- I been working remotely for a couple of years now,
and I've noticed some pros and cons.
Maybe you sitting at home right now and you're wondering
if working remotely is for you.
Well, in this video I'm going to share
all my pros and cons of working remotely.
Is it worth it?
(upbeat music)
Welcome to my YouTube channel.
My name is Richardson, and you're watching my channel,
where I share my travel and teach you how to work remotely
and become a digital nomad.
If you didn't know yet,
I run an application development studio,
so it allow to work remotely and from different location.
Yet, sometimes, sometimes, I work from my client location.
But, most of the time I'm actually working remotely,
here in Toronto or around the world.
So in today's video I'm going
to be sharing my pros and cons.
So now, there is the obvious advantages,
there is no commute, you can live a less stressful life
because you don't have to work
out of someone else's schedule,
and you can make your own schedule,
wake up whenever you want, almost, almost whenever you want.
Because sometime I have to wake up early
to get into a meeting.
But, anyways, I actually get to plan my own day
and that makes me very happy.
So I like to end with the good news.
So I'm going to be starting with all the cons,
and obviously end up with the pros.
Let's get right into it.
I'm looking at a screen right now
because I can't remember all the cons and all pros,
I kind of have to guide myself with the little notes.
(dramatic tone)
♪ I am da one, da one, yes I know ♪
The first thing that hit me when I got started
is that you need a lot, a lot of self discipline,
because you need to schedule your day,
or decide when you have to wake up,
when you have to actually do some work,
when you need to take your break,
and when you need to stop working.
And when you working remotely,
your schedule is up to you for most of the time.
So you decide when you're gonna wake up.
So often, in my own day, I tend to wake around eight,
nine a.m., have breakfast and then start working.
You know those days when you wake up,
but you don't feel like going to work,
well, when you working from home, that doesn't happen,
because you're already home,
so you don't have anywhere to go to,
you don't have to do a commute, so you're right there.
So not working, when you working from home,
is a little bit harder.
I found that hardest thing is figuring out
when you need to work, when you need to block out time
to take your own break and when you need to stop working.
When I'm working on my clients' work, for example,
if I have to finish something,
because I don't have to commute, I end up working longer
than I'm supposed to.
If you working from an office and you looking around you,
some time people start leaving the office,
so you start realizing that,
maybe it's time for me to go home.
But when you working from home
and you wanna get something done,
you end up just working on the thing on and on,
until you actually get it done.
So I've noticed that sometimes the self discipline
is not just about making myself work,
or finding the time to make myself work,
but it's also about stopping to work.
There's such a fine line between your living experience,
because you literally working out of your living space,
and your work time, then it's very hard for you
to find a fine line between when you need to stop working
and not working when your home is your work.
I've been working from home for so many years,
that I've found some tricks
that are really useful for me to actually be more self,
more self-disciplined? (dramatic music)
Is that a word?
Anyways, so I found a way to be more self discipline.
So of the thing that I notice is in the past
when I would wake up, and I'd be in boxer,
I would just go and sit
in front of my desk and start working.
And I noticed that it tend to make me more lazy
when I do that.
So nowadays, when I'm waking up,
and I have to start working, I first, obviously,
take a shower, get my breakfast and all that,
and then actually dress up.
I actually dress up just like I'm going to the office.
When I'm wearing those clothes
I'm actually conditioning my mind
that now it's working time.
The other way to actually be more self disciplined
when you working from home, is to have a schedule.
So when is your day starting?
When are you taking your break?
And when are you stopping to work?
So, for me, I usually start working around 10,
9:30 or 10, usually it's 10,
and then around noon I take a regular break for an hour.
And after that I continue working until six p.m.,
after six p.m. there's no more work for me.
So usually my day, because I know that it end at six p.m.,
I tend to end work close that,
so around 5:30 I get ready to actually stop working.
Okay, so that was my first cons, and tips to work around it.
Next one.
If you didn't know yet, I'm more of an extrovert.
I get a lot of energies around people.
So one of the other cons that I found
about working remotely, is that it can be very lonely,
because the only thing that you're interacting
with is thing right here, this computer.
That's it, that's your best friend.
But, it's true, we are in a modern time,
and, obviously, you can chat, you can Slack.
So the relationship building happen on your computer.
I found that it can be very, very challenging
to do relationship building when you working remotely.
Most of the interaction happen
with chats and through emails.
And some company that don't use Slack,
which makes it a lot more fun to communicate with people,
actually just use email.
And it's a weird thing to actually communicate with someone,
we're just doing back and forth, you sending him an,
"Ay, hi, I hope you're doing well today.
"Here's the work that I've done for the week."
And then, you know, it's just not the same thing.
It's not as fun.
Obviously, you have to go out of your way sometime
to communicate with people,
to communicate with the entire team.
I found that when you working in an office,
it can be very, very distracting,
people interrupt you, ask question,
oh, and you get into debate with your coworker.
Or you sharing a story, or you're cracking a joke,
or you're going to the kitchen
and start a conversation with someone.
That doesn't really happen when you're working from home.
Most of the time, you actually end up just
being here, quiet and getting work done.
So it's like a con, that is also a pro,
because you are not really building relationship,
but at the same time you're getting more work done.
All right, so the last con I wanna share in this video,
is that one of the biggest burden
of working remotely is building trust.
Building trust with the company that you're working for,
or building trust with your colleague, your coworker.
