Remote working has continuously increased in popularity since the turn of the millennium — especially when one does not have to get dressed or commute in order to do what is necessary to get the job done. The concept has even spawned weblogs which are dedicated to working from home or at remote locations worldwide — such as Coworkaholic at BoardingArea — and since the current 2019 Novel Coronavirus pandemic spread throughout most of the planet, the whole world seems like everyone has been working from home.
8 Tips to Stay Productive When Working Remotely From Home — and The Most Popular Places in the World to Do So
With so many people working from home these days — greater than 10 million posts are currently tagged with #WorkFromHome — Instagram has increasingly become a vehicle which people use to connect with others, share how they set up working from home, and maybe glean some inspiration to design home offices while they are at it.
Working remotely from home is not merely a trend. When the current 2019 Novel Coronvirus pandemic subsides — or is mitigated in some manner — working remotely appears to be here to stay. A study by Buffer.com found that 99 percent of workers said they would like to work remotely at least some of the time for the remainder of their careers. Some sources are even predicting that working from home will become the new norm in modern society, as an increasing number of high-profile employers — such as JPMorgan Chase & Company, Amazon, Twitter, and Google as four of countless examples — normalize remote workforces.
To help you explore the concept of working remotely from home or another location — as well as to see how popular is working remotely from home where you are based — this article from Headway Capital contains information as to the most popular places around the world for working from home or from a remote location. I have been given express written permission to use the images and the verbatim text from the aforementioned article in this article.
To navigate our interactive map, zoom into an area of interest with your fingertips or mouse. You can hover over any of the home working hotspots to identify the place and the number of Instagram posts associated with the location. Take your time to explore, if you’re currently working from home, there will be no one around to tell you to get back to work.
The 10 hottest spots around the world for working from home are:
- Jakarta
- New York
- London
- Los Angeles
- Mumbai
- Delhi
- Bangkok
- Toronto
- Bandung City
- Surabaya City
Check out our interactive map to see where else is a #WorkFromHome hotspot.
Where Are The #WorkFromHome Hotspots Around The World?
The top #WorkFromHome hotspot is Jakarta. That’s pretty impressive, considering our research shows Jakartan workers’ average Internet speed is 3.7 MBps (the average internet speed in the United States is 42.86 MBps). In a city already accustomed to working from home, COVID-19 is only inflating statistics like these, considering that President Joko Widodo recommended in March that all Indonesians work from home who are able to.
The rest of the top ten cities are some of the world’s epicenters of population, commerce, and technology. Following Jakarta, the top ten list includes New York City, London, LA, Mumbai, Delhi, Bangkok, Toronto, Bandung City, and Surabaya City.
The top 3 countries in the world for home working are:
- United States
- Indonesia
- India
And the top continents:
- North America
- Asia
- Europe
Where Are The #WorkFromHome Hotspots In the United States?
The work-from-home hotspots in the United States are the country’s most populous cities. New York City, Los Angeles, Chicago and Houston all share both the highest populations in America, as well as the highest number of hits for our list of hotspots. New York City is positioned well for remote working – internet speed in the Big Apple is listed at 46.2 MBps, higher than the national average, and the city of 8.4 million boasts about 5,400 coffee shops with free wi-fi and more than 260 dedicated co-working spaces.
Americans are pretty keen on working from home – according to one survey, 43 % of employed Americans spend at least some time working remotely. In fact, the job-posting website Indeed experienced a 385 % increase in job seekers looking for work-from-home opportunities in 2017.
Breaking down the data, the top cities for home working in America are:
- New York
- Los Angeles
- Chicago
And the top states are:
- California
- New York
- Florida
Where Are The #WorkFromHome Hotspots In the United Kingdom?
And as with the US, the list of top cities is roughly comparable to the list of most populous cities in the country – six of the top ten UK hotspots for working from home are also in the top 10 most populated UK cities list. Top of the list is London, a city of 9 million, which accommodates its remote workers fairly well – the city includes 1,680 coffee houses with free wifi, along with 271 dedicated co-working spaces, each hosting on average 121 members and growing like wildfire (an 81 % increase from 2016-17).
The COVID-19 pandemic is only exacerbating the trend of remote working among the British. According to the UK’s Office for National Statistics, 49.2 % of adults in employment were working from home as of April 2020.
Here are top UK cities for home working at home:
- London
- Manchester
- Edinburgh
And the top regions are:
- London
- South East
- North West
The Global Impact of COVID-19
As we processed the data for this research project, some of the effects of COVID-19 on remote workers likewise became apparent. In gathering information on hashtags related to working from home, many of them explicitly included keywords related to the global pandemic.
Some of the prominent hashtags, including how many hits they returned in our analysis, include:
- #stayathome: 78,097
- #socialdistancing: 47,275
- #quarantine: 44,307
- #covid19: 40,709
- #staysafe: 38,839
- #corona: 38,397
- #coronavirus: 37,826
- #covid_19: 32,096
- #lockdown: 19,570
- #covid: 13,517
- #quarantinelife: 13,042
How Can You Stay Productive When Working from Home?
If remote working is a new situation for you, staying productive can feel like a challenge. Don’t be embarrassed – this can be difficult for even the most experienced remote work veterans. To help we compiled the following infographic to help keep you on-task the next time your pointer hovers over your social media browser windows, when it should be navigating to your work email.
Whether you’ve been a work-from-home warrior for decades, or if you’re setting up your first home internet connection, you’re not alone. Millions of people around the world work from home on a regular basis; hopefully some of these tips and data will help you make the most of your home office.
Methodology and Sources
To create this map, location data for greater than 500,000 Instagram posts tagged with #WorkFromHome was extracted. The data was then cleaned up and organized by country, city, state, and region to create the interactive you see today. The data was gathered in May 2020.
#WorkFromHome posts were analyzed to find out which places around the world are home working hotspots.
Please visit bit.ly/WorkFromHomeHotspots for the full research.
Summary
Working from home can be a dream scenario for many people for the aforementioned reasons; but it can also increase the desire to interact with other people in person — as well as a change of scenery — to reduce the feelings of loneliness and “cabin fever.”
As with everything else, a healthy balance between work and personal life is essential.
I have worked from home for years and I still do not miss working in the corporate world — except for travel with which all expenses were paid by the company, of course…
All photographs ©2008, ©2014, ©2015, ©2016, and ©2018 by Brian Cohen.
