+1. Also, the pleasure or pain of a task is not constant over time. Part of efficiency is finding a task appropriate to one's mood, and anticipating how one's mood will change over time.
Influencing one's mood to match the task at hand is of course useful too, if you can figure it out. This is why I often read the git log and my notes before diving into a task -- it reminds me why I care, what fruits are tantalizingly low-hanging, etc.
The line between at work and “Not at work” has become very blurred at home. Especially with everyone in different time zones. I find that in the Midwest I need to start at least 2 hours early, and stay 2 hours late, to accommodate both coasts. It was easier when people were at the office. They’re either at their desk or not, and if not, then it’s not my job to track them down. Now if someone is not at their desk, I have to wait because they might be taking a break, or something with family.
In short, working from home has reduced productivity and maybe made some folks lazy.
I am not seeing the connection between the problems described and remote work. If someone is not at their desk, your being remote doesn't mean it becomes your job to track them down. In either scenario, try them later or leave a message. Likewise, being in a different time zone was true before, too. They clearly must be remote to you if they are in a different time zone, so the location of your desk should have zero impact on your scheduling of calls with them. If you are adding hours to your day to match theirs, that isn't a fault of remote work, it is faulty team dynamics.
It sounds like your self-expectations have changed based on being remote, not the actual problems.
Efficiency is for robots. I deliver value to my company on a continuous basis and if taking a nap in the afternoon means I work an hour or two in the evening then I don't see what worries The Economist should hold about the situation.
It's convenient that Economist articles don't show bylines. They claim that it's because they want to speak with a collective voice, but it also makes it impossible to point out specific conflicts of interest. The latter seems more important than the former, in my eyes.
Doesn't seem that way to me, but when I work longer hours at home I feel happier, less stressed and my day fits better.
Ever since I had to go back to 3 days a week I'm getting less done, I'm more stressed and I dread the days of commuting and having to sit on my tiny desk with sub par peripherals and all the distractions.
So it's anecdotal, but chalk one up for longer hours at home being a preference, even if I don't think it's true.
“It’s best for you AND the company” sorry but every time I’ve heard this exact phrasing, it was only good for the manager voicing it, not for me NOR the company.
I agree with you. However, I don't agree with the voices of managers. I manage a few engineers and haven't had additional trouble during the pandemic:
* People show up when meetings are scheduled as always
* While I can't get up-to-the-minute responses from people, my style doesn't really require them. If someone is on a walk, eating lunch, or taking a nap for 30 minutes, I can wait. I care more about happy and productive teammates than micromanaged ones.
I feel like having a productive team here is a matter of rolling with the punches. We have a policy of communicating OOFs if they are longer than 30 minutes but anything less is fine as long as you are getting the work done.
Probably some company exec's trying to build an argument to protect their high cost real estate assets from depreciation.
Think of it, if say 30-50% of an office can become unused in 50-70% of companies in a city. Man will the value of that office will tumble. I'd bet it would see a noticable depreciation even if it was 30-45% unused and only 30% of companies in a city acted on it.
From the employee's point of view, yes. From the company's side, not really. Which may explain to some degree why workers are more likely to feel that they're more efficient working from home - they consider the commute part of the workday, and the employer doesn't.
Except most workers and organizations where unused to the environment so many one time training and setup costs got averaged in. Not to mention kids being in school/daycare.
This was really a terrible introduction to remote work and it ended up going surprisingly well.
This really doesn't compute. I am far more burned out by the stress of commuting and the social energy expended going into the office than from working from my home.
Remote work doesn't mean 'stuck at home.' It means freedom to have control over your own work environment.
However, their kids will be at school or daycare, they will be able to run errands in half the time (service slowed way down during the pandemic due to safety protocols), and people at just happier with their social connections without a twinge of boding anxiety over every interaction.
By that reasoning the productivity of people in prison should be through the roof, at least for those in low security prisons that only hold people who are there for white collar crimes.
I've been remote for well before the pandemic and no, it was really not a good environment. It was stressful and the cities were up in arms and the weather was insane and there was no daycare and going to the grocery was stressful and there was no toilet paper and all kind of calamities conspired to prevent me from thinking straight. And when work stopped, there was nowhere to go and no one to hangout with.
Really the worse time to be productive. I was way more productive as a pre-pandemic remote.
Yeah, especially when we don't really know what we're even measuring in the first place. Attempts to measure the output of knowledge workers have always been more art than science, and biased by the viewpoint of whoever's paying for the measurement. Virtually all measurements depend on "all other things being equal." Which they weren't.
