Dealing With Isolation When You Work From Home
A short while ago someone made the comment to me that she could never work from home as she would find it boring. Asking questions made me realize that what she would find boring is not being able to interact with people of a regular basis.
Many people love working alone. Others hate it! They miss the rapport with co-workers, the watercooler chit-chats and jokes, and face-to-face interactions with people. Depending on the type of business you're pursuing, you may not necessarily have regular interaction with people face-to-face and on a one-on-one basis.
If you work with clients/customers mainly on the telephone, why not arrange to meet them in person from time to time? If there are networking events in your area, why not make arrangements so you can attend one or two each month?
Online forums in your niche are great places to interact with like-minded people. Over the past 16 days over 200 people have become part of a 30-day blog challenge (#blog30 on Twitter) and it has been interesting to see the level of interaction and support among participants as we visit each others blogs, leave comments, and promote each other on the social networks.
Perhaps like me, your spiritual activities also allow you to interact with another level of like-minded people. When it's all added together I never have time to be bored and feel isolated, but this is not the case with some persons.
How about you? If you work from home, do you feel isolated, and how do you deal with isolation? Please share your thoughts in the Comments.
Yvonne
1I don’t feel lonely at all in the spring and summer months because I can go outside, garden, jog and walk. I do make a point of using the phone to stay in touch with friends and family- at least someone on a daily basis.
Answering questions such as yours also brings on the possibility of new contacts and that’s always something to look forward to.
ruthan
Yvonne:
Thought-provoking subject for this post. I often find myself switching betwen periods where I like to go whole days without seeing anyone to needing the interraction.
One of my strategies is to go to the library to work (at a table or small conference room)…and even though I’m not interacting, I feel like I’m in an office environment.
2Ruthan and Mynders, Thank you both for sharing strategies you implement to avoid isolation as you work from home.
3Ruthan, These are ideas that other work-at-home business owners can copy, and as you reach out to others you build relationships and your contact circle grows.
Mynders, I like to work by myself and even when I was working in offices with large numbers of people, I enjoyed my private space and didn’t always have a need to talk with others. Going to the library is a great idea and a few of my contemporaries seem to like going to a coffee shop with their laptop as well.
Thank you, Yvonne
Yvonne ~
This is a great topic that I don’t think people talk about enough. And if you’re someone who’s feeling isolated, talking about how you feel will help!
This won’t apply to a lot of other people but …
Since I’ve been raising four children on my own, I’ve had nothing but noise, commotion, activity, talking, yelling, music playing, dogs barking, etc, going on around me for the past 19 years.
It’s a pleasure when I can steal away to my office, close the door, and enjoy the heck out of isolation!! 🙂
Melanie
4#blog30
I hear you, Melanie, LOL and I can relate as my husband and I raised three girls and it was not a quiet household when they were young. Doesn’t matter how much you love them, you need your “me time.” Thanks for sharing your strategy 🙂
5Hey, this is a tremendously helpful post! Funny, I came over just to make sure I hadn’t missed anything and I come across a really worthwhile post 🙂
6Ren, if you work from home you know that it can be lonely at times, but as the points in the posts mentioned there are some things we can do to lessen the feeling of isolation. I’m glad you found the post helpful. Yvonne
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