Home, Office, or Somewhere in Between

I worked from home off and on for years. On paper, it was the dream. No commute. No overhead. I have a dedicated room with a door that closes and a setup that would make any remote worker excited.

And I was slowly losing my mind.

Not in a dramatic way. In the quiet, creeping way where you realize at 3 pm that you’ve been “about to start” something since 10 am. Where the kitchen is fifteen feet away and your fourth snack of the morning has somehow become lunch. Where you sit down at your desk and your brain registers “home” instead of “work” and just... checks out.

So I got an office.

Then I got another one. And another one. I’ve had probably half a dozen offices over the last few years. The first one was too far. One sounded like someone was running a televangelist studio next door. (they were) One just didn’t feel right in a way I still can’t explain, which is a very ADHD reason to leave a perfectly functional space.

I’m telling you this upfront because I don’t want to sell you some clean story where I signed a lease, hung my art on the wall, and everything magically clicked. That’s not how it went. Finding the right office is its own whole project. But here’s the thing, for me: even the bad offices were better than working from home. Every single one of them.

The ADHD Tax on Working From Home

I have ADHD. I’ve talked about this before. It’s not a cute personality quirk or a content strategy. It’s a real thing that shapes how I work every day, and if you have it too, you already know exactly what I’m about to say.

Working from home with ADHD is playing the game on hard mode with the controller upside down. At least for me, but I have friends who have ADHD and work well from home.

Every environment sends signals to your brain. Your office chair says “work.” Your couch says, “Nap.” Your kitchen says, “There’s chocolate in there.” When your workspace is ten feet from all those things, your brain gets hit with mixed signals all day long. ADHD brains are already terrible at filtering signals on a good day.

Structure isn’t optional for me. It’s the entire operating system. I need to get in the car, drive somewhere, and sit down in a place where my brain goes, “Okay, this is the workplace.” That commute isn’t wasted time. It’s a boot sequence. But it can’t be a long drive. My brain needs a loading screen between “home mode” and “work mode,” and a five-minute drive is apparently the minimum viable time for it.

If you don’t have ADHD, this probably sounds dramatic. If you do, you stopped reading to go get a snack and just came back. Welcome back. I get it.

The people who say “just use a timer” or “try the Pomodoro technique” aren’t wrong. Those tools help. But they’re duct tape on a structural problem. I’d rather spend my willpower on client work than on convincing myself to stay in my chair for one more hour when the couch is right there, calling my name, being all comfortable and stuff.

The Real Cost Calculation

Here’s where most people stop thinking: office space costs money, working from home is free. Math done. Case closed.

Except that math is wrong because it only counts the obvious costs.

What does it cost you when a project takes three hours instead of one because you couldn’t lock in? What does it cost when you push a deadline because your discipline evaporated on a Thursday afternoon? What’s the dollar value of spending your entire day fighting your environment instead of, you know, actually doing work?

I can’t put an exact number on that. But I can tell you I get more done in six focused hours at my office than I ever did in nine or ten at home. That’s not motivational poster talk. That’s what actually happened and continues to happen.

Yes, the office costs real money.

But here’s how I think about it: the office isn’t an expense. It’s infrastructure. Same category as your tax software, your secure portal (You are using one of those, aren’t you?), your practice management system. You don’t run those on the free tier and hope for the best. You invest in the tools that make the work possible. For some of us, a physical office is one of those tools.

Run the numbers for yourself. Be honest about what your actual output looks like at home versus somewhere with built-in structure. If there’s a real gap, the office might be the cheapest productivity upgrade you’ll ever make.

Your Clients Don’t Care Where You Sit

Here’s the thing that took me way too long to figure out: not a single client has ever asked to see my office. Not one. In all the years I’ve been doing this.

My clients are everywhere. California, New York, Florida are scattered across the country. They found me online, hired me remotely, and have never set foot in any of the physical spaces I’ve occupied. They don’t care if I’m working from a corner office or a closet with good Wi-Fi. They care that I know what I’m doing and that their problem gets solved.

I used to think having an office was partly about professionalism. Giving clients a place to meet. In practice? I’ve had maybe a handful of in-person meetings in the last few years. Everything else is Zoom, phone, secure portals, and email. That’s what a modern tax practice looks like. I wouldn’t change that for the world. I love it.

So here’s the part that might surprise you: I got the office for me, not for them. The office is about my productivity and my focus. The clients just see the output. Faster responses, tighter work product, deadlines that actually get met. They have no idea those improvements came from me driving to a different building. They don’t need to know. They just need results.

If you’re on the fence about an office because you think your clients need it, they probably don’t. If you’re on the fence because you think you need it, pay attention to that. Those are two very different questions.

