My New Office

Photo by Norbert Levajsics on Unsplash

Hanifmr.com - At the beginning of the year, the time had finally come. I moved into my new office.

It took a long time and I was all the happier that it worked out now.

In the following, you will find out why I moved to an external office, what it looks like and what my first experiences are.

My New Office - Insights, Furnishings, and My First Experiences

In 2013 my wife and I came up with the idea of venturing a new building in a series of detours with enough offices for them and me.

She is also self-employed and at the time rented a multi-room office for her employees and herself, which she was not satisfied with.

I've worked in my own home office since I started my own business. This separate room in my home isn't exactly big, but it was enough for one person.

Nevertheless, the time came for me when I increasingly toyed with the idea of moving to an external office.

Why an External Office Now?

I asked myself this question in an article quite a while ago.

There are many reasons for moving from a home office to an external office.

I felt comfortable in my home office, no question about it. I have been self-employed there since 2006 and built up a successful business.

Nevertheless, the desire to separate work and private life a little more grew over the years. In the evenings I often wondered whether I should spend time with my family or whether I should still work.

It was difficult to separate work and personal life because it was only one door away. Over the years I've managed to switch off and allow myself more free time, but it wasn't that easy when you knew there was still something to do.

To be able to just close the office door and go home was something I was missing.

Another reason for an external office was the clutter. My home office was used by my children for homework, among other things, and it was often quite messy. That has often upset me and cost me a lot of time.

A third reason is the further development of my business. For a while now, I've reached limits that can only be postponed again by a new employee. I have a lot of ideas and there are a lot of projects that could be expanded. But this is only slowly achievable, especially since I no longer want to work every evening and on weekends.

In addition, the overhead has increased. I have to invest more and more time in e-mails, business inquiries, administration, etc. so that new projects simply fall by the wayside. But an employee would not have been possible in the home office from the space and even if I had, I would not have found it so good in my house.

All of this has led to the realization over the past few years that an external office is the next logical step.

Office Buildings Instead of Rent

The first thought, of course, was to rent an external office. However, we quickly concluded that it would not make sense if both my wife and I paid for an external office.

And since the financing costs were very low, it quickly became clear that we would build again ourselves.

After we had our house built around 10 years ago, we would not have thought that we would dare to build a new one again. But of course, this has great advantages. We could set up the house and offices as we wanted.

A building plot was also found very quickly, not very far from our home. All in all, the construction phase from the first idea to moving in took around 18 months but compared to our first house construction, it was relatively relaxed. It's similar to the second child. You have been through all of this before and are much more relaxed.

There were also no major problems during construction and so the house was finished on time at the end of 2014.

We were then able to move my wife's office between Christmas and New Year.

Apart from my desk, my PC, and a few documents, I didn't have much that needed to be moved. That's why it happened very quickly for me. :-)

And then it went to my new office.

Setup and Insights

Since my wife signed her lease on December 31st. had to quit, we were of course very happy that the schedule was adhered to and that we were able to move into the new office space at the beginning of 2015.

At around 19 m², my own office is twice the size of my previous home office. This is of course a significant improvement. In addition, I now only have my work equipment and documents here and no children can cause the disorder.

I took my previous corner desk to the office but bought a new office chair.

I also had to buy a couple of new cabinets and assemble them myself. But the result is impressive.

I've set up my desk more or less the same way as I did in my home office. After all, I developed a lot of routines that worked well.

The view is not bad in winter, but it will get even better in spring.

My First Experiences

After around 2 months I can now take stock of the situation.

The advantages of my new external office are many:

My new office is lighter, bigger and tidier than my home office.
I finally have a nice wide view.
There is space for one or two employees in a second office.
I can close the door for the evening and stop thinking about work at home.
I work more focused on my tasks because I know when it is over I won't work anymore.

The very fact that I can go home and that there is nothing more to work there is a completely new experience. That is very good.

And if something needs to be done urgently, I can walk to the office in 4 minutes.

So far I have hardly been able to identify any disadvantages. Of course, it takes some getting used to. But all in all, I now feel very comfortable in my new office. And the year got off to a successful start, so I can't complain about anything.

Employees

I would like to hire a new employee in the next few months.

Apart from the fact that it will be difficult to get someone else to work on my projects anyway, I am still faced with the question of how I can find someone suitable at all.

I can't just name a job title I'm looking for. The work to be done is so diverse that it is difficult for me to get a few sentences.

I'll just post a job posting here on the blog soon. Let's see if that brings something and who will respond.

Before that, my second office has to be tidied up, as it is currently still a bit of the storage room.

Conclusion

It is a very good feeling that 18 months of planning and implementation are finally over and I was able to move into my new office.

Even if things went relatively smoothly, it was still an intense time and there was always something to do and deadlines to be met. Now I can concentrate fully on work and my free time again.

Let's see what the future brings.

HANIFMR.COM