Working From Home Will Change Your Life, Even If It Doesn't Change Your Boss'! #MustRead

When was the last time you felt truly energised? No, I don¡¯t mean you woke up in the morning and did all the things you usually do. That¡¯s only routine; you're supposed to do that shit. I mean sun-in-your-eyes, blood-in-your-veins, wind-in-your-hair kind of energetic about the day ahead.

Chances are you don¡¯t often feel like this, save for the odd long weekend you¡¯re relaxing at home. Only because you spend so much of your energy through the week on things you have to, but really shouldn¡¯t have to, spend it on. Yes, everybody needs to and should make an honest living, but are we doing it efficiently? I¡¯m an ardent fan of efficiency in pretty much every sphere of life, and I fail to see why our work lives, at least in certain professions, can¡¯t toe the line. Seriously, if you could finish something in a less time, and run some errands without compromising on anything else, you'd like to, right? Enter - the concept of working from home.

A 2014 Harvard Business Review study undertaken by Nicholas Bloom and graduate student James Liang to see if working from home improved the performance of employees, saw some amazing results. According to Bloom, "We found that people working from home completed 13.5% more calls than the staff in the office did." This means the sample group got almost an extra workday a week out of the experiment. "They also quit at half the rate of people in the office¡ªway beyond what we anticipated. And predictably, at-home workers reported much higher job satisfaction."

Think about it - you spend pots of money doing up your place and making it comfortable and pretty, only to spend more than two-thirds of your day out of it. I wouldn't have been so vocal about this stance a couple of years back, but in an increasingly connected world, I'm wondering why we haven't done this already. All you need is a good internet connection and a good telecom provider. And a responsible adult, of course.

But cyberslacking is a reality in many of our offices, so how does one control that at home with no supervision? In a study titled Computers in Human Behavior by organisational psychologist Thomas O¡¯Neill, an assistant professor at the University of Calgary¡¯s Department of Psychology, O'Neill and his co-authors managed to narrow down on particular personality traits that could make certain employees more predisposed towards cyberslacking. So maybe it's not for everyone?

Except that British philosopher Bertrand Russel was not all that great a fan of work, and in his 1932 essay, In Praise of Idleness, he deduced that if society was a better managed institution, the average person would need to work only four hours a day. This would be enough to ¡°entitle a man to the necessities and elementary comforts of life.¡± The rest of the day could be devoted to the pursuit of science, painting and writing. And, as Russell argued, working less will guarantee ¡°happiness and joy of life, instead of frayed nerves, weariness, and dyspepsia".

The more one thinks about it, the more sense it makes. In fact, working from home could be a healthier and more productive way to work as well.

You spend less time out on the polluted streets

Let¡¯s face it - pollution will be the death of us. We look like shit because our skin and hair can¡¯t breathe enough to start glowing and shining. Our lungs are in a mess because we¡¯re denying them of the one thing they actually need ¨C air. The lesser time we spend on the roads, the better it is for our overall health.

There¡¯s also an actual shot at saving money, especially if you¡¯re using public transport. In fact, even if you¡¯ve got your own ride, you start saving on the amount of gas you use.

For some reason, if you're still doubtful, here's the REALLY huge deal. Just look at all the lovely things you¡¯re doing for the environment. You¡¯re reducing fuel emissions. You¡¯re saving space. You¡¯re saving office electricity. You¡¯re helping save the planet. Literally!

You stop eating so much junk

So you¡¯re sitting at your workstation at home, and you¡¯re starving. Alone! This is the one time you should feel thrilled about such a situation because you¡¯re more likely to just go to the fridge and heat something the maid cooked in the morning. Flashback to when you¡¯re sitting in office surrounded by devils that are as eager to eat out as your inner voice.

You¡¯re more productive

This might work better for some than others, since a study on cyberslacking found people of a particular personality type more suited to working from home. But the benefits seem manifold. Fewer distractions ensure you spend more time actually working. The lack of a team in your vicinity makes sure you have no one to chitchat with.

Moreover, you can actually plan your life better since you decide when you¡¯re going to work and when you¡¯re not. You could choose to get your work out of the way first thing in the morning, or break it up through the day.

Working from home also helps out on one very major front - the work-life balance. Although some would argue that you're likely to work like a dog because you don't get to proverbially 'switch off' at the end of the day, that's not actually the case. The trick lies in, as in most things, organising the hell out of your day.

Why aren't we rooting harder for this?