A lot of changes we’ve experienced in the past few years can be attributed to the global pandemic and its aftermath. With social distancing norms in full effect, businesses worldwide were forced to introduce remote and hybrid workflows which, despite deniers and naysayers, ultimately proved fruitful.
According to recent reports
, 97% of employees now want to work remotely at least for some time during the week. Companies with remote workflows experience 25% less turnover, meaning that people will go out of their way to make their lives more comfortable – and why shouldn’t they? Now that remote work has come out of the closet and employers can no longer deny it, what are some important life lessons we’ve learned from it?
- Maintaining a Healthy Work/Life Balance Isn’t Impossible
First and foremost, you’ll spend more time at home than you’ve ever spent just by working remotely. While you still may have strict working hours, you’ll have plenty of opportunities to sneak in short breaks or do some chores. People gravitate toward remote work because of how friendly it is toward maintaining a stable work/life balance. Here are a few things you’ll be able to do as a remote professional:
- Tidy up your apartment in the morning
- Make coffee and breakfast without a rush
- Easily mingle with your family members or roommates
- Organize your workspace however you want
- Play music or do anything else to help yourself focus
Gone are the days of dedicating 60 hours a week to a company while neglecting your family and household. Instead, remote work lets you work smartly – all you’ll need to do is organize a home office space to get started. There is one downside to remote work, however, and it concerns procrastination.
If there’s one life lesson worth thinking about upfront when it comes to working remotely, it has to do with procrastinating. If you’re the type of individual who has a hard time focusing on work, you’ll need some productivity apps and a decluttered workspace to help you out. This is a small price to pay for the freedom and ease of mind working remotely will provide you with, however, so don’t get discouraged from trying it out.
- There’s Always an Answer Somewhere Online
Working remotely inherently means that you’ll spend far more time online than before. This will encourage you to engage in online discussions, forums, social media groups, and other platforms where people from your industry network.
The internet truly is a vast repository of resources and tools which can make your professional life easier. By working from home, you’ll learn where to look for reliable data, helpful tools, and news resources, among other things. Depending on what you work on, you can also find cheap research paper writers to help you write important papers, documents, or essays. It is very little you can’t unravel or find an answer to if you simply look for it online.
Contrary to that, you’d simply ask a colleague sitting right next to you in the office about an answer you’re looking for. Working remotely makes you more individualistic, and it places autonomy and agency straight into your lap. This is an important reason why so many professionals insist on continuing to work remotely in 2022 and why the trend is bound to continue moving forward.
- Less Office Drama Equals More Productivity
Office drama is a debated subject – some people like it, some don’t. There are plenty of good reasons why you should want to network with your colleagues, spend lunch breaks together, and even help each other out outside of work.
But, there’s also the downside to opening yourself up to the people you work with if your characters are incompatible and if disagreements start to crop up. This is mainly why so many people want to distance themselves from any kind of office drama, gossip, or buzz which isn’t related to the work at hand.
By working remotely, you’d be able to simply focus on your work and communicate with your colleagues as needed to get things done. This doesn’t mean you should be unfriendly and uncommunicative with your colleagues – however, you’ll have the ability to control how much exactly you’ll get involved. While you can still chat about unrelated topics, it’s far easier to simply do your job and then focus on your family instead.
- Daily Commute Wastes Precious Time
Traveling to and from work has always been a chore, no matter how much you love your work. With remote work slowly coming to the forefront, many have realized just how much time they’ve spent commuting. Spending up to several hours every month simply traveling to your office and then going back home is nothing but a waste of time.
While you may be able to do some chores along the way (buy groceries, pay for utilities, etc.), you’re still losing time you could spend doing something else. By focusing only on your job rather than “how” you’ll get there, you’ll be more at ease and more inclined to log in and do some work every day.
Whether you’ve relied on public transport, your car or bike, or on walking, with remote work at your side, that can become a thing of the past. The most important life lesson you’ll take out of this is how much free time you’ll suddenly find yourself with. You can spend this quality time with your family, doing house chores, learning something new, or doing anything else which doesn’t involve traveling to and from your workstation.
- Eating Healthily is Much Easier from Home
Balancing a healthy diet is something we all struggle with. It’s simply too easy to grab a bag of chips or a sandwich instead of bringing a home-cooked meal to work. By working remotely, your perception of food will slowly unravel, and you’ll have an easier time eating more healthily.
Picking up a fruit from the fridge or quickly grabbing a yogurt and getting back to work is a breeze when you work from home. You can also dedicate a few hours of your day to cook an amazing meal that you can store for a day or two and have ready-made food available while working. This is very difficult to manage when you’re going to work every day and simply need a quick burst of energy.
It’s why so many office spaces have vending machines available for a quick bite, despite how unhealthy these bites are in the long run. You’ll have a much easier time managing your diet and staying fit not by exercising, but by more closely managing what exactly it is that you eat every day. This is a very valuable perk of working remotely, and it’s something that many people would appreciate regardless of all the other benefits.
Embracing Remote Work
Whether you’re a seasoned freelancer or someone who began working remotely in the advent of the pandemic, remote work is here to stay for good. Both employers and employees worldwide continue to find the value of facilitating a remote workflow – a value that will only continue to grow in the coming years.
This also makes it possible for students to make proverbial ends meet by applying for remote jobs to upskill themselves and earn extra income. Paired with some actionable working tips for students, remote work will become even more popular in academia. All that’s left for us to do is embrace the new norm and make the best of it so that we can not only learn important life lessons from it but also prosper as individuals looking for professional fulfillment.
Bio
Andrew Mazur is a professional copywriter, content marketer, and blogger with extensive experience in business development and digital marketing industries. His writing expertise extends from blog posts and essays to case studies and white papers, written to be as practical and accessible as possible. Andrew spends most of his free time journaling, cycling, and cooking.