When you working remotely,
you feel that you have a much bigger responsibility
to actually deliver, to make sure that your works
gets noticed at the end of the week.
People are often afraid that
when they hiring someone remotely
that the person's not actually getting work done,
but guess what, if the person's not getting work done,
they have nothing to show.
When you see people getting into the office,
even though sometime it might look they're working,
that might not necessarily be the case.
And you don't know.
I will actually rather hire someone remotely
that is getting work done on schedule,
than someone that is coming to the office every single day
and pretending to work.
I know there are so many people out there
that are worried that when they're hiring someone
to work remotely, that
that person won't actually get work done.
So remember, the next time that you are hiring someone,
that that person, has a responsibility to deliver
to prove to the company that they're actually working.
So that pressure alone is enough for them
to get shit done.
All right, so we just covered all the cons
of working remotely, so now,
I actually wanna talk to you about some of the pros.
When I started working remotely
I noticed one major things that change about my patterns.
So, usually, when I'm working from an office,
I tend to skip breakfast because I have to commute.
So because I don't wanna get late to work,
I actually end up just skipping breakfast altogether.
But, since I've been working remotely,
I have noticed that every morning
I take the time to be healthy, to go to the gym
and to make breakfast and to eat,
right before I start working.
As a remote worker, you have more flexibility
around your schedule.
And removing this entire waste of time of commuting,
where sometimes people are commuting for an hour
or two hours from one town to the other.
When you don't have to worry about that,
you actually make more time for other stuff.
And in my case, I'm utilizing this commute time
to actually, not only sometime start working earlier
and sometime trying to be more healthy about my overall day.
What I like about the flexibility is that,
it's not just limited around when you're working.
It's also about where you're working.
So you can literally work from anywhere,
you can work from a coffee shop down the street,
you can work from a different country,
from a different timezone, from a different weather,
a different environment altogether.
This is one of my favorite thing
about the work remote lifestyle.
I really love the flexibility.
I don't know about you, but removing the stress
of commuting is making my day a lot less stressful.
Also, if you had a long night
and then you don't feel like waking up early,
you can actually sleep 30 minutes longer
or an hour longer, which is really nice.
I have to admit, it's a lot more relaxed,
to wake up without having the pressure to walk to work.
And knowing that you never gonna be late to work.
Among the other things that I love about working remotely
is the fact that I'm actually saving a lot more money.
So when I'm working out of an office,
I take Uber every single day to work.
And I think this is why Uber is start to give $5 off,
'cause I don't drive in a city,
I either use Uber or use another way of transportation.
But, I try to avoid the transit
because when you paid per hour,
you wanna get to work as soon as possible.
The clock start when you get to the office,
so you don't wanna waste that in transit.
Especially when what you making per hour
is not comparable to what you making or losing
during that time of transit.
You can save money on transit, you can save money on food
because you don't have to get lunch during your break.
And some of you probably bring lunch to work, I know,
I know, but you don't have to do that.
So you can save money.
I'm obviously, maybe, biased because I've been doing that
for so long and I've really enjoyed working remotely.
But I have to say that in today's world
there's almost no reason for people to work in
out of an office, if the work
that is doing is on a computer.
Nowadays with the cloud, with video chat
and all those different features,
of all these different application,
there's absolutely no reason for you to get to the office.
Some people out there often argue that
it's harder for people to brainstorm
when they working remotely.
And I disagree, if you can see someone on the screen,
you can definitely brainstorm with them remotely.
Even if you have to doodle on something,
if you doodling out of the board,
or drawing something on the board,
just put the board behind you and in front of your camera.
And then done deal.
So you can definitely brainstorm remotely
and you don't need to see people in person
in order for your brain to work.
I have brainstormed with people on different design concept
through a chat, and through WhatsApp
with some of my friends.
So I don't agree with the fact
that you need to be in an office to brainstorm.
Yes, if you need to bounce ideas,
just do a video chat with multiple people.
You don't need to be there.
Like I would love to brainstorm with you from the Bahamas,
I mean, I don't mind that.
But, why do I need to be there in the office?
So, is it worth it?
Well, I don't know, you tell me.
My personal experience from working remotely
has been absolutely fantastic.
And I would recommend it to everyone.
Comment in the section below.
Let me know what you think based on pros and cons
that I just shared.
If you feel that you're able to be self discipline,
or if you feel that you're able to be okay
of being sometime lonely and making friend in different way
or not getting closer to your coworker.
If you feel that,
if you feel like you don't have to have people interaction
in order to get work done, then I think
that working remotely might be worth it for you.
But, obviously, it's a personal choice.
Comment in the section below.
If you can think of any other cons or pros
of working remotely, I'd love to know what you guys think.
If you've done it, or if this is something
that you contemplating doing, let me know.
I really appreciate all your comments.
And, again, if you wanna be featured
on the comment winners section, just comment
in the section below and I'll feature you.
Thank you guys for watching.
Shout out to the comment winner,
from last week, by the way, thank you.
I hope you guys enjoyed this video.
If you did and you wanna see more content like this one,
hit Subscribe, and I see you guys in the next one.
(dramatic music)
One more thing.
If you wanna travel the world,
and learn how to work remotely, or become a digital nomad.
Join the conversation, join the rich nation.
If you have a question, don't hesitate to ask
because we won't hesitate to answer.
Adios.
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