Working from Home

Working from home is the ‘new normal’ for many people –

and they love it!

Bluepencil Designs Chartered Architects is a collaborative arrangement of

people working from their own homes who work together on different

projects at different times and have been doing so since 2013.

There have been occasions when potential clients saw this as a somehow

‘inferior set up’. There was a perception that working from home was not

quite as good as renting an office space and travelling to it every day.

Hopefully this old fashioned and out dated view will now change.

It is interesting and pleasing that so many friends and colleagues are

discovering the many benefits of working from home and some are even

planning to continue to do so well into the future. 

We all know that in a traditional office environment so much time is spent

attending long meetings which may or may not be necessary, ‘catching up’

with colleagues and doing all manner of non-productive office work – such

as having to read emails that are sent to ‘all users’ in the organisation and

may or may not be relevant (but you don’t know that until you have read

them!) Then there is the time spent travelling to and from work, being held

up in traffic and getting stressed out because you might be late.

Of course some work is better suited to working from home than others and

ours certainly is.  As architects specialising in residential design and

masterplanning we always work with a team of consultants from other

disciplines. It is very easy to keep in touch with them, and each other, by

phone or video conferencing. We like the fact that these methods of

communication are immediate and we love the apps that allow screen

sharing.

We have found that working from home has made us:

1. More Productive
2. More Efficient
3. More Healthy
4. More Happy
5. More Creative

The majority of our working days are spent in blissful isolation. We love

this because we can totally concentrate on the design process and the

efficient PRODUCTION of INFORMATION. This is what our clients are paying

for after all.

We have found that working from home is far MORE EFFICIENT than

working in an office because there are no distractions and we can just get

on with the work and keep on until it is finished. We can work at weekends

too if we want to because we have everything we need at home. The more

efficient we can be the faster we can produce work for our clients.

Working from home means we can make a HEALTHY lunch (rather than

sandwiches) and take a short break to walk the dog/ go for a run/ do a 20

minute yoga class. Good food and exercise mean that working from home

makes it easy to stay healthy.

If you are lucky to have a job you really enjoy and home you love being in

WORKING FROM HOME WILL MAKE YOU HAPPY.

Being healthy and happy allows us to be far more creative. Working from

home can be calm, quiet and peaceful which creates the SPACE FOR

CREATIVITY – which for us, is what it is all about.

P.S. Some useful tips

Stick to a routine

Organise a work space away from the family

Only read emails twice a day

Tidy up the area behind you before video conferencing