Intro.

If you haven’t been in lockdown due to the Covid 19 virus, you’re extremely lucky. Governments around the world seem to think that lockdowns are going to help ‘stop the spread’, although this is debatable.

Regardless of where you sit with the lockdowns, I have a first hand account of the benefits of work from home during lockdown. I live in Melbourne, Australia, and we had a lockdown that seemed to last about 4-5 months.

As painful as this was (and unnecessary in my opinion), there has been a silver lining. Out of the gloom comes some favorable elements that make me look on the brighter side.

Here’s 5 things that I would say are a benefit, that I would not have known had we not been locked down.

Ability To Work From Home

Who would have thought that it was possible for so many people to work at home everyday. Not that I want to do this for the rest of my life, but I’ve been able to do it quite easily.

Although I am an affiliate marketer which basically involves being a keyboard warrior, I also work part time for an engineering firm. I’m a draftsperson in the civil engineering field, and therefore I use a heavy software program called AutoCAD.

At the beginning of lockdown, I was having problems with my internet connection. My two kids were also not allowed to attend school, one of which was at primary school. After I had my internet connection rectified, and eventually my kids were allowed back in school, working at home became a breeze.

My wife is a transport planner, and she has also found working from home easier than expected. We have our workstations setup with 2 main screens, connected to a laptop, so effectively we have 3 screens.

When we eventually venture back into our offices, I dare say we’ll spend at least 1-2 days working from home from now on. Having spoken to others, they feel the same way.

I also understand that many people have not had the same luxuries as us, as we have a decent sized house. Those in apartments will be eager to get back into the office, but as they’ve had to get used to working from home, I can almost guarantee many will continue to do so from time to time.

Saving Money

Can you believe it, I’m actually saving money. I’ve been terrible at saving money in the past, but because nothing is open, I have nothing to spend my money on.

I admit, I’m in the fortunate position of having a job. Well, two actually, as I’ve explained. My family haven’t been impacted financially through the lockdown.

The joys of hitting a bar or going shopping (in my wife’s case), has been taken away from us. I couldn’t even go out and play golf until a week ago. This meant that departing with my hard earned money was out of the question, which is good for our bank balance.

So although I’ve been extremely frustrated at not being able to venture into stores or a pub, I’m loaded for when I can join up with my mates for a bevvy or two.

Less Vehicle Traffic

Where I live in Melbourne, I’m quite close to the beach, railway line and major roads. I noticed that in the middle of lockdown, and after people immediately lost their jobs, the traffic reduced by well over 50%.

One of the roads that I need to access off my street is always very busy. However, it became so easy to enter this road because nobody was going anywhere. This is one of the things that I wish could last forever.

Now that our lockdown is not as severe as it once was, the traffic is all coming back to pre-lockdown levels. Oh well, it was good while it lasted!

Cleaner Air

If you have been in lockdown with very limited traffic hitting the roads, have you ever looked up at the stars? There’s no doubt that less pollution from cars has made an environmental impact.

I’m not suggesting it has anything to do with climate change (this is a hoax as far as I’m concerned), but looking after our environment is a totally different issue.

With limited cars and less trucks on the road, it seemed that the sky was much clearer. Therefore, the sky seemed to have twice as many stars as usual. No doubt this will change now that vehicles are back on the road.

Online Shopping​

Although online shopping has been around for a few years now, it became a bigger part of our lives in lockdown. Many of our larger stores only had a ‘click & collect’ facility for the lockdown period.

This meant ordering our store items online, receiving an email to say our items were ready to be picked up, then heading down to the store and having staff bring our order out to us.

While this did work okay, there’s nothing like heading to the hardware store on the spur of the moment to pick up a required need.

Not everything was ‘click & collect’ though, with many products being posted. The main issue here was that Australia Post was not delivering everyday, yet more people were placing orders. This didn’t really work, and deliveries took far too long on many occasions.

However, we did all learn how to place orders online, even the elderly had to learn how to do this. My mum even learned how to get groceries delivered.

So I suppose there was some benefit in regards to online purchasing.

Final Thoughts

Would I prefer lockdown never happened? Of course I would, but I’m trying to look on the brighter side.

There have been some benefits of working from home during lockdown, as I’ve stated above. But, many of these benefits will not last forever. Others I believe will come into play more often, like actually logging in and working from home.

It remains to be seen, but let’s hope lockdowns never happen again.