Having previously worked on-site with teams, the lack of social life is a noticeable drawback. You have to actively plan for IRL meetups to make up for it. Also, I believe, being in an office you get to learn a lot from other people in casual conversations about a work related problem or approach. Whereas, working remotely the communication and collaboration is not as good.
On the flip side, there are definitely some great benefits of remote work. You are not wasting time in commute and you get to spend a lot more time with family. You have much more freedom and flexibility to plan your day. In the end, only way to see if working remotely works for you is to give it a shot. Good luck!
