This is a question that I ask myself very often.

Ours is a quite solitary job… and it’s easy to become isolated. If you work with other people in your same field in an office, you’re likely to feel more support, more social interaction, and even receive feedback that helps you evolve professionally. In our job, this is sometimes challenging. And everyone needs to find their own balance. Working from home is comfortable, practical, and cheap… but is it good for our health? And for our career?

Perhaps virtue, as often happens, lies in the middle.

I’ve been in Portugal, in the Sintra area, for some time. And I’m using a nearby coworking space. Since I arrived, Portugal has been treating me wonderfully; I highly recommend coming here. It’s no wonder that my “remoter” colleagues have proclaimed Lisbon as the number 1 destination on Nomadlist, taking its flagrant first place away from Bali.

In any case, what I was getting at is that I’ve been reflecting for a long time on the way I work. Always from home. And this gives me both comfort and discomfort at the same time. Coworking spaces are expensive, I told myself every time I thought about changing this dynamic. And it’s true, most of them are. But they are also starting to realize that there are many more people with different profiles working remotely. And that makes them offer more flexible weekly or daily rates. Here, for example, working a couple of days a week, choosing the coworking space you want (and changing if you feel like it), will cost you about 100 euros per month. And this is sustainable for me, and for my mental health.

When recording in a home studio, we always tend to think, “Why should I spend money on a coworking space if I can record comfortably from the studio at home?” And you’re not wrong, but in our job, the percentage of time we dedicate solely to recording is quite small, let’s be honest. Between editing, marketing, SEO, and administrative tasks, more than 60-70% of our time goes into that. And you could do that elsewhere, change the scenery, see other people, make connections (and a bit of networking, which is never a bad thing). What if you were more productive outside your home? Because, in my opinion, separating your workspace from your personal life directly impacts your well-being, or at least that’s been my experience.

What about yours?

#travelling #voiceover #blog #coworking #voicelikevelvet #voiceactor #voiceacting #isolation