The desire to work at home has inflicted multiple workers over the past few years. The numerous benefits inherent in home work make leaving office cubicles seem a worthwhile endeavor. When one decides to work at home, he has the opportunity to choose when he wakes up, when he begins working, whether he wants his own brand of coffee or prefers traveling to Starbucks and setting up his workspace there, with human company and freshly-brewed lattes surrounding him. The scenery is much more appealing than simple gray office walls.

However, people commonly do not consider critical drawbacks. Without an abundant amount of self-motivation, self-control, and willingness to dismiss the numerous distractions a household provides (e.g. television, internet, even video games), working at home can actually become a hindrance to positive production. For instance, procrastination can become a common occurrence. Without an objective overseer, an employee may find it especially easy to delay work until the following day. Then the day after that. Then, oh well, it can be put off a few more days, right? Until the boss needs the assignment in twenty minutes, and all the employee has written is “I don’t know.”

Depending on one’s job field, income can also be hindered by working at home. Freelance writers and designers, for instance, are unable to foresee which clients will contact them in the future. They can possess unequaled amounts of talent, but if they do not contact the right people, or delay contacting said people, their opportunities will be severely limited. Plus, applying to jobs over the internet has lead to employers regularly skimming resumes instead of scrutinizing them, or even simply dismissing them before even taking a cursory glance.

Employees who remain at a typical office position do not have to worry about an ever-shifting source of income, because as long as they retain the same level of production, their jobs will remain secure. Annual guaranteed salaries are the norm; sometimes, so are incentives and bonuses. At a traditional corporation, promotional options become available to reliable employees who stay at their given positions for long enough and prove themselves accountable and trustworthy.

Those kinds of options are unavailable to freelance workers. Frequently, they invest most of their efforts on contacting potential clients through the Internet, which can become a rather unreliable method of applying. Because of the overwhelming number of applications employers receive for each position posted on a job-hunting site, such as CareerBuilder, they commonly dismiss viable candidates without taking one look at the submitted resume or work samples. The dismissal comes as a result of simply having too many applications through which to sift, so employers arbitrarily ignore applicants.

Even with the downsides of freelance work, the benefits (mainly working at home) appeal to many traditional office workers. Those employees are becoming more cognizant of the viability of transferring from their business office to their home office, mainly because of so many communicative platforms that exist now. Those platforms allow employees to submit work that, in the past, could only be done at an office. With email, phones, faxes, Skype, etc., employees can now do the same work at home and simply send it to the supervisor. This convenience allows different categories of workers, such as new mothers or physically disabled, to produce the same level of work as their counterparts, but from a home environment.

A writer for Black Enterprise Magazine, Maria A. Reed-Woodward, noticed this trend of office workers transferring home and composed an article exploring the topic. The International Telework Association conducted a survey that found the number of teleworking employees grew from 41.3 million in 2003 to 44.4 million in 2005 and projects that number to climb to 51 million by 2008. Woodward quotes Jan Anderson, director of Midwest Institute of Telecommuting, who summarizes the general direction to which those statistics point: “There is a trend toward making jobs more mobile and permitting employees to have remote access to work from home.”

Employees armed with that statistical data may assume their suggestion to work at home will be met with resounding applause by their bosses. However, the largest influential factor when working at home is procrastination. Without a boss looming over one’s shoulder, ready to disparage or criticize the slightest fault, a worker may find it much easier to succumb to numerous omnipresent distractions. Personal phone calls may be made at any time, to anyone. There’s no such thing as “company time,” and therefore all time is personal. That freedom places a greater emphasis on the significance of self-discipline, which is not something easily developed if one does not inherently possess it.

If one values his independence and strongly wishes to work at home, I suggest consulting some freelancers who operate under those conditions and asking them to summarize their daily activities, financial issues, and general states of their careers. That way, one can ascertain whether a position that allows them to work at home is genuinely befitting of their personalities and work habits, as well as their financial requirements.

James Scottworth loves to write articles regarding small business. Previously he’s written how to earn money taking surveys. If you’d like to get paid for surveys be sure and visit this free site that provides resources for finding paid surveys.

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