There are probably countless reasons to work from home as long as you can stay self-motivated and don’t mind working alone. Here is a list of the 22 most significant reasons that come to mind:
1. Less Stress
All illness is stress-related. Going to work can be the major cause for stress in your life. From the commute to and from your office, to the pressure of upholding your boss and co-workers’ expectations of you, working can cause a great amount of strain on your body even when you aren’t doing physical labor. Did you know that your body responds to a small stressor (someone bumping into you in the hallway) the same way it does a life-threatening stimulus (a jaguar chasing you through the jungle)? Your digestive system shuts off, your adrenal, respiratory, and circulatory systems turn on full blast, and the body analyzes whether you are in danger or not before it slowly transitions back to normal. Avoiding work-related stress could be a serious reason to consider working from home.
2. More Time With Family
How many mothers and fathers miss out on their children’s first words, steps, and others because they are at work? I still remember that my mother was at work when I first learned to pump myself back and forth on a swing. I watched a close friend of mine, who worked as a store manager in a corporate business, miss many birthday parties, parent-teacher conferences, and even her child’s hospital stay due to work. If she had been working from home at the time she would have been there for things that she can never make up.
25 Ways Work at Home Parents Can Balance Work and Family Life http://www.powerhomebiz.com/blog/2010/05/balance-work-and-family-life/
3. Creative Freedom
As with any job you do for yourself, at a home-based business, you have the gift of creative freedom, which is quite fulfilling. People are truly motivated by this, which is why many highly skilled high-paid workers volunteer their expertise on their time off. Take advantage of this on a daily basis and you will be better more inspired in general.
4. Less Commuting
Say your commute to work is only 15 minutes each way. That’s 30 minutes each day. You will save 150 hours per year, and approximately $1500 or more on fuel. Wow!
5. Work Anywhere
When you are working from home online, you actually have the ability to work from anywhere you can find a wi-fi connection. Take a family vacation. Visit Europe. Go hang out on the beach. Camp on the river. Can’t really take your office with you when you do these things, can you? I don’t recommend taking your work everywhere with you. but having that option is a valuable perk.
6. Larger Network
Working online gives you the ability to network with the entire world. Just interacting on forums, commenting on blogs that you follow, and browsing social networking sites like Twitter, Facebook, and Linked-In is good for business when you work online. You can communicate in real-time with friends, family, and colleagues across the globe. Meeting new leads, wholesalers, and customers just happens as long as you are interacting online. The network chain never runs out of links.
7. Save Money on Clothing
When you work from home, you can literally lounge around in your jammies all day if you want. No need to dress to impress. Of course, you will want to look good for one-on-one interactions, but since this doesn’t happen every day your clothing budget will significantly decrease.
8. Build Your Own Empire
Everything you do for your own home-based business online, you do for yourself. You have the ability to create your own personal brand, and each article or blog you write, each post you submit, each mailing list you subscribe to is like a brick in the wall of your own online castle. It’s fulfilling to search for yourself online and see pages of work to be proud of. Not as fulfilling to run your employers info and see a list of his or her accomplishments, with no mention of the contributions that you have put into keeping the business afloat.
9. Create Your Own Workspace
Feng Shui can be a key aspect to the success of your business, if you believe it. In a corporate office, where you have no control over the energy flow of your space, it can distract you, take away from your mental clarity. I feel comfortable lounging around in my bedroom with my laptop playing music, candles lit, and incense burning while I work. Since I am at my own home, doing my own thing, I’m able to do this.
view home office design ideas http://homecreativedesign.com/2012/01/16/modern-home-office-design-ideas/
10. Fewer Distractions
It seems to be almost unanimous amongst people who work from home that the results are in and there are in fact fewer distractions at home than in a traditional office. Of course, there are children, pets, meals, cleaning, and visitors to distract us from our work agendas at home, but office jobs can be even worse. We’re stuck keeping messages for co-workers, employers, and worrying about sally and steve’s attitudes. If Steve comes to work in a bad mood, it’s going to rub off on everyone in the room. At home, as long as we are balanced, we have more peace-of mind.
11. Save Money on Childcare
Say you have three children who need to be cared for while you work 40 hours a week in the Summer time; you are going to be spending close to $1200/ month paying for a daycare provider. That adds up to two full paychecks in my state for someone working minimum wage. At that point, why even work? Because, you can do it at home avoiding that issue!
12. Save Money on Food
If you’re someone who likes to eat out from work, you will start saving money by just being at home with your groceries. We have all already seen the comparison of the cost of eating out opposed to planning meals. Working from home just makes it that much easier to go the cheaper route.
13. Less Impact on the Environment
When you work from home you are driving less. This means that you use less fuel, produce fewer emissions, and less wear and tear on the roads, not to mention your vehicle. You are also purchasing less junk on your breaks, this means there is less garbage for landfills. You’re helping save the environment by minimizing your impact on it.
14. Exercise at Your Desk
Can you imagine stopping in the middle of a project in the office to just start practicing tai chi or do a head stand? Can you grab your weights and start pumping iron in front of your boss? Maybe. But if you work from home, you can stop and exercise at any given time, even jump up in the middle of something and go for a run if it suits you.
15. Develop Business Skills
When working from home, you will develop business skills that you might not otherwise learn. This is just inevitable. I always have more than one window open while I work; a big part of the time, I’m hopping back and forth between tabs, at least one of which is something I am studying. Not only am I learning valuable information, but it’s always relevant to what I’ve got going on, and it’s something I am interested in, so I absorb the information better than if it were “required learning.” Working from home requires that you lean about customer service, retention, marketing, business organization, many types of management (even if it’s not managing people), and these are all great skills to have, even if you decide that working at home isn’t ideal for you.
16. Eat Healthier
In the same sense that you are more apt to save money on food purchases, being at home all the time gives you more freedom to control your diet. You can jot down notes on the refrigerator about meal ideas, shopping lists. You can even get up at any point throughout the day and take a trip to the market to get what you need.
17. Quality Time With Your Pets
My dog does fine when left alone all day while I’m at work, but he does even better when I’m home with him all day. We have fewer accidents around the house and zero tearing-into-garbage. He is my best friend and he’s more secure when I spend more time with him. Something else: you can’t very well train a puppy when you are at work 8 hours a day! This goes for cats and caged animals as well.
18. Choose Your Own Music
You might like Heavy Metal, Hip Hop, Classical, Rock, or Electro music. Whatever your taste, not all music is welcomed in every office. Most businesses, for whatever reason, are always playing tasteless “elevator music.” When you work from home, you have the freedom to play whatever you like; anything that motivates you. I normally have my iTunes playing, but sometimes I just want silence too. Working from home gives you full control over your musical atmosphere.
19. Increased Productivity
I’ve mentioned in the other reasons the ways that working from home gives you freedom, creativity, and that making your own choices is more motivating, which will carry us into our next reason. These freedoms increase productivity tenfold.
20. More Motivation
When you are working from home, experiencing freedoms and productivity, you will in turn be more motivated. Here is a video by RSA Animate that I like on what motivates people:
Working from home facilitates motivation.
21. No Penalty for Calling in Sick
Some jobs require that you have a doctor’s note if you call in sick. Without this, you can lose your job and your whole means of survival. If you’re working from home, chances are you’re going to be able to work even if you are ill. If not, you can just pick back up where you left off as soon as you are well enough with little or no repercussions.
22. You Can Partake in All of Your Dirty Little Habits
