Once upon a time working from home was an uncommon practice. Showing up to the office every week day and making the daily drive home after work was the routine. If you were the employee of a company with an office in Tulsa, then Tulsa was where you bought a house. If Atlanta was where your boss had a desk, then Atlanta was where you picked your zip code.
Fast forward to 2024 and that’s no longer true.
More and more, folks are taking the short commute from their bedroom to their office – which is sometimes their own kitchen table. And even if you do have a job that requires you to show up to a shared office space, most companies offer more flexibility now than ever before. Employees can work remotely a few days a week. Schedules can be flexible. Entire companies are run from coffee shops and restaurants in every town.
Travelers Rest is no exception. And Travelers Rest Here is a remote only sort of business with no brick and mortar. The We Are TR podcast episodes are recorded on my porch most weeks. My co-host Brandon Timms runs a mobile detailing business. He literally drives to your home or office to detail your car. I meet regularly with designers, photographers, accountants and every sort of folks imaginable over hot tea or pizza or crepes to hold our professional meetings, to conduct interviews, to work quietly together in the same space on our own projects.
Craig Williams, a local mortgage professional, currently works from home a few days a week. “Travelers Rest and the greater Greenville area is a perfect place to work from home,” Williams says. “From the outdoor culture of our community with the mountains nearby, the Swamp Rabbit Trail and amazing parks, families are in for a treat every weekend. And it’s easy to enjoy these with a quick break during the workday. The cost of living here and the small town feel is tempered with a healthy industry for small and medium-sized businesses.”
Since so many of us work remotely in some capacity, I thought it would be fun and helpful to gather information and tips and tricks to help us all work more efficiently, productively – and even more kindly – as we take our collectives workforces to the kitchen tables, the spare bedroom offices, the park benches, the Swamp Rabbit Trail and the local coffee shops.
I chatted with lots of TR remote workers and hybrid workers and work from home folks and gathered these suggestions from their experiences.
Here are some things you love about working from home:
- The freedom of determining your own schedule
- No need for purely professional business attire daily
- You can fit exercise into your routine with more ease and efficiency
- The ability to start early and to work hours that suit your lifestyle or your current season
- Seeing your family and your pets more often because the commute isn’t such a time drain
Sarah Kaminski, an Upstate local who has been working from home for many years doing medical consulting, says the flexible hours are her favorite aspect. “I am more of a night owl,” she shares. “I end up getting some of my best work done in the evenings after dinner. I like being able to set my own hours. I do try to be in front of my computer a few hours during business hours daily because that is when I am able to email back and forth with my attorneys, schedule calls with them, etc. I like being able to leave work for appointments, lunch with a friend or errands when needed.”
Some of the struggle you all find that working from home creates:
- Being home can be distracting – kids, chores that need finishing, pets, less privacy
- No longer having the strong sense of working on a team
- Being alone most of the day without a social outlet
“I do not think that working from home is for everyone,” Kaminski says. “I think it takes discipline and the ability to work well independently. Also, it can be lonely. Some days end up being full of distractions, which is frustrating. Also, your work is always with you, so it’s hard to separate yourself from it and enjoy the other things you also do at home. It can be too easy to be a work-a-holic.”
A Few Friendly Suggestions
- Leave your house sometimes. Working from home is great. And sometimes it is more distraction free and sometimes it is less distraction free. But it’s a good idea to physically leave your house occasionally. Set an appointment at a park and walk through your meeting plans. Spread the love and buy coffee for a friend as you discuss your current project. This helps you change from your lounge wear and feel like a productive human.
- Speaking of loungewear. Get dressed for the day. Although it’s tempting, lounging in your pjs all day will usually lead to less productive days. (But hey – you do you!)
- Set timers. This helps me personally to maintain my focus. If I know I have one hour designated specifically to catch up on emails, then I can focus solely on that and accomplish a lot in one hour. It also allows me to ignore those little distractions while I am doing other work if I know I have a designated hour later to handle those current distractions.
- Get up! It’s not kind to your body to sit still for eight hours a day. Every hour get up from your chair, even if it’s only to move around while you take a phone call. One friend of mine takes a walk whenever he is required to converse on the phone. You can see him strolling the neighborhood because a phone call came in. Do push ups between projects or jumping jacks. Standing treadmills and desks are becoming quite popular now. I shared a co-work space one day and saw TR local Reh Harvey walking on a treadmill while checking emails. Genius.
“I dress for my full day, so if I have a business meeting during the day, or city council or a concert at night, I’m dressed for that the whole day,” Kelly Byers shares. She works from home and also serves on our TR City Council. “Do I feel weird working from home in a dress sometimes? Yes! P.S. I have a no stretchy pants while working from home rule.” (I generally share the same policy as Kelly does here. Dressing for the day saves me time and mental effort, but don’t worry – we won’t judge you if your primary reason for working from home is to wear stretchy pants.)
Kelly started her work from home journey motivated by what motivates so many of us – flexibility.
“Flexibility was the main appeal in working from home,” she shares. “I liked the idea of incorporating nature into my day more, so even if I’m doing something on the computer or taking a call, I can sit on my porch and do that. I have a bit of wanderlust and while I don’t intend to fully embrace the digital nomad life, I like the idea of being able to work from anywhere if I choose. The idea of managing my energy as well as my time was appealing to me and it’s more feasible when you have more control of when and how you work. Plus, you know the saying, ‘If you can’t see Paris Mountain, you’re too far from home.’ It’s important to me to spend lots of quality time in TR and this way I can.”
Sarah Brown has been working remotely for years and is the former manager of the Slater/Marietta Farmers Market. She shares her words of advice, “Stick to your hours, just because you CAN work more doesn’t mean you SHOULD work more. Focus on being more efficient – it helps in the long run! And write down your daily tasks so that you aren’t trying to remember what you need to do every day from your brain, let your brain do more exciting things!”
Of course, when we say work from home we sometimes mean work from a coffee shop or some other not actually home location.
So you’re going to spend the day sorting emails and cranking out assignments at a coffee shop? That’s fabulous. It’s one of my favorite ways to get work done. Sometimes I find that I am more productive for a set amount of time out in public than I am at my home work space. And TR has so many great spaces perfect for this.
Here are a few guidelines for this fan favorite of working out in the great wide open:
- Be considerate. Purchase a beverage. And a snack. And maybe another beverage. Think of it as a lower cost than paying for renting an office space. It’s okay to get work done, but be a paying customer! You love that small business – support it with your dollars so it stays an operating small business.
- Be considerate. This time I’m talking about where you sit. If you are one human being working alone, please refrain from sitting at a table designed for six human beings. If the seating options dictate the large table is your only choice, sit at the far end without spreading out everywhere, thus making it clear that the extra seats are for sharing and other human beings are welcome to sit at the table too.
- Be considerate. If you have to take a phone call, that’s okay – people are allowed to talk in coffee shops and restaurants. But be aware of your voice tone. Remember your momma’s rules about inside voices. Get familiar with your inside voice. It might not seem as loud to you because you have on headphones, but take a moment and control your volume. You can always step outside for a few minutes if necessary.
If you know that you always see your friends at this particular coffee shop and you have work you HAVE to get done, it’s okay to drive an extra fifteen minutes to a town you don’t normally visit and a coffee shop that is not on your usual route. It’s fun to mix it up. It keeps you distraction free so you can power through those deadlines and it introduces you to new spaces.
Working from home can be a great option for many of us and I love seeing the various ways it benefits many of our community members.
Share in the comments the tips and tricks you’ve learned from working from home!
