Image credit: Piqsels
If you work in an office during the week, how much do you like it? It’s nice sometimes, certainly — being around your colleagues (if you like them, that is), feeling suitably professional, and getting to benefit from the purpose-built working environment — but it can be grating. It eats into your free time, particularly if you have a lengthy commute, and it can be noisy.
Working from home is a great alternative. No more commuting, no more background office chatter, and freedom to set up your working area as you see fit. With the progress of technology, it’s getting easier all the time, and becoming a powerful driver of productivity. In this piece, we’re going to look at the technology pushing things ahead. Let’s begin:
Device connectivity
When you mostly work using a laptop, you can have issues with comfort (the cramped keyboard and trackpad) and visibility (the small screen). Due to connectivity standards improving, it’s become easy to connect a business laptop to various peripheral devices. Consider Mini DisplayPort and Thunderbolt, for example: they’re both display output connections, but the latter also allows you to connect non-display devices such as docking stations and hard drive enclosures, which is why Thunderbolt ports are so convenient.
Shrinking transistors
The size and efficiency of a computer is heavily determined by the size of its transistors. The smaller the transistors are, the more densely they can be packed onto microchips — and since production processes keep getting better, a modest laptop today (or even a great smartphone) can outperform a bulky desktop from the relatively-recent past. This allows remote workers to carry around powerful machines, saving them valuable processing time.
Internet infrastructure
One of the main issues with remote working is that internet access isn’t consistent. Businesses tend to have speedy and robust connections supplied by suitable IT companies, but the average employee opting to work remotely won’t be so fortunate. Even so, internet infrastructure has improved so much that major workflow interruptions are fairly unlikely — particularly given how affordable and reliable mobile data connections have become, making tethering a great fallback.
Collaboration software
Instead of emailing back and forth, remote workers can now use SaaS (software as a service) tools to collaborate effectively, no matter which devices they’re using. Teleconferencing, shared document editing, task assignment: it’s all simple to achieve with a collaboration suite, and there are plenty of options out there to meet all budgetary demands.
Cloud storage
Working remotely on a solo project has never been a major concern: provided you can access the data you need, it doesn’t matter how disconnected you are from the office (or from the wider world). When you’re part of a team, though, the work you do must be accessible to others — and cloud storage has changed the game by allowing files to be safely stored online (also lowering the impact of a laptop being lost, stolen or damaged beyond repair).
Due to all of this technological progress, remote working keeps getting better as a regular option. If you’ve ruled it out before now, why not give it some more consideration? It might be exactly what you need.
