RPF0577-An_Honest_Analysis_of_the_Good_and_Bad_of_Working_From_Home
00:00:00.000 | Welcome to Radical Personal Finance, a show dedicated to providing you with the knowledge,
00:00:04.600 | skills, insight, and encouragement you need to live a rich and meaningful life now while
00:00:09.560 | building a plan for financial freedom in 10 years or less.
00:00:13.140 | My name is Joshua, and today I want to share with you some ideas about the good and bad
00:00:18.820 | of working from home, an honest analysis of the topic.
00:00:24.160 | I think this will serve you if you've ever thought, "Man, I wish I had a different circumstance
00:00:29.760 | than I'm in right now."
00:00:30.760 | I know for me, the idea of working from home, the idea of an independent livelihood has
00:00:36.560 | been something that I wanted for years, literally since I was about 15 years old.
00:00:43.000 | I've wanted to work from home.
00:00:44.320 | I always had an image of a guy with a laptop being able to make a living.
00:00:48.920 | I was in my middle teenage years during the time when it was first becoming more prominent
00:00:56.720 | that some people were figuring out how to make their living at the end of a laptop.
00:01:01.720 | That was in the late '90s at that time.
00:01:04.520 | I remember being intrigued and entranced by that particular topic.
00:01:09.180 | My brothers and I were very interested in figuring out how to make money on the internet,
00:01:14.320 | and again, all through our teens.
00:01:16.520 | By the way, we all succeeded, which kind of shows the power of goal setting.
00:01:22.320 | I thought I would be able to take it in a year or two or a few years.
00:01:26.560 | Unfortunately, the Get Rich Quick courses that I bought and the how to make a billion
00:01:29.640 | dollars from your internet, from your computer, a lot of that stuff didn't work out.
00:01:33.600 | It was a much more circuitous route than I ever anticipated, but in time, I did achieve
00:01:39.200 | it.
00:01:40.200 | However, just like with many goals, I've learned that working from home can be built
00:01:45.360 | up to be too much of a utopia.
00:01:50.040 | It's really not.
00:01:51.780 | It's really not a utopia.
00:01:54.160 | I can remember sitting in an office and just hating being there and being very frustrated
00:02:00.840 | with being there.
00:02:02.400 | I thought the only solution was to be able to work from home, and yet I'm here to share
00:02:08.240 | with you that's not the only solution.
00:02:12.040 | I think in the course of my presentation to you here today, you'll hear a very balanced
00:02:17.040 | and honest perspective on the good and the bad of working from home.
00:02:23.760 | I'd like to begin with sharing with you the reasons why I always wanted to work from home.
00:02:30.400 | The first part of that was I always wanted to be able to be available for and invested
00:02:35.940 | in the lives of my children.
00:02:38.720 | I've always desired to have this very integrated family unit.
00:02:43.080 | By my analysis, I think that a fragmented family unit is one of the most destructive
00:02:49.360 | trends in our modern culture.
00:02:52.000 | Very frequently, if you consider a family unit, you'll have a dad and a mom and children
00:02:57.560 | who, if they are together, physically together, which is increasingly rare as families continue
00:03:04.920 | to splinter, if they are together, their lives are frequently not organized together.
00:03:12.120 | Dad has his ideas about what is involved in his life.
00:03:15.280 | He's got his work.
00:03:16.620 | He's got his work buddies that he hangs out with.
00:03:19.060 | He's got his work goals, and he doesn't think that much about mom's goals or the children's
00:03:24.240 | goals.
00:03:25.240 | Mom has her work life, and she has her work buddies and her life there, and they're not
00:03:29.920 | really connected.
00:03:31.400 | Frequently, mothers and fathers who are in that circumstance might try to coordinate
00:03:35.840 | their calendars for family vacation, but there's not really a shared sense of purpose.
00:03:42.680 | Rather it's more of you've got your thing and I've got my thing, and I want to support
00:03:45.760 | you because I want you to be happy, but you've got your thing and I've got my thing.
00:03:49.480 | And then the children, of course, all have their own things.
00:03:52.300 | Very frequently in the modern US American family, the children's courses are set primarily
00:03:58.860 | by their school environment, and the parents have little input or influence over the curriculum
00:04:05.180 | that's chosen for their children, the values that are taught to their children, and the
00:04:08.940 | children just kind of come and go, taking their instruction primarily just from what
00:04:14.700 | they're taught in that particular system.
00:04:17.720 | But they're not part of an overall family unit.
00:04:20.580 | They don't really know what dad does.
00:04:22.540 | They may go to the office here and there, but they don't really know what dad does.
00:04:25.740 | They don't really know what mom does.
00:04:27.900 | And usually the work that mom and dad are engaged in is not something that the children
00:04:34.180 | care about or are taught to care about.
00:04:36.140 | They don't understand why it's meaningful.
00:04:38.180 | If dad's a lawyer, well, you know, dad does legal stuff, but we don't really know much
00:04:42.500 | and he talks about it sometimes.
00:04:44.980 | And I'm trying to give even in a positive case, let's say mom and dad get together and
00:04:49.820 | have dinner every night with the family, which is of course one of the most important things
00:04:53.380 | you could do for the stability of your children.
00:04:55.900 | Let's say that does happen.
00:04:57.580 | Very frequently the children aren't interested in or the parents aren't able to articulate
00:05:03.460 | things in a way that will engage the children.
00:05:05.940 | And so the lives of the modern US American family, even a family that is together physically,
00:05:13.540 | those lives tend to be disconnected and going in different directions.
00:05:18.540 | And there's not much of a shared sense of purpose, a sense of family mission, a sense
00:05:23.020 | of family identity even.
00:05:25.780 | Well, I oppose those things.
00:05:27.980 | I think there should be a sense of shared purpose, mission, a sense of family identity.
00:05:35.820 | And I don't fully know exactly how that's created.
00:05:39.700 | I don't think you have to have a family business in order to create that sense of family mission,
00:05:45.420 | but I think a family business might serve that goal.
00:05:48.420 | I don't think you have to be physically together in order to build a sense of coherent identity
00:05:54.020 | as far as the values of a certain family, but I think that working together can help
00:05:58.660 | those values to be absorbed and assimilated by the younger generation.
