Working from home doesn’t mean working from home

Business culture in the UK has been crippled by presentee-ism, the idea that somehow being cooped up in an office from 9 am — 5 pm is beneficial or valuable is outdated and damaging.

How can it be the case that a graphic designer, an accountant, a reporter, a salesperson and an HR manager can all be expected to wake up at the crack of dawn, shit-shower-shave and then cram themselves onto crowded busses and trains in a race to get bums on seats for 9 am to then all work in the same sterile office environments under artificial lighting for 8 hours then go home and do it all again the next day ad nauseam until they retire and expect them all to do their best work and bring value to the company they work for. This is madness.

Your best work is done at different times, in different places.
I sit down at my desk at home and get my business administration work done in the mornings with a steaming cup of tea and a pile of toast. For creative work or writing, I take my iPad down to the canal or set myself up in the newly opened light and airy Bloom.Space Coworking space, somewhere that I can work with space to think, piping hot fresh coffee and fast secure WiFi.

The global pandemic has resulted in huge swathes of people working productively from home for the first time and its blown apart the idea that in order for you to be an effective worker you need to be nailed to a beige desk for 8 hours a day in a room full of people doing the same, so lets not just replicate this by pinning ourselves to our desks at home. Use this time to experiment with what works best for you, try different environments for different tasks, try different times for different tasks.

Hate doing accounts every morning? Then don’t! Do them in the evening on your iPad in the bath. Is your home office too cluttered to think creatively? Then go write your social media content in the park or sitting on the steps of your local library or on a bench along the canal. Find what works for you. This is the core principle of “NowWork” look at what works for you and create your best work, unconstrained by your environment or what’s been done before.

Never has it been so easy to work how you like, when you like. We all have access to technology that used to be reserved for huge companies (and huge budgets), take advantage of that, don’t be a slave to your technology, make it work for you.

I’ve worked from my laptop and iPad all over the place for years and have met many fellow “Digital Nomads” it feels so natural to want to be unconstrained and free. Covid-safe coworking spaces like Bloom.Space provide a great place to drop in and out of for when you need somewhere calm to work from so having a hotdesking membership is a handy tool to have and usually will cost around £100 a month.

Where do you do your best work from? I’d love to hear from you with your thoughts and tips in the comments :-)