“Home is supposed to be where we leave work behind. But what happens when home becomes everything?”
I’m going to date myself here.
Does anyone remember the movie The Net starring Sandra Bullock?
There’s a scene where she’s sitting on a beach, laptop balanced on her knees, becoming increasingly frustrated because she can’t get her dial-up connection to work while she’s on holiday.
Yes… dial-up internet.
I warned you I was going to show my age.
Back then, the idea of working from anywhere seemed futuristic. Fast forward thirty years and working from home has become one of the most debated topics in modern workplaces.
Whenever the conversation flares up, it usually follows a familiar script.
Employers argue that productivity, collaboration and culture suffer.
Employees argue that flexibility, autonomy and work-life balance have improved.
Both sides make valid points.
But there is one aspect of working from home that I rarely hear discussed.
The long-term psychological impact of living, working and caring for others within the same four walls.
I worked from home for more than a decade for one of the world’s largest technology companies.
What began as a six-month contract eventually became a leadership role, managing a fully virtual team of more than 150 people.
Working from home wasn’t simply a lifestyle choice.
It became a lifeline.
Around the same time, my wife Karina’s kidney disease was progressing. Removing a four-hour daily commute gave me back almost twenty hours every week and, more importantly, meant I could be close to the hospital if something went wrong.
For the first few years it worked remarkably well.
I had structure.
I trained most mornings for upcoming triathlons.
I had a dedicated office.
I made sure I left the house every day.
I still had routines that separated work from life.
Looking back, that separation was doing far more heavy lifting than I realised.
Everything changed in 2016.
Karina was no longer eligible for a kidney transplant.
After many difficult conversations, we made the decision for her to begin dialysis at home.
We believed giving her greater control over her treatment would improve both her quality of life and her dignity.
I still believe we made the best decision we could with the information we had.
But it fundamentally changed our home.
Suddenly, every room had a job.
Our house became my workplace.
It became a hospital ward.
It became the place where I was trying to hold a marriage together.
The boundaries between those roles quietly disappeared.
One of the memories that has never left me is hearing the “Calls Waiting” alarm from my work computer sounding at the same time as the alarm on Karina’s dialysis machine.
Those two completely different worlds had begun operating in perfect synchronisation.
Working from home also made some extraordinary things possible.
I could continue working from a doctor’s waiting room while Karina was in surgery.
I joined leadership meetings from hospital cafeterias.
I answered emails while waiting for her to come out of recovery.
My employer received the leadership they expected.
Karina received the support she needed.
In many ways, working from home made the impossible possible.
I remain genuinely grateful for that flexibility.
Looking back now, I don’t believe working from home harmed me.
But I do think something else happened.
Something much quieter.
I slowly lost perspective.
Not because I stopped working with people.
But because I stopped living alongside them.
One of the biggest things I lost wasn’t my office.
It was everything around the office.
The conversations walking to the car park.
Chatting while making a coffee.
Listening to someone talk about their holiday.
Celebrating a promotion.
Watching new employees find their confidence.
Sharing a laugh after a difficult meeting.
Those moments seem ordinary.
But they’re constantly calibrating us.
They remind us that our workplace isn’t the only workplace.
That our manager isn’t every manager.
That our experience isn’t everyone’s experience.
Working from home slowly removed those reference points.
Then caregiving removed almost everything that remained.
Without noticing, my world became incredibly small.
Today, one of my greatest vocational challenges isn’t capability.
It’s perspective.
I genuinely don’t know what a healthy workplace feels like anymore.
When you’ve spent years with your home functioning simultaneously as your office, hospital and sanctuary, the idea of stepping back into another working environment becomes surprisingly difficult.
Not because you’ve forgotten how to do the work.
But because you’ve lost the ability to compare one environment with another.
When every room has had a job, it’s hard to imagine what it feels like to simply walk into a workplace where your only responsibility is to do your job.
I often wonder whether this is something we’ll understand better in another ten or twenty years.
Perhaps working from home isn’t simply about productivity or flexibility.
Perhaps it’s also about understanding the invisible role our environments play in shaping our wellbeing.
For me, recovery hasn’t just been about healing from grief or burnout.
It’s also been about slowly teaching my home that it no longer has to be everything.
That some rooms can simply be places to read.
To cook.
To sit quietly.
To laugh with friends.
To watch the sunrise with two Border Collies asleep at my feet.
Home is gradually becoming home again.
And perhaps that’s been one of the most important parts of the journey.
“I’d love to hear your thoughts. If you’ve worked from home for an extended period—especially while balancing caring responsibilities—did you notice changes that went beyond productivity? I’d be interested to know whether anyone else has experienced something similar.”
The Way Home Project 