00:06:05.260 | And so for a long time I've wanted to be able to work from home so that my wife and I could
00:06:09.840 | build a more integrated family unit, a family that's going to mean something, that's going
00:06:16.180 | to do something throughout the course of history, not a bunch of individuals who happen to share
00:06:21.700 | a name.
00:06:22.700 | And I've always seen being able to work from home as an important component of that.
00:06:28.580 | And that's been a primary motivator for me.
00:06:33.140 | Another part of my own personal vision as far as why I've always wanted to be able to
00:06:38.060 | work from home is just the simple coziness of being able to do intellectually stimulating
00:06:43.940 | work in a cozy environment.
00:06:46.520 | Most of my personal experience in many office environments, I learned that those environments
00:06:52.940 | didn't have much of a sense of coziness.
00:06:58.100 | I guess to use some of the modern vernacular, it's hard to create that sense of hygge in
00:07:04.520 | the modern office environment, whereas I've always seen that as home.
00:07:09.620 | Now part of that would be simply due to the fact that I was born and raised in a very
00:07:14.220 | welcoming environment.
00:07:16.880 | My home was always a place of joy, of peace, of serenity.
00:07:21.340 | It was always a place of warmth and love.
00:07:24.040 | And so because of that, I associate home with all of those things.
00:07:27.420 | I know people who have a different background, people for whom their home experience did
00:07:33.860 | not relate to those positive attributes and virtues, they have a very different sense
00:07:38.280 | of home.
00:07:39.280 | I've always liked to be in the home and offices are often very sterile, very cold,
00:07:45.520 | very uninviting.
00:07:49.480 | And I like to be in a cozy place and be able to do interesting and meaningful work.
00:07:53.480 | And I always thought that would be best done in a house, at home.
00:07:58.840 | I've also been strongly drawn to some of the financial benefits and lifestyle benefits
00:08:05.640 | of working from home.
00:08:07.000 | For example, obvious lowering of expenses by removing the cost of commuting.
00:08:11.800 | That's always been meaningful to me.
00:08:13.160 | If you could remove the cost of commuting, remove the cost of second car ownership, et
00:08:17.160 | cetera, you can dramatically lower your personal expenses.
00:08:20.600 | And that's assuming even that you don't take advantage of some of the various tax benefits
00:08:24.880 | of dedicating some portion of your home to your personal business.
00:08:29.940 | But also some of the larger benefits from the geographic flexibility, the idea of geo-arbitrage,
00:08:36.520 | being able to live in the less expensive part of town that's still a beautiful place, but
00:08:42.360 | because it doesn't have easy access to the downtown business center, you can get there
00:08:47.760 | for a cheaper price and have a higher lifestyle for a cheaper price.
00:08:51.760 | Or some of the geographic arbitrage that can be gained on a national or international basis.
00:08:57.600 | If you can live in Mississippi and earn at New York City wages, your lifestyle in Mississippi
00:09:04.600 | can be very, very enjoyable and you can also salt away quite a bit of money.
00:09:11.800 | Similarly, if you can live in Thailand and earn at London wage rates, your lifestyle
00:09:18.880 | can be excellent and your future financial freedom can be enhanced by that geographic
00:09:24.320 | arbitrage.
00:09:26.040 | When you bring in concepts such as being able to earn income outside of the jurisdiction
00:09:31.720 | of any particular government by building your life in such a way that you can move outside
00:09:37.200 | of the taxing authorities, etc., there are significant benefits to being able to do work
00:09:42.840 | that's not geographically restricted.
00:09:45.800 | And some of, I guess frankly, the last reason is just that it's always been a better perceived
00:09:51.120 | lifestyle.
00:09:52.120 | I've always wanted my Monday mornings not to be painful.
00:09:55.480 | And I remember so many times the idea when I was younger, we would, I guess I remember
00:10:00.760 | in college, I went to a Super Bowl Sunday party one time and it went late, the game
00:10:06.200 | went late and I'm on the East Coast, so of course that means that it's the latest of
00:10:10.480 | any of the time zones in the United States.
00:10:13.280 | And people party hard on Sunday afternoon and then they dread Monday morning.
00:10:17.680 | Well, I've always thought, why don't you just move Monday morning back and if you're going
00:10:20.960 | to be up late on Sunday for something that's important to you, just move Monday morning
00:10:24.000 | back and instead of starting at eight, start at 11.
00:10:27.200 | And that just seems to me to deliver a better perceived lifestyle.
00:10:31.400 | Those were some of the reasons why, since I was in my teens, I've wanted to work from
00:10:36.640 | home.
00:10:37.640 | Now, reality is that some of those things are truly excellent, truly nice, truly good.
00:10:47.120 | And some of those visions matched up with reality.
00:10:51.480 | But of course the opposite is also true.
00:10:53.200 | As with much goal setting, I had a more utopian idea and I wasn't able to fairly appreciate
00:10:59.920 | some of the benefits of not working from home.
00:11:03.280 | Whereas today I look back and I recognize some of those benefits as being things that
00:11:08.360 | I miss.
00:11:09.360 | So let's start with the reality.
00:11:10.920 | The reality of working from home is it is and can be very comfortable and very pleasurable.
00:11:18.800 | You can build for yourself a very nice environment.
00:11:22.440 | And although I've been in some beautifully decorated offices over the years by people
00:11:26.420 | who were able to generate a very warm atmosphere in their private office, that's nothing compared
00:11:33.040 | to what you can create within your own home.
00:11:36.600 | You can create a beautiful study, a beautiful work environment that is exactly how you want
00:11:43.660 | it to be.
00:11:44.660 | And that can be very, very comfortable.
00:11:48.120 | And in a moment I'll talk about some solutions, but I love the solution of having an office
00:11:53.280 | that is on the same physical property as your house but is outside of the house.
00:11:58.000 | And I think of some of those types of offices that I've been fortunate to be in, of wealthy
00:12:02.960 | people who have created their perfect office environment.
00:12:06.480 | And they're just the kind of places where you love to be, where I really enjoy being.
00:12:11.240 | And it's easier to do and it's really nice and comfortable and pleasurable.
