Time is the ultimate currency. Working from home can give you your life back so that you have more time to do the things you want to do. Having more disposable time is like winning the time lottery. Disposable time is to time as disposable income is to income. Disposable income is the money you have left over after all the necessary bills are paid. Disposable time is the time you have left over to do with as you wish. Having more time is a top reason people give about why they want to work from home. This article discusses the various ways in which time can be gained by working from home.
Of course, there are also the savings of hard dollars associated with these items as well as other benefits such as health and safety, however, those are topics for a different blog article.
Here are some of the ways working from home is like winning the time lottery:
Commuting. Working from home can give you your life back by saving all those hours spent commuting to an office. Some people travel to an office up to an hour and a half just one way, or even more. An hour and a half one-way commute per day is over 60 hours per month gained that can be hours used doing something else. Even a half hour commute is a gain of over 20 hours per month of time that can be repurposed. Commuting to an office typically represents the single largest time saving category however, there are numerous other ways in which you can win the time lottery when working from home. The commute of a few steps to your home office is a miniscule amount of time compared to driving anywhere in a car.
Getting dressed. Many people agree that working from home saves time on the various aspects involved with getting dressed to go somewhere. Going to an office to work may involve activities such as time spent ironing shirts, picking up dry cleaning, shopping for clothes, putting on makeup or doing your hair. This may not be true for everyone, however, in general, working from home tends to be more casual and takes less “getting ready” time to walk into your home office than into a traditional office.
Lunches. When working from home, people are less likely to drive somewhere to eat out for lunch. Eating out typically takes more time than eating at home. Meals can be prepared ahead of time. That extra time gained eating lunch at home can be counted as part of the time saving benefit of working from home.
Chores: When you are working from home, you have the option to throw the laundry in to be washing while you are working. When working in a traditional office, you might be reluctant to start the washer and let the clothes sit all day, so the laundry piles may stack up to do over the weekend, limiting your options of how that time could otherwise be spent. You can also be home to let in the repairman instead of having to drive home and then back to work.
Work. When you have quiet, uninterrupted time, you can get more work done in less time. When you work in an office, there is time spent at the water cooler and various interruptions of productivity that come with working in an office. Some people have work from home jobs, like our lead generation position we have here with the TeleReach Corporate virtual call center, which allows flexibility to stop work when you have completed your goals. We offer performance-based pay, so when you’ve hit your numbers, either our minimum requirements or your own financial goals that you’ve set for yourself, you are free to use the rest of your time in the way that you want. That even includes not stopping work but continuing to work to earn more. The point is, working from home gives you more time options to one degree or another depending on the type of work you do and the company for which you work.
When you win the time lottery, how will you spend your disposable time?
What have you always wanted to do if you had more time? A wise mentor of mine once said that at some point in people’s lives, time becomes more important to people than money. Of course, that was his perspective because he was older and had already achieved financial success. He was free to spend his time in the way he wanted. He did not have to work any longer to earn money but he chose to work as a volunteer, applying skills he had gained in his money earning career to run volunteer organizations which helped a lot of people.
Do we love working from home because we have more disposable time, or do we have more disposable time because we love working from home? Either way, we all want to spend our disposable time wisely. The possibilities are endless. Maybe you want to spend time writing that book you’ve always wanted to write, to exercise more, to start a new business or simply to get more sleep.
The main reason we love working from home is freedom. More time is less stress and less stress is greater peace of mind.
Benjamin Franklin, one of history’s greatest icons of productivity said, “Dost thou love life? Then do not squander time, for that is the stuff life is made of.”
Ben worked from home a lot.
About the Author
Tracie Chancellor, CEO and Founder of TeleReach Corporate, national business to business call center specializing in sales appointment setting and lead generation, based in Houston, Texas. Chancellor is an MBA graduate of the University of Houston with over 20 years hands-on sales and marketing experience, working with privately-held businesses, universities, non-profit organizations, as well as Fortune businesses in the business to business marketing space.