When I
started Mathilde & Co, I lived in a small village on the border of the
Klein Karoo desert in South Africa. There wasn’t much work available if you
couldn’t work from home or for yourself as an entrepreneur. It took me 6 years,
but I did both. I haven’t set foot full-time in an office for the last 13 years,
nor do I want ever again.
I believe
that the “home office” concept is the way forward, for all of us. For a healthy
family life, for equality in couples, and for more freedom just to be you.
Let’s face
it, it’s easy. With the technology available to us nowadays, the entire world is an office. When I was little, I’d imagine a futuristic world where we could see
the other person through the phone – today, that’s a normal thing. We don’t need
to be sitting together physically to be sitting together. So we can work,
efficiently, from absolutely anywhere we desire...
It takes a hell
of a lot of self-control and discipline. Especially for us OTT mothers who will
always remember to start a load of laundry or plan tonight’s dinner between an
email and a conference call. It takes a lot of organizing for single
mothers. It takes a huge amount of multitasking, dads! (FYI: Multitasking: verb
– (of a person) to deal with more than one task at the same time) (I’m totally
teasing you. Honest.)
Jokes
apart, it’s not a walk in the park, although, having said that, I’m currently in
France (yes, I am! I can work from all over the world) and WiFi is available in
most parks… So you can sit and work
with your laptop while watching the kids on the jungle gym (multitasking…ahem.)
You can sit in Starbucks and not feel guilty. Better yet, there are Co-working
spaces now where you can work and meet like-minded people, which is priceless because
because as I always say, every person you meet brings you a key, to use now or
later, but they are all part of the big puzzle which is your life. Exciting?
And these new co-working spaces are popping up everywhere, which is really
stimulating.
I have
decided to make it my life’s mission (chapter, what are we on? 6? 7?) as a continuum
to woman empowerment, to develop and promote the idea of working remotely.
It is so
hard to find a job with the flexibility of hours necessary -and by that I mean, indispensable – to manage a fulfilling career
and be a good, available, caring mother. The generation before us had the hard
task of transitioning from the stay at home wife answering only to her lord and
master, to being a career girl, a perfect mother, house-cleaner and hot stuff in
the bedroom. All in a day.
But No more.
I need a
career. I need to design, to manage and create. But I’m also a mother, a women,
a lover of the outdoors and I need time to dance. And I won’t compromise on any
of the above.
Businesses
need to start acknowledging this growing trend and no doubt their employees
will provide them with a higher quality of work. Don’t get me wrong, we still need
office spaces and to be there maybe 2-3 days of the week, or perhaps a few hours a day,
for brainstorming sessions, for good old colleague socialising and
shenanigans - AKA team building sessions. Whatever balance is needed can be
found, to the greatest satisfaction of everyone involved.
Even the dog.
GG
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