00:12:16.120 | I really love the ability to integrate my work life with some of my other life events,
00:12:22.120 | especially life events in the world of my children.
00:12:25.880 | By not having to commute into the city, I'm more available for those moments, those times,
00:12:32.320 | those special afternoons, those special activities.
00:12:34.520 | If it's a particularly beautiful day and my brain is not working, I've learned instead
00:12:39.080 | of just chaining myself to the desk to try to beat it out, I've learned just to say,
00:12:43.800 | "I'm done," and to go.
00:12:45.920 | A number of years ago I had an experience where I was just totally stuck.
00:12:49.280 | I could not seem to create and I was so frustrated.
00:12:53.120 | And I would go, this was after the course of a couple of days and I had nothing to give.
00:12:57.900 | And finally I just threw up my hands and I said, "That's it."
00:13:01.760 | And I took my family to the beach and we went and hung out at the beach and played on the
00:13:05.960 | beach and I came home from that experience.
00:13:08.960 | And instantly several things were clear.
00:13:12.560 | I sat down in front of a microphone, I cranked out a whole bunch of particularly useful work,
00:13:18.080 | but it didn't come to me while I was sitting at my desk.
00:13:20.000 | It came to me while I was playing with my children at the beach.
00:13:22.960 | That's the kind of opportunity that very few people have when they work in an office, but
00:13:28.120 | you might more frequently be able to have when you work from home.
00:13:34.480 | In addition, I have to say that the idea of geo-arbitrage is really cool.
00:13:39.320 | It's really, really powerful.
00:13:41.280 | I haven't fully appreciated it until I've been traveling.
00:13:46.080 | I had not fully appreciated it until our travels the past few months.
00:13:52.560 | But when you can earn an income independent of a geographic location, that's really, really
00:13:58.440 | powerful because it opens up the world to you, literally the world.
00:14:04.880 | And from a planning perspective, I had never appreciated that as fully as I probably should
00:14:11.080 | have until the past couple of months.
00:14:14.640 | I could live and work from anywhere and I'm so grateful.
00:14:18.320 | I'm so blessed to be able to do that.
00:14:22.120 | And yet it is really, really neat when you can move and you can live in the place that
00:14:27.520 | you want to live.
00:14:28.520 | I've met so many people living in places that they never thought they would be able to.
00:14:33.720 | And a lot of it has been gained through being able to earn their income remotely.
00:14:39.800 | If you go and look in some of the resort towns, we've passed through a number of resort towns.
00:14:44.760 | If you talk to people, it used to be that those resort towns were populated primarily
00:14:50.700 | by some lower paid service workers and retirees who could afford to live there because they
00:14:58.640 | had their wealth earned independently.
00:15:01.520 | But now it seems more and more that you find increasing numbers of young professionals
00:15:06.400 | who enjoy living in those resort towns and because they can earn their living at the
00:15:12.400 | end of an internet connection, they're able to live there while not yet being independently
00:15:19.040 | wealthy.
00:15:20.040 | That is really, really neat to be able to have that geo arbitrage.
00:15:23.120 | It's really cool.
00:15:25.040 | And I think it sets the stage for all kinds of lifestyle choices that hitherto were unimaginable
00:15:33.600 | for the common person, the common person who didn't come from an inherited wealth base,
00:15:38.520 | but rather had the responsibility of earning their wealth and saving it themselves.
00:15:43.640 | That's really, really cool.
00:15:46.080 | But working from home also comes with a number of difficulties that I hadn't previously accounted
00:15:52.640 | for in my own thinking.
00:15:55.500 | The first, it can be very hard on the family.
00:15:59.640 | In the early days of Radical Personal Finance, my wife and I had, I can't remember, I think
00:16:05.640 | we had one child and he was pretty young, a few months old, I think, when I started
00:16:11.360 | doing the show.
00:16:12.360 | And one of the biggest challenges was transitioning from my leaving the house every day to my
00:16:18.000 | being home in the house every day.
00:16:20.800 | And that transition was a significant lifestyle change.
00:16:24.420 | Now I've been very fortunate that my wife is not the kind of person who spends all of
00:16:30.160 | her time interrupting me during my workday and wishing that I would spend time with her.
00:16:35.060 | But it was hard for her to figure out, "What do I do now that Joshua's home?"
00:16:39.860 | Because of course, when I'm in the home, the family dynamic is different than when I'm
00:16:43.940 | not in the home.
00:16:45.520 | And so when I'm in the home and coming and going from the kitchen to get a cup of coffee
00:16:49.940 | or a glass of water or a snack, then I'm there, but I'm not emotionally available in the same
00:16:55.620 | way that I am at other times.
00:16:58.280 | And that took time, that took work, and that was a significant challenge to make that transition
00:17:04.620 | period.
00:17:05.620 | But that was a relatively short-term challenge because once she got used to it and once I
00:17:08.900 | got used to it, it really worked out well enough.
00:17:11.540 | There weren't any long-term issues with that particular challenge.
00:17:17.400 | But there have been other things that are challenging.
00:17:20.620 | For example, one of the most significant is that it's hard to get meaningful work done
00:17:24.660 | with young children around.
00:17:26.340 | Now that's the phase of life that we're in and we embrace it fully, but I have to admit
00:17:30.900 | that it's hard to get meaningful work done with young children around.
00:17:35.180 | The microphone here at Radical Personal Finance has been silent over the last few weeks, and
00:17:38.980 | there have been a number of reasons for that.
00:17:41.220 | But one of the major reasons is just simply that I couldn't figure out how and where to
00:17:45.420 | get work done.
00:17:46.980 | I didn't have an office space, I didn't have anything set up.
00:17:50.900 | I have solved that problem, I think.
00:17:53.300 | Today is my first day in my new mobile office space and I think it'll work out well.
00:17:59.260 | And thus far, today's experience has been proving that I was right.
00:18:03.160 | But that's hard, of course, in a small, perhaps couple hundred foot RV, but it's still not
00:18:08.220 | easy in a house.
00:18:10.100 | For me, noise isolation is challenging.
