I’ve not had to get in a car and drive to work for more than ten years. And I’ve loved every minute of it.
There’s nothing like getting up in the morning and not having to rush into the shower, shave, get dressed, catch some grub and sit in traffic during a long commute. According to a recent Gallop Poll, the average American spends 46 minutes on their daily work commute. 46 minutes, that’s basically an hour.
Let’s see how much time we spend in our cars just getting to and from work:
If we round down to 45 minutes per day that’s 3/4 of an hour. 3/4 of an hour each day multiplied by 5 days per work week is 3 hours and 45 minutes each week we spend in the car. Over a month that’s 13 hours and 48 minutes. But the staggering number for me is the time the average American spends in the car over a year – it’s more than 158 hours. And that includes taking two weeks off.
158 hours each year spent in our cars driving to make living…wow! If you go a little further with the math and divide our 158 hour by a 40 hour work week, we’re nearly spending an entire month (4 weeks) of potential work or free time sitting in our cars.
Imagine if your job could give you a month of work time back each year. Or a month of vacation. Or you got that extra 158 hours with your family or doing a hobby. Heck, starting a hobby for that matter. What could you do with that time?
I know what I’d do…I’d start a home-based business. I’d start a business so I could stop wasting so much time driving back and forth to work. I’d start a business so I could have more of my time for what I want. Which is one of the main reasons I’m self-employed.
And if I couldn’t start a business for some reason, or didn’t want too what would I do? I’d spend some serious time thinking of how I can convince my boss that I need to work from home. How might I do that?
Well, if I go to my boss and say I want to work from home because it benefits me…well, we know that answer to that one already. But if I can come up with some really good reasons why working from home would make me more productive and help the company – now I have something to stand on.
Here’s one way to approach this with your boss:
- Start logging all the ways you waste time at work. You know, the ways your production is constantly interrupted by your work environment. And have that ready when you sit down to discuss working from home.
- Think through all the little details of why your need to be in the office and find solutions for how each of these can be met at home. Have them ready when you talk to your boss. Even offer some of them up before (s)he brings them up. There is almost nothing that can’t be communicated by phone, email, fax and the internet today.
- Talk about how working at home will let you focus on work in a quiet, uninterrupted environment where you can be far more productive for the company. Don’t mention that you can get up late, sit around in your pj’s while you’re on a morning conference call, sipping tea.
- Don’t approach your boss that you want to transition from working at home. Rather, bring up the idea as though you just you’d like to do it on a trial basis one day each week. Find someone who works at home part-time – a friend or a neighbor – or reference some book, magazine article or tv show you watched on the topic. Mention that you’re curious to try it as though it’s not your original thought.
- When you get your boss to agree to let you work from home one or two days each week, work like a dog. Really. Don’t just show you can be as productive or slightly more. Be incredibly more productive. And log it all. Then you can some raw data to your boss and show them it’s working out.
If you want to work at home the most important thing is to show your boss and your company how it will benefit them. You already know how it’s going to benefit you. They simply don’t need to know that.
One last point…I can see how all these suggestions sounding a bit like manipulation. Just so I’ve said it, I don’t hold it that way. The bottom line is in almost all circumstance you can get more work done at home than in the office. But your boss doesn’t necessarily believe that. And why would they. It’s a new concept. So give them an opportunity to see things differently without their own ideas getting in the way.
Hi, I’m Dawud Miracle. Professionally, I’m a blog and marketing consultant, business coach, educator and web developer who helps people use their websites to grow their business. I’m also a devoted husband and father to two, soon to be three, children. And I’m always interested in a good conversation.