I’ve found remote work is hardest with time management, specifically when I have lulls in the day where I don’t feel particularly focused.
At the office I would have gone to the cafe or for a walk outside the building (downtown), had a short break, and gotten back to work.
When I try that from home it doesn’t work well. I’m fortunate to have a home office with a door I can close. But if I leave that room I’m immediately in my home space, full of distractions. If I walk outside it’s a neighborhood, and unfortunately as part of the pandemic I moved to a more suburban locale so the walking is abysmal. More often than not I end up giving up on work for several hours, which leaves me with work I now need to do in the evenings or on weekends.
(The move to the burbs was done so I could have the office that closes… but losing the walkable neighborhood was a huge hit and I’m not sure it was a net benefit.)
I also miss the motivating effect of seeing my coworkers in the morning. There are plenty of days working from home where I just really don’t feel like getting started, and maybe I won’t start till 10 or 10:30 in the morning. This just means more work that I need to find another time to do. By contrast, knowing I had 9:30 stand up in person, with people I liked, usually with coffee, helped get me moving even on days when I initially didn’t feel like it.
The last drawback for me is the lack of commute. I had carefully arranged my life so that it was a 15 minute bike ride to work. That was perfect for me, and really helped me mentally transition from home to work mode. I’ve tried doing an “out and back” in my new neighborhood, but it doesn’t work, I think because I’m not actually going to a different place. Ie the bike part wasn’t the magic, it was the physical move from home to work. The bike was just a way to make that an enjoyable transition.
All of this adds up to a feeling that I’m always working and always needing to find time to squeeze in the next 3-4 hours of focus since I haven’t fit that all in my 9-5 box as I used to. The only real payoff I get in exchange for this is some increased flexibility scheduling appointments and what not. But, on the whole, it feels like it’s been a bad trade for me.
Finally, lest anyone think this is just because of the pandemic not being “normal WFH,” I worked full remote for an agency for three years (long before the pandemic) and had the same struggles then.
Everyone is different, and I think there has been an under supply of remote and WFH jobs in the past. I know that for some, none of what I’ve said applies, and WFH is a blessing. So I hope (and expect) that post-2020 it will be much easier for anyone who wants full-remote to have lots of good jobs available to pick from.
But as for me, I am really looking forward to getting back to office work - and advocating hard for offices with doors that close, to make that environment even better :)
Agree that well-rounded time management skills are required, or are essential to learn. My spouse, for example, has some of the worst time management skills I've ever seen, unless she's bounded by the confines of an office working with peers. In office, she does quite well. There's merit to the theory that surrounding environments effect focus.
I agree. I have had many similar struggles as you have had. With my commute I often came up with interesting ideas or solutions to problems. I've found the online scheduled meetings just are not as effective as inpromtu in person meetings. Idea generation and brainstorming are not as effective at home.
Very much YMMV.12 year remote engineer here, and I absolutely work less on the whole, versus my past in-office gigs, due to far more focused and efficient stints of development, etc.
Perhaps some folks just aren't the type that should/can work remotely. As all things in life, we're not made from the same mold.
I'm more of an in-office person. The office is definitely more distracting, and I used to like working late occasionally because I had some solid focus time, but to a degree that's still true: whilst other people are online there is necessary interaction to transfer information in both directions.
One potential WFH efficiency loss for me is that due to casual conversations or things I overheard in the office, there were many occasions when I knew that someone had already investigated something or that some issue had come up that explained symptoms I came across, saving unnecessary duplication of effort or implementing something which wasn't quite what was required. You might argue that this level of communication could be achieved remotely, but maybe you'd end up with nearly the same level of distractions.
I will add that my commute was a 15-minute cycle, and my employer provided me with lunch, so probably going to work was actually a net time saving for me (certainly if you consider the commute exercise time), which may explain why I'm less keen on WFH than most.
When your company culture is authoritarian to the point of installing tracking software on all employees' laptops and monitoring all their activity you might not be the best-suited organization for remote work.
I believe I work longer. However, I'm also avoiding up to two hours of commute. Before the pandemic, commuting was the most draining part of my day. I'd gladly exchange the commute for extra working hours.
I can't read the full article as its behind a paywall, but from looking at this glimpse in the preview it was based on installing some sort of keylogger to track time spent typing and tracking websites visited, which are both really poor indicators of productivity. Just as many workers will visit reddit, facebook whatever in the office as WFH, no metrics were used around the actual output of work.