00:18:13.080 | One of the most difficult things of creating audio has been noise isolation, but even isolation
00:18:17.780 | in terms of movement.
00:18:20.260 | We previously had lived in a place that had a separate bedroom that didn't have a pass-through,
00:18:25.280 | but right before traveling, we'd spent the last couple of years living in a place where
00:18:29.060 | the access to the backyard was through my office.
00:18:33.240 | And that was really exasperating.
00:18:36.140 | I'd be in the middle of a train of thought, I'd be working on something, and then all
00:18:39.100 | of a sudden here would come a troop of children to go through the backyard.
00:18:42.140 | And there was no other real choice.
00:18:45.460 | It wasn't as though I could fairly say, "No, we can't go through the office right now,"
00:18:50.820 | but it would be so disruptive that it was just physically hard to be able to focus.
00:18:55.620 | And so I found that it's very difficult with young children.
00:19:01.540 | Don't kid yourself about it.
00:19:03.380 | If you have young children and you want to work from home, don't kid yourself.
00:19:07.300 | It's tough.
00:19:08.300 | It's really tough.
00:19:10.580 | To figure out an environment where that will actually work.
00:19:14.740 | They are very disruptive.
00:19:16.860 | I'm so thankful for them.
00:19:19.340 | They are incredibly disruptive.
00:19:21.900 | Of course, also in the home, it's easy for you to get distracted.
00:19:26.420 | It's easy to allow yourself to become distracted.
00:19:28.820 | Now your distractions may be different than mine.
00:19:31.380 | My Achilles heel is simply the internet.
00:19:34.620 | There's so much that I can get distracted into and drawn into that it's easy for me
00:19:39.280 | to waste hours on things that really don't contribute to my own personal goals and my
00:19:44.020 | own personal lifestyle.
00:19:45.780 | Some people have the distraction of television or of activities around their house that they
00:19:50.540 | would like to engage in.
00:19:52.500 | But it's challenging if you don't have a place that you're used to doing work.
00:19:56.780 | It's challenging to make that switch from personal mode to business mode because I don't
00:20:02.940 | want to be productive 24 hours a day.
00:20:05.140 | I don't want to spend all of my time working and putting forth work, but I do want to be
00:20:09.620 | productive when I'm working.
00:20:11.500 | There's something about having a commute of some kind, whether it's a walk across the
00:20:15.340 | property, down the street, a drive across town.
00:20:18.140 | A commute can allow you that transitional space where you get your mind ready for work.
00:20:23.500 | And then on the way home, you get your mind ready for home and you enter those two different
00:20:27.220 | things.
00:20:28.220 | Frequently, what I have found is it's hard to transition from work mode to home mode.
00:20:34.340 | I may be sitting at my desk working and then I recognize, "Ah, it's time for me to quit."
00:20:39.020 | And I'm in the middle of thinking about things that are so far away from my personal life
00:20:43.660 | or I'm concerned about something or I'm stressed about a major decision.
00:20:48.260 | And then I come home and it's hard for me to put a smile on my face and say, "Hi, honey,
00:20:51.900 | I'm home."
00:20:52.900 | My wife and I have this little tradition that it's silly, but I do the way of transitioning
00:20:58.820 | to let her know that I'm here and available is I come out the door and I say, "Hi, honey,
00:21:03.980 | I'm home."
00:21:05.020 | And it helps me to transition.
00:21:06.140 | But still, I wish for the time.
00:21:09.540 | Sometimes I need about 10 or 15 minutes in the car to adjust and to transition.
00:21:14.740 | Working from home is often very lonely, especially if you're not involved in a virtual team environment
00:21:21.940 | of some kind.
00:21:24.020 | It can be just very lonely.
00:21:26.260 | It can be very difficult to stay focused.
00:21:28.540 | If you don't have someone to talk to about what you're doing, about what the next actions
00:21:32.780 | are, those meetings, it's of course easy to hate on those team meetings where you sit
00:21:38.420 | down around a conference table and try to figure out what's next.
00:21:42.680 | But frankly, those are very helpful to help you figure out what to do.
00:21:47.060 | And when it's just you at your desk, it's hard to figure out what to do.
00:21:51.260 | Now, I think that can be mitigated to some extent if you're involved with a team, co-workers,
00:21:56.500 | employees, people who you're interacting with.
00:21:59.740 | Then that aspect can be mitigated.
00:22:02.320 | But it is a truth.
00:22:03.900 | And often you miss out on just talking to adults and having those natural ad hoc conversations.
00:22:12.900 | One of the biggest challenges experienced by, that is often joked about by stay-at-home
00:22:18.540 | moms is the desire for adult conversation.
00:22:24.820 | When you spend all your day talking to little children, just having an adult conversation
00:22:28.840 | can feel like a breath of fresh air.
00:22:31.020 | Well, I have certainly experienced that.
00:22:33.780 | One of the things that I'm grateful for, having worked from home, I have a much deeper appreciation
00:22:39.620 | of what it's like to be a stay-at-home mom than I think many fathers do.
00:22:44.260 | And if you're a father, I encourage you, perhaps it would be good for you to spend
00:22:48.180 | a few days at home to understand what happens in your wife's daily routine.
00:22:51.460 | A lot of fathers who go off to the workplace often have very naive understandings of what
00:22:56.580 | happens in the home.
00:22:58.020 | But that rabbit trail aside, it's the same experience that I've had working from home
00:23:03.420 | that often you just wish for a friendly conversation.
00:23:07.000 | What happens is, at least for me, if I don't get a chance to talk to many people in person,
00:23:13.340 | I miss out on the normal human interaction.
00:23:16.680 | And yet because of the availability of the internet, all I see is internet speech.
00:23:21.640 | And I struggle to understand how much of internet speech is real.
00:23:25.420 | I have friends who I've spoken with on this and they say, "Well, all internet speech
00:23:28.780 | is unreal."
00:23:30.300 | I don't quite buy that.
00:23:31.980 | And by here I mean, I'm referring to the vicious commentary, the ugliness of speech,
00:23:37.480 | the personal attacks that seem to flow so freely from one person to another.
00:23:41.900 | I don't think that that's all unreal.
00:23:43.980 | Those are real people who are typing those things out.
