WFH [working from home] - riiiight...

Trying to defend WFH [working from home] is such a cliché. Well, viewing things as clichés is such a cliché. Anyway...

I was dialing in to all these conf calls the other day. From home I might add. One after the other and suddenly I realized - that I wasn't going to beat early morning traffic. So I shot an email to my manager explaining my dilemma and suggested being in by noon. He approved. This is around 9am in the morning and I have already been on two conf calls from 7am. At around 1pm I realize that a) I'm still at home, b) it's 1pm and c) I haven't had lunch and I'm hungry like a wolf. So I shot my second email, arguing the above and suggested staying at home. He approved - again. So I kept working.

At around 3pm in the afternoon - after 8 hours of straight work with no food I'm about to pass out. I have kicked ass and they day is not yet over but I need lunch.

I cook a quick pasta, eat in my home office and keep working until 5:30pm when I realize I should enjoy the benefits of working from home and run down to the bank, the flower shop and to the cobblers to knock things of the household to-do-list.

Okay, let's step back for a moment and give this some thought. Working 7am to 5:30pm is ambitious. Doing it undisturbed and focused is more than a miracle. In my eyes I delivered very high productivity in the comfort of my own home. It comes down to that I alone am my toughest boss. I dreamed about morning and afternoon walks with a latte taped to my hand. Maybe drop by the local International Magazine Store. Even a quick stop at the wine cellar would have made this whole equation heavenly. But nooo - pushing the envelope is all you can think of you over-achiever.

The cool thing was to be able to stop at 5:30pm and be home by 5:30pm. It didn't give me a lot of time to decompress but on the other had I didn't have to commute or chase other people's agendas. I gotta say that my stress level was closer to zero than one.

But the true benefit was that by 5:31pm I had a Cohiba Siglo II lit between my lips and a glas of Muga Gran Reserva '95 in my hand. That is worth all the diss for defending WFH as a win-win for you and your company. In the end of the day - who is going to believe you - slacker!