Why do people want to work from home? – 5 reasons to avoid the office

Updated 19/12/2018

Many people fantasize about working from home. The reasons are many but sometimes you can’t help wondering why is it exactly? Why do people want to work from home?

Today I will talk about some of the most common reasons to avoid the office or what ever your workplace is and staying home instead.

I will also talk a little about how anyone can start working from home (or anywhere with an internet connection) for themselves, regardless of their current working situation.

You can read more about that from here if you are interested.

So let’s get cracking! Let me introduce the 5 reasons to avoid the office and work from home instead.

Reason 1: Other people

This is by far the biggest reason many fantasize about working at home. Other people.

Be it colleagues, bosses or customers, other people can be taxing. This of course depends on your own persona and of the atmosphere at your work place or if you have to deal with demanding customers.

Some people are the opposite and think that other people are the reason to go to office but many don’t.

If you are an introvert who dislikes small talk and likes to focus on their work, offices can be incredibly distracting and annoying with the interrupting chatting, office politics and obligatory small talk.

An introvert can be so taxed from socializing at the office and with customers, that they need to recharge their batteries in complete silence for the rest of the day, to be able to go back to work the next day.

As you can imagine this can be very taxing on the long run and working from home can seem like a great option at that point.

Even if you are not an introvert you can find other people at your work place stressful.

This is especially true if there are issues with the atmosphere of the work place.

Things like bullying, harassment or an overly demanding boss can drive anyone to fantasize about working from the safety of their own home on their own terms.

Even if you do your best to stay away from office quarrel it’s hard to avoid it completely. At the least you will have to witness other people being jerks towards each other.

Even if it’s not subjected to you, this kind of behavior can be very taxing.

Most people do their best to do their work and act civil and friendly to others. But there are always a couple of rotten apples that talk trash and gossip behind peoples back.

Sure, sometimes this kind of behavior can be justified by frustration and deeper issues withing the work community but most cases it’s simply a case of people acting childishly.

You can’t really completely shield yourself from this kind of behavior because it’s so common. It almost seems like a common trait in any social group of humans. There always has to be the jerk that’s inconsiderate towards others.

The best thing about working from home is that you don’t have to deal with this kind of bull shit. At least not daily.

Reason 2: The Commute

As most offices these days are situated at the centers of large cities, many people have to commute long ways every day to their work place.

This can be incredibly time-consuming if you can’t use the commute for working, like most can’t.

Ask someone who has a longer office commute than say 15 minutes if they would choose to work from home instead of using many hours of their week for sitting in the car or the train and I bet most would say yes without hesitation.

Most people don’t have the option to choose a shorter commute since the cost of living in large cities has risen to an all time high and especially larger family sized flats and houses simply are not a possibility for many financially.

When you work from home the commute is a few meters. You get out of the bed, go to the toilet, start the computer and load the coffee maker.

Then you can start working while you wait for coffee to drip.

Working from home without distractions can be so efficient that you can accomplish more before your last cup of morning coffee than you can at the office in a typical day.

Studies say that people can do actual deep work only for around two hours a day, and it usually takes the full day at the office to accomplish that because of all the interruptions.

Just imagine what you could achieve in your life if you could work for three hours in the morning to make a full living?

People are doing this and many are working even less. Getting rid of an obligatory commute is a big part of it.

Reason 3: Family

The next one is obvious to anyone with small children or maybe elderly parents they are looking after for. Or even pets that they would rather spend most of their waking hours with.

The fact is that commuting to work and staying at the work place for 8 to 10 hours is all taken out of your family time.

Often it can feel heart braking to leave to the office on Monday morning knowing the next time you will truly have time to be with you family, while not feeling taxed from work, will be at the week end.

When working from home you will get to use your coffee and lunch breaks to hang out with your family and this can be really rewarding.

Of course this requires you to have a study or an office room dedicated for working so you can get stuff done without interruptions. That’s the whole magic of working from home. Your family has to understand you are working when you are working.

Just think about this kind of a scenario for a minute. You get up early. You work couple hours before the kids wake up on your computer.

You then wake up the kids and spend your whole day with them, doing what ever it is you love doing.

Then in the evening you maybe work and hour or two when the kids are in bed again.

Maybe there really is something to working from home?

Reason 4: Time

The fact is that working from home will leave you more time for other parts of your life.

While working at home you can actually multitask small but obligatory and time-consuming chores like running the dish washer which will save you even more time from your evening and weekends.

When you combine the time lost on the commute, the time lost spend with your family and the time you save doing small chores throughout the week the time can add up to 20 to 30 hours.

Think about that for while.

What would you do with 30 hours of extra time in a week if you were suddenly offered the possibility?

You might simply use it to sleep and relax more or maybe you have hobbies that you could use the extra hours on.

You could almost do another full time job or maybe study academically?

No matter what you would dedicate the time to, I’m sure it would be a welcome addition.

Reason 5: Sleeping in

Some people are morning persons. Others really aren’t.

That’s why working from home can be great if you hate waking to the alarm clock hell every morning feeling dead tired.

Every minute of sleep in the morning is a god send if you are not a morning person – believe me I know.

Even if you are just working remotely for normal office hours from home, you can wake up a lot later since you don’t have to commute and freshen up.

You can actually start working in your underwear while drinking you morning coffee 15 minutes from waking up, which is heavenly for people who dislike mornings.

I have actually realized the worst part about mornings is communicating with others. I can actually focus and think pretty straight but I don’t feel very verbal and get easily annoyed by others in the morning.

Working from home is the perfect solution for a problem like this.

How to start working from home yourself?

There you have it. Five points why people want to work from home instead of an office or other places of work.

These points apply to many people working from home remotely for an employer or to people running their own companies from home.

The biggest thing in favor of working from home for me personally is the complete freedom to decide my own schedules and content of work.

This of course is possible only if you are working for yourself and don’t have the burdens of a traditional business model like inventory, business premises and employees.

Working like this is possible because of the internet and thousands of people are doing it around the world.

I’m doing it while writing this article.

If you would like to know more, check out this article.

Like always, please drop a comment if you have any questions and I’ll do my best to answer them!