Tag: Happiness

Home working – what are the downsides?

Posted on by philipdodson

home working

Today, I worked at home, it’s a bit like living in the shoes of the competition for me. I run a coworking space (I apologise for no hyphen, but it’s better for SEO) and most of the self-employed/freelance workforce are still choosing home as their workplace.

This initially is very understandable, as firstly, an office is very expensive, especially in central London or most big cities. Then secondly, until more recently the only other alternative to a fixed office contract, was a coffee shop.

Coffee shops are OK for a quick informal meeting, or a quick catch up on emails etc between meetings. However, as a long term base, they are often impracticable, as they can be noisy, the Wi-Fi in most is poor, there is no one to really engage with, you feel guilty that you haven’t bought a coffee for at least an hour and you have to take your laptop to the toilet (losing your seat in the process).

I did a period of home working a couple of years back for around 6 months and I became completely isolated in the end and finished up being depressed.

The home environment can be good, if you really need to knuckle down and get something done and if it is only the odd day here and there, then I think that is totally fine.

However, after a few days, I found that I started to really miss just having another human to talk to. Sure you make phone calls and you are sending emails & social media updates, but that is not the same as the face to face chats you can have in a shared workspace.

The cat really has a limited vocabulary beyond ‘meow’ and to be honest it is worrying that you are even conversing with your pets.

Then there are the home life distractions, such as chores that you would only normally be able to do at the weekends or evenings, you start to say ‘oh well, I’ll have a break and just fix that, or pop to the shops’.

Then the next challenge is eating. When you’re around others and in an office, you might have the odd snack and then a sandwich at your desk, often while you work, that’s it.

When you are at home, lunch will be a longer affair where you study the fridge to see what culinary delights you can cook up. The lunch break will be more like an hour, than say 10-15 minutes. Then once you have stopped, without others around you working, you can sometimes lose the buzz that creates.

If you are at home, then eating the entire packet of chocolate HobNobs won’t seem bad, that’s something you’d never do working around others.

But for me the big downside of working alone at home is the friction points that you miss out on, when you bump into someone you know or someone interesting/new.

At home you are unlikely to have to many chance serendipity moments, that might lead to new connections, new opportunity or new business.These friction points, where you bump into someone, not literally, but where you might be opposite someone and start chatting or at the coffee machine.

Not only does this give you a buzz, make you feel good, as after all humans are designed to be social and around others. But this gives you new ideas and connections.The other thing it does is keep you in touch with what is trending and happening.

The last benefit of getting out the house is that, if you find the right space, is you can become part of a community of like minded people and that is the ultimate goal for humans. We are all happier when we feel part of something, when we belong. When you work on your own at home, you are isolated not belonging. In a coworking space you can belong to a community.

Ultimately, we are all more productive if we are happy and that will make our business more successful and will help us to live a happier life.

My mind gym

Posted on by philipdodson

This is my mind gym, 750Words.com, I love this 20-25 minutes each day, sometimes it’s good enough to release on the world via my blog and sometimes it is just private thoughts and ramblings, which would only make interesting reading to me or disturbed people.

So these 20 minutes that I write my 750 words each day is firstly a great discipline and more importantly, it is a place that I can exercise my brain.

This is an area that very few, me included until very recently, focus on. We all think about what we eat and what exercise we could be doing or are actually doing.

There is a lot of focus on physical exercise and that is very important to our health. However, the exercising of the mind is important to our mental and physical well being.

Our minds control everything that happens in our lives and it determines whether we are healthy or not physically.

Many illnesses, some of the most chronic, are result of stresses in our lives. These stresses are caused by a number of factors, however, it is our mind that determines how we deal with these stresses and determines what effect these stresses have on our physically health.

For me it is important to put down in writing a review of what happened during the day and to put down what my thoughts were. To write about my reactions to events that happened.

It’s important, as it allows me to think about the situations and learn where I could have dealt with situations to get a better outcome in the future.

Often, our lives just go by without us realising and certainly without pausing to take stock of things that have occurred.

So doing this writing everyday allows me to press the pause button in my head and to scan back over the day to take stock and think about things.

The other thing that this writing is good for, is to celebrate my successes for the day and to think about my goals and what I could do the next day to get closer to them.

Some people have no goals and certainly none that are ever put in writing. Others spend so much time planning and writing goals and targets, that they actually forget the doing part.

A review of my progress is important to me and it allows me to continue the focus. It is important to feel that you are moving forward to towards your goals. It is important to recognise progress and give yourself a pat on the back for your achievements.

I never use this to beat myself up, although I do use this sometimes to deal with things that are preying on my mind.

I pick a particular worry/concern and write down what it is. I then think of all the worst possible outcomes, then say ‘so if that happens…then what next?’. I repeat this for each outcome and keep going ‘so if x happens, then this will be next and then this’. Eventually the process leads to the fact that you can deal with every outcome, however bad you can imagine it to be.

Then you realise, having actually put them down in writing, when you read them back through, nearly all of the outcomes lead to nothing that you can’t handle and I often laugh at how silly 99% of them seem on reflection.

The other exercise I do at my mind gym, is to write down the things that I am grateful for and the positive thoughts that I have had that day.

So it is not all about exercising the gremlins, demons and worries. It is also about writing and reminding myself of the good things that are going on each day.

So this mind gym that I do each day has a number of exercises that I do and that enables me to keep my mind super fit and healthy. So if you don’t have a membership to a mind gym, I strongly recommend getting one.

I go for a family walk nearly every evening for 3 miles or so, which gives me a chance to spend family time combined with physical exercise. After that it’s off to the mind gym.

Since the 1st September, this has become the most important thing to me on a daily basis, it clears my head, recharges my brain, helps me to express my thoughts more precisely, helps me reduce worry, helps relieve stress and gives me a real confidence boost.