Remote Working Thoughts
Remote Working/Working from Home sure has a lot of hot takes…so I’m going to add to it. Well, I hope this isn’t a hot take. Just some thoughts and hopefully a fairly balanced take.
Early on in my career, I was drawn to the idea of working from home. I realized pretty quickly that my job is online and I could do most of the work online*. I never pushed hard for it but had hoped I’d grow into an opportunity at some point. Then Covid happened and we all learned how to do it pretty quickly. I actually think I made that transition fairly seamlessly. I didn’t even have my work computer. I had clearance to use my own computer and just used that. In hindsight, this isn’t the best practice but in a crisis situation like Covid, it was nice to say “I’ll be online Monday, don’t worry about the rest”. 5 years later, there are plenty of articles about how to best work from home, be a hybrid worker, why RTO is good for you and the business. Like most things, I think what is best is personal. So here are some thoughts.
Being in the office is probably good for my brain.
I’m not a super social person. I strive to be incredibly polite and pleasant to be around but I am a textbook introvert. Being social is tiring. Being around people, is tiring. However, I notice when I do go to the office I have this thought of “this is the most people I’ve seen in a long while”. It’s probably good to see people, as I imagine it helps see the bigger picture of life.
It’s nice that my work set up at home is how I like it.
It’s not a perfect set up but I generally like it. I have one larger monitor, as I find the dual monitor set up kind of strange. I like my keyboard and mouse. There’s nothing wrong at all with the office set up but it’s not personalized to me. Again, it’s not perfect but I do prefer my home desk more than my office desk.
The office interruptions feel better.
I’m not talking about long interruptions. I’m talking about the small moments to say hi to someone walking by. Asking about someone’s weekend. The trip to the restroom and back. Compare this with how many of us take a small break at home, picking up the phone. It’s just moving eyes from one screen to another…and that doesn’t feel very good. Plus at home I have a tendency to make a list and just go. No one is efficient every minute of a work day but I can go a pretty long stretch of focused work and sometimes that is very draining. The smaller office interruptions help break that up.
Yeah, but no commute
This is the closest I’ve ever lived to my office. Somehow my commute home takes twice as long because of traffic that isn’t there in the morning but it’s still the shortest trip for me. And yet I still don’t like it. Just the idea of traveling to work feels weird when my work is online.
However going home for the day feels more complete
Putting my laptop in the bag, zipping it up, and then going to the parking garage to leave feels more like “the ball game is over” vs hitting shut down on the laptop and leaving a room. I even walk the dogs after I finish working for the day, I have that and it’s still not quite the same.
But the dogs miss me too much
I just mentioned the dogs, Josie and Dani. They usually are independent during the day but I miss them when I go to the office. They miss me too. It just feels weird to not see my little pups during the day.
I think most things in life are a balance of pluses and minuses. We talk about trade offs in programming all the time. In this case, I find that it’s probably easier to build out the pros of the office work, at home, rather than build out the pros of home work at the office. For example, I can probably do more to replicate better mind breaks and end times at home. However, I can’t replicate my desk at the office and bring my dogs. I still think working from home is better for me as a person and employee however, I think it’s wise to consider the benefits of both styles and see how one can maximize the pros and limit the cons of each system.
*Much of my first job out of school was setting up events, meeting with community members my employer served. I wouldn’t have had this working entirely remotely.
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