A humorous perspective on home-working from Lifehacker. It’s true however that a move from being office-based to spending more, or all, of your working time at home can be difficult for the person you share your home with.
When you start working from home you have to prepare those around you for the inevitable consequences of this new lifestyle. I’d recommend telling your neighbors, kids, pets, imaginary friend(s), team of personal therapists, and parole officer. Of course, the absolute most important person to prepare is your Significant Other (SO). A lot of people who try working from home give up after about a month and when you ask them why they say “I was driving my SO crazy so she threw a burrito at my face”. If you do not properly handle the work from home transition (aka “The Great Move Away From Pants”) you will eventually have a burrito thrown at you.
When you start working from home your SO’s life is going to change in unexpected ways and they need to be prepared for this shift. The way you communicate, interact, and smell are all going to change in ways that they don’t expect.
Why? Because of mismatched expectations about the benefits to their lives. The sad reality is that working from home does not offer many benefits to the significant other. Well maybe you will look at them more and be able to do cool things like eat lunch with them sometimes or do them small favors.
Read on for the rest, including the need to ensure some form of separation between work and home life.
