Working remotely – the history and my personal take
History
Working remotely also called telecommuting, teleworking, mobile work, working from home is a special work arrangement in which instead of travelling to a place of work we are able to do all the tasks in comfort of our home.
It is worth mentioning that term “home” can mean anything, it could be even our own office, a room, coffee shop, van, motorhome, yacht, anything really.
When doing a research I found that first working at home arrangements were prominent back in 1970s however I do believe that small percentage of people used to work this way for hundred of years. Let’s look at first doctors, they used to come to patients but they didn’t had their own “practise or office”, they used to work from their own home, as well as other groups like solicitors, agents and so on.
In the 1995, a motto “ Work is something we DO, not a place that we GO to” became very popular among the businesses, governments as well as no-profit organisations. It was firstly used to reduce costs as people who work at home do not use office environment, climate control, lighting and so on. Some companies adopt working remotely to improve their employees’ quality of life as time spent on commuting was much reduced, along with saving time and perhaps money spent on travel, the work-life balance was made more achievable. Some organisations, especially the big ones adopt remote work for environmental benefits such as reducing congestion and air pollution getting streets less overcrowded with cars.
My take on working remotely.
It all started many moons ago when I was at primary school, I was one of these kids who had no pleasure in waking up early and getting out from comfortable house to have 15minute walk to the school, during these every day trips I was dreaming a lot, probably these days I will be steering at the smart phone or listening to music instead, back then, and that was 25 years ago all I wanted in to stay at home. I was coming from working family background so I had very strong work ethics from the beginning and my biggest dream was being able to work at home. I didn’t quite know on how this should look like but I have seen it through eyes of my imagination to be like an end goal.
Moving on, we are now in 2020 where I do work from home, is that the ultimate end goal, for some might be, but I have many years left which I need to work towards my pension age. Saying that I do work from home for 5 constant years now and I think I’m able to comment on any aspect of that matter. I was able to increase revenue of company I work for, spend time with family, minimise “out of work” days usually taken as sick pay days, have a healthy lifestyle and very well balanced work-life attitude.
Desk Away.co.uk concept crossed my mind back in 2017 but I didn’t realised back then that my adventure could be something which will allow more people do be just happy and inspired. There are of course up and down sides of working at home so one need to focus on reducing the downs and work on developing the up’s.
This is all very achievable. A general plan for this blog is to show you what equipment I use to work at home, what is that you may need, different styles of working remotely, ways to approach your employers and clients and finally hopefully getting more people to start doing what they dreamed of.
The fun begins here, join me with my adventure.
Cheers,
Lucas