Your Staff Deserves the Same Honesty

Everything I just said about clients applies to the people you work with, too.

There’s a certain type of firm owner who insists everyone sit in the office because they don’t trust their team to work remotely. You’ve heard it. “I need to see them working.” “How do I know they’re not just watching Netflix?” “People slack off when nobody’s watching.”

I’m going to be blunt here: if I can’t trust you to do your job without me hovering over your shoulder, I don’t want to work with you. That’s it. That’s the whole policy.

The problem in that scenario isn’t remote work. It’s a hiring problem. Or a management problem. Or a trust problem. Dragging people into an office doesn’t fix any of those things. It just adds a commute to an already broken situation.

I need an office. That’s my thing. But the people I work with? I expect them to manage their own environment and their own output. Some people are great at home. Some people need a coffee shop. Some people do their best work at 6 am in their pajamas. Fantastic. I don’t care where or when the work happens. I care that it happens, that it’s right, and that deadlines get met.

If you’re building a firm, you have to be open to what works best for the people around you. Your structure needs aren’t everyone’s structure needs. The person who’s brilliant at representation work might do her best thinking from a kitchen table in sweatpants. That’s not a problem. That’s the whole point of running a modern practice. Hire good people, set clear expectations, and evaluate the output. Not the optics.

The practitioners who build their firms around control rather than trust are going to struggle to hire and retain good people. The talent pool in this profession is already shallow. Shrinking it further because you won’t let someone work from home is a choice. It’s just not a good one.

Boundaries Are a Real Problem

The hardest part of working from home wasn’t focus. It was boundaries.

When your office is in your house, you’re never fully “at work,” and you’re never fully “at home.” You’re always this weird in-between version of both. The laptop is right there. The client portal is one click away. That email came in at 8 pm, and you could just knock it out real quick. You won’t, though. Except you will. Because it’s right there. And now it’s 9:30, and you’re deep in a collections case in your living room while your spouse gives you a look.

It goes both ways, too. Sometimes “work from home” quietly becomes “live at work.” Sometimes it becomes “do two loads of laundry while pretending to work.” Both of those are boundary failures, and they’ll eat your practice alive.

I tried all the hacks. Dedicated room with a door, a thick door to help block our noise. Strict work hours. “I’m closing the laptop at 6 pm,” I said that so many times. The laptop was open by 6:15 approximately every single day.

An office gives me a hard edge. I’m there, I’m working. I leave, I’m done.

If your boundaries at home are solid, keep doing what you’re doing. But if you’re being honest with yourself and those boundaries are more aspirational than actual, that’s worth sitting with for a minute.

The Part Nobody Talks About

Working from home can be lonely. There, I said it.

Tax work is already isolating. Most of us are solo practitioners or tiny firms. We spend our days reading transcripts, drafting responses, and staring at tax software. Add physical isolation to professional isolation, and it gets heavy.

Going to an office, even a small one, puts you back in the world. You see other humans. You get coffee from somewhere that isn’t your own kitchen. You exist as a professional who put on real shoes today. That sounds like a small thing. It’s really not.

So, What Should You Do?

I’m not going to tell you that everyone needs an office. That would be dishonest, and it would contradict everything I just said about trusting people to know what works for them.

But I’ll tell you what I tell myself: know what you actually need, not what looks good on a spreadsheet.

If you have ADHD, or if you struggle with focus and boundaries, the office might not be a luxury. It might be what makes your practice actually work. If your clients are remote anyway, you don’t need to justify the office as a client-facing expense. Justify it as what it is: a tool that makes you better at your job.

If you’re thinking about it, try it for three months. Find something small and affordable. Don’t sign a five-year lease. Just test it. Track your output. Be honest about the results. And if the first space isn’t right, try another one. I’m on office number six or so. The search is part of the process.

And if someone on your team does their best work from home, let them. Build your practice around results, not around where the chairs are.

I’m not going back to working from home. But I’m also not going to pretend that what works for me should be the rule for everyone else. Figure out what you need. Be honest about it. Build around that. Everything is trial and error.

Now I want to hear from you.

Where are you working right now? Home office? Rented space? Kitchen table? Coworking spot? The back seat of your car between client meetings? (No judgment.)

Drop a comment and tell me about your setup. What works, what doesn’t, and what you’d change if you could. Bonus points if you include a photo.

I’m planning something fun for a future post: a showcase of tax pro workspaces. The good, the bad, and the “I can’t believe I’m running a practice from here.” If you’d be open to having your space featured, let me know. I think we can all learn something from how other practitioners have figured this out.