I brought work home almost every day for many years. That's why I took early retirement when I was 46. I had worked the equivalent of about 50 years.

Over the years, I often brought work home, wrote up notes on the computer, prepared lesson plans, emailed people, reading. I wasn't paid for it, but it made things easier when at work.

I would get fired if I did. I'm a reciever...

I don't think I've ever had a job where the program we used, could be used at home as well. So no, I have never and will never bring work home. Home is for relaxing. Work is for working. I watched some people bring work home, only to have hours cut at the business. Head honcho's see that the workload is being done in a 40 hour work week, not seeing how much is being done on the employees dime at home. Next thing you know, you're getting hours cut, having to do extra work in the same amount of time. You end up staying late, skipping breaks, bringing it home all for free. All to make the boss happy. Not me. If it can't be done it the scheduled 8 hour shift, it's not getting done.

I worked on salary for most of my working years, not hourly. I liked it because I had more freedom.
Working on deadlines, companies didn't care where or when a report or course was written - just that it was done well and on time.

Many professional level jobs are like this.

Hu! I taught school 28 years! LOL You can only imagine! LOL

Wish I'd learned that lesson earlier than I did, debby ab. You are absolutely right, but like SamKaren said, too many interruptions at work can turn a job into a project!

I'm salary so that means nights and weekends when needed. I can connect remotely to my computer at work so I have all the programs I need. Trust me, management notices when your emails are sent on the weekends or late at night, and it's one of the secrets to promotions. I see so many people wonder why their career is stagnant and it's because they leave at the dot of 5 every day, take a one hour lunch every day and never put in a little extra effort. And that's fine if you're aiming for a steady work/life balance but it's not the way to get ahead in the corporate world. Even if you're amazingly efficient and get a lot done in the 8 hour workday, it's still viewed negatively if you never stay late or take work home, at least in all of the companies where I've worked. No one will ever say anything to you about it as long as you get your work done but it's noticed.

I'm self-employed and my office is in my home, so yes.

Yes in fact work provided me with a wonderful microscope for home to be able to do some of my work from home when I was doing my cytogenetics research. It did help but many times I was at my lab till after midnight, in that world some things do not work on a regular timetable.
It was ridiculous how much over time I had built up by the end LOL

I love having projects to do but in this case his fvorite saying is "wait..before you do that...can you do this..."

I sometimes get so backed up I am drowning in papers. So...now that I have finished this project I am free to do my other work Monday.

SamKaren
your resident DJ

I have but I try not to make a habit of it. I can say I'm more likely to stay after and finish stuff that way. I seem to get more done if I do my work at work. At home, I have far more interruptions and temptations and wouldn't get it done anyway. I do agree with Debby that your home life should be separate but I know that it doesn't always work that way for some.

I was entering grades at 11:00 the other night. Does you university use D2L Desire 2 Learn? At least I can work on it from home.

I bring work home sometimes but I get really distracted by personal things I'd rather be doing. If I have a lot of work to do I usually just put in long days at the office to get it done. I check my work email from home all the time though just to keep up with it. I'm involved with international business so there's email coming in all the time. Plus a lot of domestic employees are working on email all the time. It's so easy to do that with all the mobile devices.

I work for a state agency, and I'm an Active Directory administrator (actuallly, I'm a Domain Administrator) for our network. I'm rarely required to do work from home, but I am authorized to telework occasionally, which is working from home. But, I know you're talking about working from home on my own time. Yeah, I do that, several evenings a week, and for a short amount time nearly every weekend. As you said, it's so much easier to get stuff done without all of the day-to-day in-office interruptions.

I was a "trainer" or teacher at my job. I often brought work home to prepare classes, including making hand-outs. I wasn't allowed to bring actual cases home, because I worked for the federal government and we had to protect individual's privacy.

Absolutely, but now it is a moot point since I work from home. And my job is more or less 24/7. . . just the nature of the beast. Doesn't bother me at all, I love my work or I wouldn't do it.

I think that this one of the big differences is a job and a career.

So if you stay after-hours at work to get more done, do you think the bosses look at you and think "She can't even get her work done in 7 and a half hours"?

One of my bosses has routinely said that we have to do "more with less" -- less meaning fewer people because the company's not getting as much earnings as shareholders would like, so buyouts have happened a few times since I've been there.
Many nights, I have worked late. In fact, if they paid overtime, I could take a lovely 1-month vacation somewhere with the number of hours I gave to this company.

But my department's morale sucks because of how ignored we are and how people ahead of us don't do there jobs very well, so we get stuck cleaning up after them.

So when quittin' time comes, I pack it up. And I don't take work home. And I know that doing that is not going to jeopardize my job. There's only one reason they'll kick me out -- when they look at the spreadsheet of who's being paid what and see me in the top 10, because of my age and experience.

It depends. There's a big difference between someone who has to stay an extra hour or two every night to hit their deadlines and someone who stays late one or two nights a week to work on additional projects or get ahead on other projects.

Where I work, even staying an extra 15 or 20 minutes makes a huge difference in perception even if you aren't getting that much more done. You can always tell the people who jump up out of their seats immediately at 5 pm every day. It's not really that fair of a metric to measure people by but it is what it is.

Our office behavior is perceived just like yours Chi83.

In the five years I've been with my company, I can count on two hands the times I've actually left right at quitting time.

Instead, the company basically owns my soul. I have a company issue laptop and iPhone so I can be available 24/7. And do I bring work home? Yes.

But hey, I'm nearly 58, have a steady job in a successful, secure company with great benefits and make enough money to live comfortably in California. That can't be said for a lot of people my age. Though I admit, I'd rather be retired. :-)

Jodi-