00:23:47.480 | But I don't also think that it's all entirely real.
00:23:51.300 | And for me, I so desperately need to get out into the world and to spend time with people
00:23:56.620 | who I'm not interacting with on the internet to regain a little bit of confidence in some
00:24:02.180 | sense of normalcy, of people's willingness and ability to interact with each other as
00:24:07.380 | humans, to have civil conversations with one another.
00:24:11.100 | And that's been a real challenge for me personally, to identify the lines.
00:24:15.340 | Where is the line between what's real and what's not?
00:24:18.600 | Interacting at the internet versus other things.
00:24:21.780 | So that's one experience.
00:24:24.540 | And so it's very easy when working from home to get lonely.
00:24:28.140 | And I never appreciated how important those ad hoc conversations really were.
00:24:35.100 | The ability to talk with somebody at work and just to bump into them, just bumping into
00:24:39.740 | people and enjoying those off-topic conversations, I have a greater appreciation for them now
00:24:47.300 | than ever before.
00:24:48.740 | It can also be just simply very boring to be in the same place all the time.
00:24:52.800 | If you are in your house, even if you love your house, if you're in your house and you
00:24:58.460 | live in your house and you work in your house, that can be really boring.
00:25:03.500 | And if your personality is anything like mine, at least, you can crave a little bit of external
00:25:09.420 | stimulation.
00:25:10.700 | And so you might find that you wind up underappreciating being at home and you might find that you
00:25:16.980 | wind up going out more to compensate for that sameness of routine, that sameness of place.
00:25:24.500 | Now that might be a good thing.
00:25:25.620 | You might further embrace the opportunities for adventure in your local town because you
00:25:30.180 | have more energy and more desire to go and embrace those.
00:25:32.820 | It could also be a down, a not so good thing.
00:25:35.440 | You might wind up spending more money than you otherwise thought you would.
00:25:42.500 | But those are some real, real factors.
00:25:45.260 | So in short, it's not all good and it's not all bad, just like with anything.
00:25:49.980 | It's not a utopia.
00:25:51.380 | There are certain problems that can be mitigated and can be solved.
00:25:54.980 | But I think those problems and ideas that can be improved, whether you're in an office
00:26:00.240 | environment or in a home environment, I think they can be mitigated both ways.
00:26:06.340 | I don't intend to go back to the corporate world.
00:26:09.620 | Now if the circumstances of my life ended up leading me in that direction, I wouldn't
00:26:14.340 | be opposed to it.
00:26:15.340 | I'd actually appreciate certain things more than I appreciate them now.
00:26:18.900 | Just like I've previously recorded shows on the value of being an employee.
00:26:23.700 | When you are an employee, it's easy to look at the value of being a business owner and
00:26:27.900 | to say, "Well, everything would be better in the world of self-employment."
00:26:30.740 | And as a business owner, it's very easy to look back over at the world of employment
00:26:34.660 | and say, "Man, I wish I just were an employee.
00:26:36.620 | I wish I just had some vacation days or somebody to call in sick to or stated tasks where I
00:26:43.140 | didn't have to figure out what to do and also do it.
00:26:45.100 | I just went in and did what my boss told me to."
00:26:47.740 | I think it's the same with this particular environment.
00:26:50.980 | But here's my best analysis at trying to solve some of the problems both ways.
00:26:55.540 | First of all, in the office environment.
00:26:57.880 | The major problems that I used to have with an office environment were the requirement
00:27:02.940 | to be in that office when I didn't need to be in that office.
00:27:08.940 | I can remember being there and it's 4.42 and I've finished all my work and yet I know I
00:27:15.380 | can't leave till 5 and yet I've got to just keep on being there at my desk.
00:27:22.340 | And you kind of get to the point where like, "What's the point of this?
00:27:25.660 | I want to go."
00:27:27.940 | Other examples would be days that you have people in town, friends of yours who visit,
00:27:33.020 | and you want to take the day off and show them around town, but you know you can't really
00:27:36.140 | do that because you've got to be at work.
00:27:38.220 | Or it's a beautiful day and you want to go surfing or snow skiing and take advantage
00:27:42.300 | of the weather, but you can't because you've got to be there in the office.
00:27:46.300 | Well, I think that problem can be solved in a couple of ways.
00:27:49.980 | First, that problem is largely solved by moving up the ranks.
00:27:54.500 | If you are an entry-level, line-level employee, you're probably going to be required to be
00:27:59.140 | there at those certain times.
00:28:00.820 | But if you are a management-level employee or an owner or partner-level employee, you
00:28:05.940 | can pretty much come and go as you like because you're held accountable for your results,
00:28:11.060 | not for your time.
00:28:12.700 | And so you can solve that problem by moving up.
00:28:15.820 | You can also solve it by choosing different kinds of work.
00:28:19.540 | That's always been a high priority, and it continues to be a high priority for me.
00:28:22.220 | I would very much not want to go into a job environment where I were required to be there
00:28:27.580 | from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. every day.
00:28:30.660 | So you can just think carefully about your job.
00:28:32.700 | And instead of choosing a job of being a banker, you can choose a job of selling life insurance.
00:28:39.980 | The financial skills associated with both of them, but one of them is going to require
00:28:44.780 | you to be at the teller window from 8 to 5 or whatever those banker hours are.
00:28:49.360 | The other is going to give you that personal autonomy.
00:28:52.140 | So you can make those choices and solve those problems in your own life if you're in an
00:28:57.960 | office environment by simply moving up or making a different career choice.
00:29:04.420 | One other strategy is just appreciate that with the 8 to 5 comes the ability to leave
00:29:09.300 | at 5.
00:29:10.540 | I don't think it's a good idea really unless you're really convinced and you can have your
00:29:15.140 | work pay off with your career by really putting in the hours.
00:29:19.460 | I don't think if you're paid for an hourly job, I think you should leave at that time.
00:29:24.060 | I had a family member who was a government school teacher.
00:29:26.760 | One of the things I most appreciated about him was he left as soon as he didn't stick
00:29:32.400 | around and put in an extra 20 hours of work per week in the evenings being a government
00:29:39.280 | school teacher.