I work longer, more efficiently, and have more free time. It really is a win-win. There's just not much I miss about the office at all. Initially I said the only thing I miss is whiteboard sessions, but even that I've now found tools which work well (excalidraw).
Why is this presented as a problem? If one works 1-2 hours more daily and still gets more personal/family time, for eliminating of unproductive commuting time, is this not good? is this not in fact more efficient?
I've been working from home since March 2020. The moment I started I followed the work schedule to the minute. I work 8:30 to 16:00, with a 30 minute lunch-break. I don't work extra time. The work laptop gets closed at the end of the work session and that's it. If work somehow leaks into my brain outside of those hours, I make a note in a notebook I have and forget about that idea.
A few weeks back I received the good news that I can keep working from home indefinitely. It mustn't have been that bad for whatever fashionable metrics pass as "productivity" nowadays.
Is "productivity at home is same as at office, but work at home has more micro interruptions that researchers couldn't track" a viable theory? Would explain longer hours and seemingly lower productivity. (Workers are just taking care of little domestic things here at there throughout the day.) They don't say many details about how they determined when people were working.
The study found no rise in productivity, neither did it mention anything about fall. So likely these employees are taking care of stuff at home during work hours and making up for it by working a little longer. I don’t see any issue with mixing some personal tasks with office work as long as the productivity stays the same.
It all depends on the people. For lot of folks who love remote work, it frees up 3-4 hours every day to do things they like and at the same time increasing the productivity. There is no need for 19th century factory style work hours for most people.
Agree. If you work with physical material, you need to be where that material is. If you work with information this is obviously not necessary.
Constructing large office buildings, roads and public transit to get people from where they live to a downtown office just to work with information is illogical and very inefficient.
Define efficiency and then I may agree. I not only work more efficiently from home, but work least inefficiently in an office setting. I don't have kids and my daily meditation helps me from being distracted. I personally think most information workers can work more efficiently from home.
The big quality of life thing I received from the Pandemic is that instead of procrastinating, I simply take a nap. No bullshitting. I know the elite companies have nap chambers, but WFH provided this for me - a regular ass joe the plumber developer.
No commute, rest when stressed by a problem, a deep dark secret that’s helped me just do the work or sleep. The simple rest has solved entire features for me. The humanity of it all is remarkable, but of course, a dirty little secret in this absurd world.
I’m human - come at me bro.
Edit: To deny the stress of the alarm clock, the commute, the theatrics of looking busy, like, I just can’t. We’re mentally healthier and I will absolutely not put up the bullshitters that say it isn’t true.
It is quite funny how shunned napping is in our society. I feel most people have had at least one experience where a 20 min cat nap has revitalized then more than any stimulant like coffee could ever do.
So why is it shunned to the point of ingrained worry that someone might catch you napping?
108 comments
[ 2.7 ms ] story [ 198 ms ] threadHalf of the work is fighting your laziness.
Influencing one's mood to match the task at hand is of course useful too, if you can figure it out. This is why I often read the git log and my notes before diving into a task -- it reminds me why I care, what fruits are tantalizingly low-hanging, etc.
In short, working from home has reduced productivity and maybe made some folks lazy.
It sounds like your self-expectations have changed based on being remote, not the actual problems.
The readership of the Economist is worried about commercial real estate.
But this sounds efficient.
Ever since I had to go back to 3 days a week I'm getting less done, I'm more stressed and I dread the days of commuting and having to sit on my tiny desk with sub par peripherals and all the distractions.
So it's anecdotal, but chalk one up for longer hours at home being a preference, even if I don't think it's true.
* People show up when meetings are scheduled as always
* While I can't get up-to-the-minute responses from people, my style doesn't really require them. If someone is on a walk, eating lunch, or taking a nap for 30 minutes, I can wait. I care more about happy and productive teammates than micromanaged ones.
I feel like having a productive team here is a matter of rolling with the punches. We have a policy of communicating OOFs if they are longer than 30 minutes but anything less is fine as long as you are getting the work done.
Think of it, if say 30-50% of an office can become unused in 50-70% of companies in a city. Man will the value of that office will tumble. I'd bet it would see a noticable depreciation even if it was 30-45% unused and only 30% of companies in a city acted on it.
But I agree that the average company employer isn’t thinking at this depth. They might be blinded by emotion.
"Although they saved commuting time, this did not offset the extra hours spent in meetings."
