Working remotely, outdoors!
For some reason remote work is often linked to indoor places like another office, coffee shop, gym or house. But what if we take our iPad or laptop and move to our garden, go to local park or simply leave the surroundings for some exotic holidays?
I have experienced work outside the house, work in other countries or working in parks and to be honest these all are fantastic but you need to prepare yourself for it. Firstly you need to master working in home, have decent self discipline and ability to work regardless of surroundings around you. Let’s face it, how do you feel you when you step outside? Calm? Refreshed? More happy? You surely don’t feel claustrophobic or “locked”, you feel the freedom.
Looking at our roots, humans have a proven, biological connection to the nature. This phenomenon is called biophilia. Understanding the concept will help to explain why we enjoy a morning breeze, sunny spot when opening the window or a lush garden.
There are some sciences backed benefits of spending your time outside:
- increased happiness – study found that spending time outside can affect your mood in a very positive way. It also reduce the risk of depression.
- reduced inflammation – spending more time outside could help naturally reduce the pain.
- increase energy levels – being in nature makes people feel more alive. Connect with nature and this will have a more positive impact on you that this morning cuppa.
- improved memory – spending time in the nature can improve memory functions, especially the ones responsible for short-term memory, even viewing pictures of nature have helped many improve both memory and attention span.
- stress relief – spending time outside can help you minimise the stress levels and it has similar effects on your body and brain as meditating. Being in the natural setting is shown also to lower heart rate as well as the blood pressure.
Taking into account these positive factors of being outside, the question remains – why are we not spending more time outside?
There are simply barriers to working outside, humans are meant to be outside. If you think about our history, as hunter-gatherers and later as farmers, we were working outside but due to the industrial revolution over the last 300 years we’ve been forced to move indoors.
About 10 years ago when I still worked in office environment, I absolutely loved to use my lunch break to just walk out and connect with nature, I would go to that nearest park, sit on the bench and relax, the creativity just flows naturally, nothing is holding you back anymore, you are no longer restricted by ceilings and walls, you have the wide open sky and there is this adage saying “sky is the limit”.
So, how you can actually work outside?
First, you need to understand on how to work remotely in your home and you need to be good at it, once you have adopted useful habits you are able to slowly move onto the next stage. Don’t go to parks just yet, use your garden, setup a patio area with a table, chair and umbrella, make sure you have WIFI or your device has LTE connectivity, check if you do have power outlets, charged batteries and power bank handy, make sure you do have these noise cancelling headphones in case surroundings will prevent you to focus. Start working like that for couple of hours per day, don’t spend a full day doing so just yet, you may also prefer to hold any online meetings and conferences in your garden to create a positive connection between the task on hand and your environment which you have just created.
Once you are able to comfortably work outside, expand the number of hours, then days, once this is mastered, you are welcome to go anywhere you want as you will be able to work as normal in any environment.
Have you ever tried working outside of your house? How did it go? Feel free to let me know in the comments section below.
All the best,
Lucas