00:29:40.280 | He left at 3.30 or whatever the time was and he made sure that he got all the work needed
00:29:44.360 | to be done during that time.
00:29:47.440 | There's no reason for you to spend more time at a job unless it's actually going to pay
00:29:51.060 | off in the long term.
00:29:52.520 | But the great thing is when you leave that kind of job, you can leave it and there's
00:29:56.220 | no stress that follows you.
00:29:58.120 | My wife was always very good about this.
00:30:00.400 | She never gave her employers her cell phone numbers.
00:30:03.280 | She never interacted with them.
00:30:04.920 | This was in the era when it was common to do that, but she didn't put her work email
00:30:08.460 | on her phone.
00:30:09.640 | She just always left.
00:30:11.160 | I think that that would benefit many of us today to put those things in place.
00:30:17.080 | Your employer might need a copy of your cell phone number for the emergency files, but
00:30:21.320 | you should never answer it.
00:30:23.160 | Don't answer the text messages, don't answer the emails and keep that line drawn.
00:30:28.180 | Unless it's going to pay off for you, just take advantage of that.
00:30:31.800 | And then you can, instead of substituting that, instead of having that frustration about
00:30:35.880 | the fact that it's 4.42 and you can't leave, you can appreciate the fact that at 5.01 you're
00:30:41.200 | free of the job.
00:30:42.840 | And so that can be helped.
00:30:45.320 | Another major problem with the office is working with people that you don't like.
00:30:49.320 | Just being exposed and being forced into a circumstance and a situation with people you
00:30:53.360 | don't like.
00:30:54.360 | I simply point out to you this, you're not forced to be there.
00:30:59.200 | So leave and go find an office with people that you do like.
00:31:04.940 | Other problems with the offices in terms of the commute, those can be solved with planning.
00:31:10.280 | For example, you can live close to work and you might work downtown, but if you also live
00:31:16.920 | downtown then you can enjoy living that downtown lifestyle.
00:31:20.600 | Or you can look into some transportation route into your town where instead of having to
00:31:29.040 | sit in traffic on the highway, you think about being on a bus route or on a bike route.
00:31:36.180 | I am profoundly convinced of the value of buying a house or renting an apartment that's
00:31:41.360 | closer to work, even if it costs you more money.
00:31:44.960 | I think that's a good lifestyle decision, a good expense to bear if you can make the
00:31:49.440 | numbers work.
00:31:50.440 | I'm also very much convinced of the value of choosing a neighborhood that is close to
00:31:56.120 | a transportation route, such as a bus route or a train route that would be convenient
00:32:01.200 | to get you to your office location.
00:32:04.040 | And I think that if you're working in a job that you have this kind of choice over, you
00:32:08.560 | should choose your job based upon its location.
00:32:12.000 | Very frequently people will choose a job in a location that doesn't fit some of those
00:32:18.080 | things.
00:32:19.080 | And I'm talking about the kinds of jobs where there are many versions of those.
00:32:22.720 | I recently was interacting with somebody in a grocery store and I found out that they
00:32:26.920 | lived several towns over, but they commuted into this town.
00:32:29.680 | And I thought, "Why do you commute into this town?
00:32:32.480 | You're working at a grocery store.
00:32:34.360 | Just go and get this same kind of job, but instead of working at a grocery store, work
00:32:38.160 | at an auto parts store or something so you can avoid this commute."
00:32:41.240 | Because so much of your money is being sucked up in this commute.
00:32:45.000 | So if you work at a job that's very fungible, where you can substitute one job for another
00:32:51.560 | one, then choose a job that is close to a bus stop or close to a train stop or has a
00:32:56.720 | beautiful bike path.
00:32:58.340 | We passed through in our travels a town that has this beautiful bike path going from one
00:33:03.640 | end of town to the other.
00:33:05.520 | And you could easily choose to live a couple miles outside of downtown, but by choosing
00:33:10.040 | a place that was near that bike path, you could bike in on this beautiful greenway into
00:33:14.800 | the downtown urban environment.
00:33:16.960 | That's a really strong decision that I think really would pay off.
00:33:20.720 | And you should be willing to pay more money to enhance that lifestyle.
00:33:24.760 | And there are those benefits of being in an office that if you appreciate them and you
00:33:28.880 | plan around mitigating some of the things that you don't like and figure out how those
00:33:34.500 | can be mitigated for you personally, you can really improve your quality of life without
00:33:40.520 | working from home.
00:33:42.080 | Now back to working from home, I think the most important thing about working from home
00:33:46.460 | is the optionality of it.
00:33:48.640 | The fact, the thing I most appreciate about working from home is the fact that I can work
00:33:53.920 | from home or I can choose not to work from home.
00:33:57.880 | Because then it gives me that sense of freedom.
00:34:00.440 | But you don't have to have a home office to do that.
00:34:03.640 | I think it's nice to have, if you're working in your home, it's really worth it to pursue
00:34:09.760 | establishing a separate facility for working, meaning a separate room, a separate suite
00:34:17.800 | in the basement.
00:34:18.800 | I think an ideal situation is to have a separate physical structure.
00:34:24.040 | Now that helps me in terms of sound isolation with my unique type of work, but it'll help
00:34:29.160 | you with sound isolation as well, being able to make conference calls or business calls
00:34:33.720 | without hearing the dog barking in the background, et cetera.
00:34:37.280 | And so if you can build a separate facility, a simple backyard shed will suffice that you
00:34:42.520 | go to, then you can have a place where work is done and where you go home.
00:34:47.900 | One of the entrepreneurs that I interacted with that I just thought had just the most
00:34:51.800 | beautiful facility, he had about a five acre farm.
00:34:55.240 | It's not a farm, a five acre property in a somewhat rural subdivision.
00:35:01.760 | And he had the house, but he had converted the barn to this wonderful office and conference
00:35:09.320 | space.
00:35:10.560 | And the walk down to the barn was not insignificant.
00:35:13.820 | It was perhaps 100, 200 yards, 100, 200 yards.
00:35:19.720 | It wasn't across the 30 foot backyard, it was a couple of hundred yards.
