It generally doesn’t take long for the work-from-home creative to become disillusioned by the small space allocated for his/her workstation, the mayhem emanating from the kids when they arrive home from school or the sudden extra attention one receives from the household pets.

It’s about this time that an OFFICE FOR RENT sign appears in the commercial center only a few minutes down the road, and thoughts of leaving behind this bundle of problems for the sanctity of YOUR VERY OWN OFFICE begin to surface.

Just imagine… you can meet and greet clients at your own premises, seat them in a comfy leather couch and offer them real coffee from the Starbucks across the road. You can play your music as loud as you want, without risking waking the baby. You’re not faced with the constant reminder that the lawns need mowing whenever you look out the window.

In short, you can escape the many drawbacks of working from home.

But before you rush off to sign that lease, consider the following;

1. Why did you decide to work for yourself in the first place?
   
2. Why are you at home, rather than in a corporate office? and
   
3. What are the real benefits of working from home?

Let’s look at the first question. Why are you working for yourself? Is it solely so that you can keep all of the profits? Or make all of the decisions and have no one telling you what to do? Or were there other attractions, such as leaving behind the daily commute, or choosing your own hours of work, or even so that you could spend more time with the kids?

Now ask yourself this; do your original motivations gel with moving back into an office? Your decision to work for yourself from home likely had many overlapping benefits which may be compromised by shifting out of that cramped spare bedroom. But only you know this.

The second question asks why you’re not still in a corporate office. Is it because you got sick of office politics? Or do you like the idea that you can work in your pajamas?

And the third question looks at the advantages of working from home. Before you throw all of these away, I suggest you take another look at your original pros and cons of choosing to work from home.

That office will not only cost you in rental, but there’s power and telephone to consider, a separate broadband account, another coffee machine, and the specter of insurance premiums, smoke alarms and all the other paraphernalia that goes with setting up at another location.

Also, what about your computer, printer and other gear? Do you wish to retain the ability to work from home on occasion? Or will you transfer it all to the office? If it’s the former, you will need to duplicate everything, including software licenses (not cheap). But if it’s the latter, you will be forced to travel to a cold office every time you want to work – which includes checking emails, phone messages and re-sending a file that got lost in translation.

Personally, my work hours are not set in concrete. I start at 7.00am and sometimes don’t finish until 11.00pm. But along the way I might have lunch with my wife, go for a run on the beach or take time out to watch a son play sport. Regularly I will return to my office (which is a converted bedroom) for an hour or two before bed just to read emails or finish a project or take down some notes on a blog I’ve formulated while at dinner or lazing in front of the TV. I won’t ‘commute’ to an office to do this.

In the end it’s your choice, but I know many work-from-homers who have succumbed to the lure of an office only to miss being able to work while stuffed up with a cold, or in their tatty tracksuit, or without makeup, and do so in five sessions of 90 minutes rather than a great chunk in the middle of the day.

It’s your choice… but I know which I choose.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, October 29th, 2008 at 7:24 am and is filed under Business and Marketing, Graphic Design From Home, graphic design. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.