Does Working from Home give you freedom?

Nov 27, 2022

One of the attractions of working at home is the vision of freedom it invokes -- no time clock, no time sheets, and no one to account for how you spend your time. Yes, it is an attractive proposition, but like so many attractive propositions there is a heavy downside -- you are likely wasting a lot of time.

 After a spate of relatively unproductive days when my "To Do" list seemed to grow exponentially every time I looked at it I knew something had to change. Working from home, I realized there simply weren't enough hours in the day to accomplish all my goals.

 I now have a spreadsheet and agenda for the day and I have improved my productivity and reduced my stress immeasurably. If you don't think you need a schedule for your home when working remotely, then think again.

After studying my time and chatting with some other work-at-home folks, I discovered five reasons to embrace the schedule:

 

  1.  It's too easy to waste time doing non priority tasks
  2. It's too easy to get sidetracked or distracted from your current task
  3. Unscheduled work time can often overlap into your free time until you don't have any free time at all
  4. Your free time can overlap into your work time until you fall behind with important projects
  5. Concentrating your time and effort on highest priority projects means more gets done

 

You may actually find it more freeing than restrictive.

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Sudha Bakhshi

For me, Jawaria has been a game changer in seeking non-clinical employment. I’ve been working with her for a period of time that was divided into a number of phases.

This first part was to undergo an inventory of professional traits to better understand my strengths and weaknesses. In general I am skeptical of organizational personality assessments and feel that they tend to overgeneralize and group people based on superficial assumptions. However, I decided to commit to this approach in order to obtain a more objective view of how my interactions may result in certain perceptions in a work environment. This helped me to focus on my motivations and how I wanted to approach this stage of my career.

In the second phase, Jawaria helped me to create a coherent narrative that was reflected in a revision of my resume. She was very supportive as I overcame my hesitation to assert myself in more contemporary formats, such as LinkedIn. I felt that the conversations that we had were essential to feeling more confident as I moved forward to identifying positions that were of interest, researching the employers and writing customized cover letters to accentuate skill sets.

The third phase navigated the strange and often confusing experience of the interview process. Jawaria helped me to just accept the black box that is HR for many corporations and to then move forward to interviews with medical directors and company executives. She was present after every interview, to challenge and also to validate my perceptions of what transpired.

I have many supportive friends in medicine and other professions that offered insight and encouragement in my job hunt. But I feel that the investment in the professional coaching Jawaria offered was essential to creating the mindset necessary to approach and feel comfortable competing in the current non-clinical environment.

In the end, yes, I was able to get an offer for a job that I feel will be very interesting and challenging. And I am very grateful for Jawaria’s assistance in helping me in this process. She was very willing to share her own experiences as a physician and this was enormously meaningful.

There is a saying: “When the student is ready, the teacher will come”. This definitely applied to me and I felt that what she said resonated, even from our first conversation. As physicians, we invest into our profession, but there is something to be said for investing in ourselves as well. I would encourage my fellow doctors to consider how important professional mentorship can be and how often it can feel inaccessible. But if you are ready, then Jawaria can be the catalyst to empower physicians to feel energized about their career choices.