00:35:23.480 | And yet that walk of a couple of hundred yards was ideal because it provided that transitional
00:35:28.680 | space where he was going to work.
00:35:31.520 | And yet his facility in the formerly converted barn was beautiful.
00:35:35.880 | It was so comfortable and cozy.
00:35:38.800 | It was the kind of place that you really wanted to be.
00:35:43.400 | And I think that's the best type of work from home environment to have.
00:35:47.640 | It's really nice to have a separate facility for working.
00:35:51.420 | That solves some of those family problems.
00:35:53.480 | That solves some of the ability to get meaningful work done with young children around.
00:35:58.440 | And it also gives you some measure of flexibility while not removing those benefits of working
00:36:06.440 | from home.
00:36:07.440 | I think it's well worth considering the modern co-working movement.
00:36:11.700 | In my travels, I've tried to visit a number of co-working spaces and facilities.
00:36:16.760 | And those co-working spaces and facilities, I think, really do meet some of those needs
00:36:22.100 | of entrepreneurs or of independent workers where they have the ability to interact with
00:36:27.300 | people on that ad hoc basis, even though their work is independent.
00:36:32.440 | And that gives them the ability to move and to travel, but you're not confined to one
00:36:38.340 | specific location, but it gives you those benefits of being in an office space where
00:36:42.800 | you have a separate space.
00:36:44.460 | And that's why they're growing so much.
00:36:46.420 | I expect that trend to continue.
00:36:47.900 | And I think it's a very positive and healthy trend.
00:36:51.700 | And I would like to support it in any way I can.
00:36:55.460 | I think the factor of loneliness of working from home by yourself can be solved and should
00:37:00.180 | be solved by developing a team and/or by cultivating more meaningful social interaction outside
00:37:07.740 | of work.
00:37:09.460 | My wife and I have talked a lot about this in terms of your social relationships.
00:37:14.360 | What I realized is how much of our relationships are simply there because of factors we didn't
00:37:24.020 | intentionally choose.
00:37:26.060 | What I mean is those relationships are frequently with co-workers just because that's who we
00:37:31.860 | know.
00:37:32.860 | And we don't take the time or effort to cultivate relationships with those who we'd really like
00:37:37.800 | to spend time with, but we may not choose to work with.
00:37:41.360 | So I try to look at that as an opportunity to embrace more social activity, but more
00:37:46.800 | intentional social activity.
00:37:49.520 | Some of the boringness of being in the same place all the time, I think that also can
00:37:52.880 | be compensated by taking advantage of the fact that you are location independent.
00:37:59.120 | Here, I think, again, working in a co-working space or renting an office is well worth considering,
00:38:05.300 | but do it in a way or place that solves your personal desires.
00:38:11.360 | As I've traveled and stayed in RV parks and campgrounds, I've interacted with a lot of
00:38:15.920 | people who do live and work on the road full-time or part-time.
00:38:22.060 | One of the most interesting people with whom I interacted was this man I met.
00:38:26.520 | And he had this big, beautiful motorhome, big, probably 40-something foot, class A motorhome,
00:38:32.320 | practically brand new.
00:38:33.320 | It was about two years old.
00:38:34.780 | He'd already put 50-something thousand miles on it, even though it was two years old and
00:38:38.140 | he bought it brand new.
00:38:39.440 | And as I inquired of his situation, he works for a large company doing remote customer
00:38:47.260 | service work.
00:38:48.720 | And so his job requires him to be on the phone and on the computer with customers during
00:38:54.420 | the entire normal 40-hour work week.
00:38:57.620 | But what he has chosen to do is to spend about 50% of his time traveling during the year.
00:39:03.980 | So he and his wife, his wife also works independently, he and his wife have a house in a big city
00:39:11.860 | and they spend a good amount of time there.
00:39:13.800 | But then they also go on the road a lot.
00:39:15.700 | Sometimes she goes, sometimes she doesn't.
00:39:18.500 | But he works his normal 40-hour work week.
00:39:22.160 | But then when he's done, he comes out his front door, he gets on the bicycle, and he
00:39:25.780 | loves to go and explore small towns.
00:39:28.460 | And so his reason for doing it is every night, instead of going to the same pizza place around
00:39:33.860 | the corner, every night he explores a new restaurant in a new small town.
00:39:37.740 | He goes to all the small town museums and he travels and seems to spend about a week
00:39:42.140 | in each place.
00:39:43.340 | And he really likes that particular lifestyle.
00:39:46.660 | And with their circumstance being middle-aged, a middle-aged couple, that class A motorhome
00:39:52.660 | was just a palace for them, frankly.
00:39:56.140 | I chuckled at the fact that he doesn't even bother to put out one or two of his slides
00:40:00.340 | because he doesn't need the space and just feels too big inside.
00:40:03.660 | That's how big and beautiful his motorhome was.
00:40:07.540 | So he was working in a traditional job that does allow that kind of disconnected location
00:40:15.540 | where he doesn't have to work in the central call center.
00:40:18.920 | And he was embracing it to enjoy his particular desired travel lifestyle.
00:40:25.900 | So that's my analysis for you, my overview of the good and the bad of working from home.
00:40:32.780 | I hope that you can use it.
00:40:34.420 | What I have found in the past, it's often hard to see the benefits of your own situation
00:40:39.140 | until those benefits are lost because of a life change.
00:40:43.180 | And if you're working a job, it's often hard to see the benefits of that job until you
00:40:46.620 | leave and try something else.
00:40:48.700 | And so I hope that if you've experienced frustration with your office job, I hope that these ideas
00:40:55.340 | will help you to appreciate a few things about your office job.
00:40:58.380 | I believe that those frustrations can be mitigated.
00:41:01.440 | And if you've experienced frustration with your home-based job, then I hope that these
00:41:05.540 | ideas will help you to mitigate some of that frustration.
00:41:09.060 | Frankly, none of us have anything to complain about because we live in the most incredible
00:41:14.720 | time in human history where we can choose the work that we do more than any past generation
00:41:21.740 | has ever been able to do.
00:41:22.940 | A few months ago, I taught the Radical Personal Finance Guide to Career and Income Planning.
