Tips

• Create your own commute.

• Give yourself a Feierabend.

• Focus your workload on a daily “must win.”

• Put “proactive time” on your calendar.

• Reclaim the social in social distancing

• Run time-management experiments.

Downsides

The potential downsides of WFH

The key points from a Boston Globe article (1) with some of my personal feelings on the topic...

• The Allen Curve. Thomas J. Allen, a professor of management at MIT, discovered in the 1970s that communication between people in an office increased exponentially the closer their desks were. If they were about 50 meters apart, they might as well have been on different planets. And even in the age of Slack, email, and Zoom, the fact remains: Out of sight is often out of mind. If some employees are seen only at video meetings, there is less chance the rest of the community will value them. (1)

• Trust. As distance increases, teams need higher levels of trust to function. And trust is traditionally created through little actions that are more fluid in person. The “IKEA effect” is our propensity to care more about anyone or anything we put effort into, like flat-pack furniture . The “vulnerability loop” is when people come to trust each other more by demonstrating vulnerability and finding that other people respond by revealing their own vulnerability in return. (1)

• Working from home can be too convenient. Things that are convenient aren’t necessarily good for us. Lifting weights is hard, but it makes us stronger. Similarly, it is more convenient not to have a commute or change out of our pajamas, but that doesn’t mean it’s good for us. (1)

• Belonging. One of the greatest predictors of our longevity is whether we have close social ties. It is clear that we are not designed to be alone.(1)

Some other points raised by a Medium article called, "The dark side of remote work no one talks about" (2)...

• Loneliness. 

• Work/Life Balance. Lines can blur between work-life and home-life

• Physical Health. It's easy to sit all day.

• Decision Fatigue. Without office rules everything becomes a decision

• Tech Troubles. If it breaks there's no on-site support to call on

• Workplace Equipment. You might need/want to buy things like chairs, desks, additional screens. Perhaps the company would buy them but you want something else that goes with your decor.

• Career Growth. It's easier to be overlooked

• Workplace perks. You have to buy your own coffee

• Distractions. Back to those blurred lines

• Skill Development. Its' harder to watch someone else do it

• Pressure. With nobody watching you can feel the pressure to show you are actually being productive.

Bibliography & References