Work from home - a bane or a boon?

      Work from home has become an option in many firms, while it does play a huge role in making our work lives easier by providing a better work-life balance, this means that since we work from the comfort of our homes, we get to spend more time with our loved ones while also benefitting from added time which would otherwise be wasted in commuting to and from our workplace.

  Yet many health experts tend to argue that working from home and not having to go to office makes people more sedentary and less likely to move around thereby leading to health issues in the long run, hence they advocate working from office where people are more likely to move around and hence get exercise. So is working from home really that bad compared to working from office?. While I am very much for the idea that exercising is quite beneficial for our overall health and that going to office means that we are more likely to move around for pretty much everything. I do have my reservations about whether working from office is better than working from home as we will see below.

   Leaving aside the obvious benefits of work from home to employers, we have already seen that working from home gives people better work life balance meaning that they can spend more time with their loved ones, especially when they take a break in between because time lost at the workplace, weather it is for the common good of our own family members or their future, can never be replaced by the time that we spend with them, moreover nothing is certain in life even if we strive for the future or well being of our family by slaving away at a place called work right now. However, employees must know when to turn off their laptops and this is particularly true after work hours, else work from home can eat away what little precious time we get with our loved ones as well, which work from office would be sure to give us because once we return from work, we are most likely to focus on ourselves and our families without turning on our systems.

  With regard to the aspect of personal health, while working from home implies that most people are less likely to move around thereby leading to health issues. We must bear in mind that while physical activity is greater at the workplace which helps in personal health, so is another factor that can undo the effects of physical exercise leading to those very same health issues setting in quicker and leaving a person's health in shambles or worse - kill him/her a lot earlier than usual. The villain that I am referring to is, you guessed it - "stress". Work stress, while it can also be present at home, we must bear in mind that the load of work stress in many cases is worse at the workplace than at home. While a sedentary life can kill a person in the long run whence the need to stay active which can also be done at home with enough discipline, stress does a quicker work of him/her and can send him/her to the grave a lot more quickly than being less active or even inactive.

   This work stress can further be exacerbated by poor management of time at work. Even if time is managed judiciously, there is always an x-factor that can still make our work planning go haywire and hence can lead to our inability to complete our tasks at work within the deadlines, especially if our work involves many different tasks, some or many of which are dependent on others giving us all the relevant information than a single task that we can complete with enough focus and determination from the start of our work day to its end. Work stress at work is further augmented by having to meet with people in the hierarchy who may not always be kind and understanding. Quite the contrary, Albert Einstein aptly put it in German "Der Hauptgrund für Stress ist der tägliche Kontakt mit Idioten" (the main reason for stress is daily contact with idiots). Hence we see that moronic managers can not only make our work lives difficult by hindering progress at work as we would envision it by pitching forth their ideas to us whose primary beneficiary would be the organisation moreso than ourselves, these can also make our daily work lives at the workplace difficult and strenuous which is the major contributor to stress at the workplace which in turn can affect our health adversely. Hence, we are led to prioritise what matters the most in our lives, the one who places work ahead of his own health and life is the one who places the cart before the horse. I am not saying that in such a scenario, we are to leave our jobs, just alluding to the idea that we must give it careful consideration, especially if our health is at stake. Losing a job is not tantamount to losing our lives, there is always another way to make a living in our world. If we lose a job, we can always get a new one or find another means to earn a living. On the contrary, if we lose our lives because of workstress associated with working from office all the time and getting to meet people who do not bring down our BP but do quite the opposite, no human can restore it. Then, our loss affects not just ourselves because we do not get to spend enough time with our families but also our families themselves.

     Your boss and mine are not going to bewail our passing because of work stress caused by us having to meet them daily and interact with them as they cause stress to us, they will always seek to find a replacement for us because we are just a "resource" to the company. However, work from home means that we invest more in our own families, those who will not just shed some tears for us but will also remember us and keep our memories lush and green in their hearts long after we have left this physical plane which no manager will do. Work from home provides us with just that same experience. As for the exercise part, we just need more discipline to stick to that routine of getting adequate exercise daily so as to tick off that checkbox of our lives for our physical well-being.