Seems like one should be careful drawing conclusions about remote work from the last year's data.
As people start going to sports games, vacation, concerts, fairs, dinning, bars, clubs, etc. the number of hours they’ll work will go down.
This was really a terrible introduction to remote work and it ended up going surprisingly well.
Remote work doesn't mean 'stuck at home.' It means freedom to have control over your own work environment.
And their social interactions were limited to zoom happy hours.
Though it's entirely possible that hurts efficiency.
> the number of hours they’ll work will go down
and it's possible that can improve efficiency.
Really the worse time to be productive. I was way more productive as a pre-pandemic remote.
At the office I would have gone to the cafe or for a walk outside the building (downtown), had a short break, and gotten back to work.
When I try that from home it doesn’t work well. I’m fortunate to have a home office with a door I can close. But if I leave that room I’m immediately in my home space, full of distractions. If I walk outside it’s a neighborhood, and unfortunately as part of the pandemic I moved to a more suburban locale so the walking is abysmal. More often than not I end up giving up on work for several hours, which leaves me with work I now need to do in the evenings or on weekends.
(The move to the burbs was done so I could have the office that closes… but losing the walkable neighborhood was a huge hit and I’m not sure it was a net benefit.)
I also miss the motivating effect of seeing my coworkers in the morning. There are plenty of days working from home where I just really don’t feel like getting started, and maybe I won’t start till 10 or 10:30 in the morning. This just means more work that I need to find another time to do. By contrast, knowing I had 9:30 stand up in person, with people I liked, usually with coffee, helped get me moving even on days when I initially didn’t feel like it.
The last drawback for me is the lack of commute. I had carefully arranged my life so that it was a 15 minute bike ride to work. That was perfect for me, and really helped me mentally transition from home to work mode. I’ve tried doing an “out and back” in my new neighborhood, but it doesn’t work, I think because I’m not actually going to a different place. Ie the bike part wasn’t the magic, it was the physical move from home to work. The bike was just a way to make that an enjoyable transition.
All of this adds up to a feeling that I’m always working and always needing to find time to squeeze in the next 3-4 hours of focus since I haven’t fit that all in my 9-5 box as I used to. The only real payoff I get in exchange for this is some increased flexibility scheduling appointments and what not. But, on the whole, it feels like it’s been a bad trade for me.
Finally, lest anyone think this is just because of the pandemic not being “normal WFH,” I worked full remote for an agency for three years (long before the pandemic) and had the same struggles then.
Everyone is different, and I think there has been an under supply of remote and WFH jobs in the past. I know that for some, none of what I’ve said applies, and WFH is a blessing. So I hope (and expect) that post-2020 it will be much easier for anyone who wants full-remote to have lots of good jobs available to pick from.
But as for me, I am really looking forward to getting back to office work - and advocating hard for offices with doors that close, to make that environment even better :)
Or a yoga mat?
Perhaps some folks just aren't the type that should/can work remotely. As all things in life, we're not made from the same mold.
One potential WFH efficiency loss for me is that due to casual conversations or things I overheard in the office, there were many occasions when I knew that someone had already investigated something or that some issue had come up that explained symptoms I came across, saving unnecessary duplication of effort or implementing something which wasn't quite what was required. You might argue that this level of communication could be achieved remotely, but maybe you'd end up with nearly the same level of distractions.
I will add that my commute was a 15-minute cycle, and my employer provided me with lunch, so probably going to work was actually a net time saving for me (certainly if you consider the commute exercise time), which may explain why I'm less keen on WFH than most.
All in all a poor study.
"Although they saved commuting time, this did not offset the extra hours spent in meetings."
A few weeks back I received the good news that I can keep working from home indefinitely. It mustn't have been that bad for whatever fashionable metrics pass as "productivity" nowadays.
Edit: typos.
The exact opposite is true in my experience.
Constructing large office buildings, roads and public transit to get people from where they live to a downtown office just to work with information is illogical and very inefficient.
No commute, rest when stressed by a problem, a deep dark secret that’s helped me just do the work or sleep. The simple rest has solved entire features for me. The humanity of it all is remarkable, but of course, a dirty little secret in this absurd world.
I’m human - come at me bro.
Edit: To deny the stress of the alarm clock, the commute, the theatrics of looking busy, like, I just can’t. We’re mentally healthier and I will absolutely not put up the bullshitters that say it isn’t true.
So why is it shunned to the point of ingrained worry that someone might catch you napping?