We don’t need another study to tell us that millennials like working from home.

It’s understandable.

Who wouldn’t like a chance to work in the comfort of their own home? Especially on a grey, cold and miserable day.

There’s nothing like getting up later, not stressing about a commute, and sitting down at your laptop with a big breakfast and no outside distractions to start your day at work, right?

What if working from home isn’t for you?

You may be spending more time to doing your laundry and cooking meals than actually working, especially when your vacuum cleaner happens to be lying so close to your workspace.

Or, if you’re like me, you just feel isolated and lonely knowing that the rest of your team are working in the office. Together. Without you.

When you live in a residential area in a city like London, you may find that during the day, there is not a single soul around you within 1-mile radius, because literally everyone is working in the office.

So, if you think that working from home, means you can have lunches with friends and spend more time with your family, then that’s probably not going to happen, because literally everyone is working in the office.

As we get older, it’s getting more difficult to make friends.

Think about it …

How many friends have you made outside of institutions and organisations like school, university, workplace, evening classes, hobby-based meet-ups etc?

We don’t meet people on the streets or buses, we need a physical space (and time) to get to know them.

So, it’s no surprise, that as adults, we make friends at work. We see our colleagues more than our partners, and the space we share with strangers almost forces us to get to know, and consequently, like them.

“All strangers are friends you don’t know yet,” – said someone smart 😉

If you work at home, you don’t get face time with your coworkers, so it is more difficult to make new friends and find out about new projects you might be interested in.

You can’t deny how personal collaboration, as well as social bonds forged in the workplace, can lead to future opportunities and promotion.

I, personally, have found it difficult to work from home, especially when I know that the rest of my team are working together in the office.

Because:

• If your office has a culture, you are not a part of it.
• When you come to office parties, everyone assumes you are a cocktail waiter or someone who got lost.
• Your colleagues who work out of the office become jealous of you working from home, and the relationship can suffer.
• You can almost never be completely satisfied with the work you’ve accomplished because you have no idea what your co-workers accomplished in comparison to you.
• Your “office” is in your 5-step bedroom, which is your whole world for the rest of the day, 5x a week.
• You miss going to the canteen for lunch with others and having a choice.

And generally, if you work at home for long enough, away from real people, you may start to feel sad for no reason (happened to me). You may even be surprised how much you will miss the human interaction.