00:41:28.780 | And as I went through and developed the curriculum for that course, one of the ideas that impacted
00:41:36.380 | me so deeply was how incredibly blessed we are to be able to choose these circumstances
00:41:43.700 | of our life.
00:41:44.700 | That is fundamentally new.
00:41:47.200 | Throughout human history, you did the work that your parents did or that your parents
00:41:52.500 | were able to apprentice you to somebody to learn.
00:41:55.620 | You worked in the place where you grew up because you didn't know many of those options.
00:42:00.380 | And if you did pursue something else, for example, if you decided you want to get on
00:42:04.700 | a ship and sail across the ocean or walk across a country and start a new life, that often
00:42:09.660 | came with the complete abandonment of everything with which you were familiar.
00:42:14.740 | But in today's world, very frequently people get to try new things, new places, new lifestyles
00:42:20.500 | without entirely abandoning all of the old and comfortable and familiar.
00:42:25.460 | The best example of this would be the embrace of modern air travel.
00:42:30.220 | If you look at how many people are able to move across the country or move across the
00:42:33.460 | world and yet still travel home for the holidays, the fact that these options are available
00:42:39.680 | to a swollen middle class is really incredible.
00:42:45.140 | What once was the luxury of the elite wealthy is now a commonplace experience of the middle
00:42:53.020 | class.
00:42:54.020 | And we should be grateful for those opportunities.
00:42:55.860 | We should be grateful for the many choices that we have in our world.
00:43:00.960 | And in any job, any occupation, any type of business, you can take that and you can either
00:43:08.340 | adjust the circumstances of that job to suit you a little bit more, or you can find a different
00:43:14.980 | expression of that job or business that will suit your personality and suit your own personal
00:43:21.060 | goals.
00:43:25.220 | In closing, I would encourage you, take your own situation seriously.
00:43:30.540 | Consider what's good, what's working, what's not.
00:43:32.900 | You know, as I sit here in my new digs of my office that will travel with me on the
00:43:37.620 | road, I'm pleased with it.
00:43:41.540 | One day working in it so far, pleased.
00:43:43.940 | But it's because of just major problems.
00:43:47.620 | And so embrace the problems because they can lead you to good solutions, but recognize
00:43:51.380 | that you can solve those problems.
00:43:53.220 | If you need to buy something, buy something.
00:43:54.720 | If you need to move, move.
00:43:56.500 | If you need to change jobs, just change.
00:43:59.340 | Have the courage to embrace what you think will make your circumstances better and try
00:44:06.060 | it.
00:44:07.060 | And if it doesn't work, change.
00:44:09.440 | Try it.
00:44:10.440 | If it doesn't work, change.
00:44:12.160 | I do encourage you, don't abandon if your visions or your ideas are like mine, where
00:44:17.860 | you want something more than a disconnected and fragmented lifestyle.
00:44:22.260 | Don't abandon that desire.
00:44:25.220 | Just look at how it can be accomplished in the best way possible.
00:44:28.220 | When I was growing up, my father had a traditional engineering job, but he did also have the
00:44:34.580 | benefit of a small enough company where they were flexible with him in the early days when
00:44:38.980 | such flexibility was not entirely appreciated.
00:44:42.220 | I still remember my dad coming home one time and showing us his new laptop computer.
00:44:46.540 | It would have been sometime in the 90s.
00:44:48.860 | And he was always on the leading edge of the tech world.
00:44:52.780 | We had a computer in our home when few other families did because of the type of work that
00:44:57.260 | he did.
00:44:58.260 | But that gave him the benefits of being able to really have a major impact and do some
00:45:04.300 | pretty cool stuff with us as children.
00:45:06.500 | There were many times when he worked from home for a season.
00:45:09.500 | And there was one season where I particularly remember that he was able to negotiate his
00:45:13.460 | work environment in such a way that he did a huge amount of work in building our own
00:45:17.340 | house.
00:45:18.380 | But he was able to do all of those things without abandoning a traditional office job.
00:45:23.360 | So I'm convinced that it's possible in whatever circumstance you are to look for opportunities,
00:45:28.340 | to improve it, and to find it.
00:45:30.260 | You don't always have to pursue a drastic change.
00:45:33.740 | Hope these ideas have helped you with an honest analysis of the good and bad of working from
00:45:37.740 | home.
00:45:39.980 | One thing I forgot.
00:45:41.940 | In closing, in my experience, the most important factor is having work that matters to you.
00:45:51.260 | You have to have work that matters to you.
00:45:54.020 | If you don't have work that matters to you and you try to work from home, I think you'll
00:45:58.220 | spend most of your time wasted, wasting it, because you won't want to do the work.
00:46:04.940 | But if you have work that matters to you, then when working from home, you may be like
00:46:09.420 | me frustrated that you can't get more work done and appreciating the benefits of the
00:46:13.860 | office.
00:46:14.860 | Well, the same thing goes in reverse.
00:46:16.140 | If you're working in an office and you don't have work that matters to you, you'll be frustrated
00:46:20.100 | by the office environment.
00:46:22.100 | And then if you have work that matters to you, you'll appreciate those certain things
00:46:26.860 | and you'll deal with the negative.
00:46:29.260 | I almost forgot, because in conclusion, that point really, I think, is one of the most
00:46:35.300 | important things.
00:46:36.300 | If you have work that matters, then that's what will attract your attention and your
00:46:41.300 | focus.
00:46:42.300 | And if you don't have work that matters to you, then you'll find whichever circumstance
00:46:47.980 | you're in to be difficult.
00:46:50.340 | So if you're looking for a place to start, focus on finding and developing work that
00:46:55.700 | matters to you.
00:46:57.100 | Hey Cricket customers, Max with ads is included with your Cricket $60 unlimited plan at no
00:47:02.500 | additional cost.
00:47:04.620 | Max is the streaming platform where you can watch Scoob, Meg to the Trench, the Nightmare
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00:47:11.980 | Just log in with your Cricket username and password to experience Max on all your favorite
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00:47:18.260 | Max the one to watch for a good scream with Cricket.
00:47:21.240 | Phone plans, streams, and standard definition, programming subject to change, fees, terms,
00:47:25.260 | restrictions apply. See cricketwireless.com for details.