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I wonder if this is related to the long commutes Americans have gotten used to. I'm not in the US, and while I would say I definitely appreciate the flexibility

• lawlorino 7y ago
  I feel the same. I've found that having a dedicated work environment can help, e.g. a separate office room with a proper desk, chair and monitor, although realistically that's not possible for a lot of people including myself currently.
  • gspr 7y ago
    I currently don't have that, but I did in the past, and it sadly didn't help for me. It seems to be people related: I've noticed the same tends to happen in the office if others are not around (if, say, I swap a holiday for a work day or something and am alone when I go in).
    • Loughla 7y ago
      I have a staff member that sounds similar to you. It's not that she's unaccountable for her own actions, she just has a hard time 'turning on' her work brain without some kind of incentive or external motivator. I worked with her to come up with regular (weekly) check-ins, monthly goals, and changed the annual review process to include those items. I would never have that amount of micromanagement for anyone, except her, because it's what she wanted/needed for productivity. Maybe look into that with your direct supervisor? It helped her immensely. She has an external motivator that she needs. For me, it helped, because measuring remote worker productivity is hard as hell, unless you have sales, you make something, or you decide to measure by number of lines of code or some other arbitrary measure. It was a god-send in a very 'grey' work area.
  • tom_mellior 7y ago
    > I've found that having a dedicated work environment can help I would also definitely recommend that if you work from home, you get a separate office room. But I also struggle with bouts of not feeling motivated to work. The office is no miracle cure for that.
• mfer 7y ago
  I did when I started working from home. I was lucky to have a manager who knew about habits and patterns to fix that. A lot of this isn't about going to work but about our habits and patterns. For example, I have a room I go into and close the door. When I am in there I am working. When I am out of there I'm not. It's like a mental switch. I also use some tricks to keep be from being distracted like a pomodoro timer. Doesn't work for everyone. But, I learned from training my dog that situational training can be important. If we are training ourselves we might need to train ourselves to be productive at home.
  • gspr 7y ago
    Yeah I hear you, but I've been unable to make it work so far. Sometimes when this happens in the office, I would go exercise, and more often than not the flip would be switched afterwards. Doesn't work at home. I've noticed the same tends to happen in the office if others are not around (if, say, I swap a holiday for a work day or something and am alone when I go in).
  • tomger 7y ago
    100% agreed. Important patterns for me are having the same breakfast, lunch and dinner times with dedicated time to eat without work. Shutting down work at a fixed time at night. Waking up at a fixed time. If it stick to those I tend to automatically start making other patterns to make those times work.
  • FalconSensei 7y ago
    > I have a room I go into and close the door That would be awesome to have, unfortunately, I live in a small 1 bedroom apartment. So I either work on the living room, were the TV and my wife are, or on the bedroom :(
    • maccard 7y ago
      I'm in a small apartment too, where my partner (and dog) are also here. We've both got corners set up in different rooms (I'm in the bedroom) and if I'm in my corner, I'm working. It's less about having a full room to dedicate to being a home office, and more about making a space (no matter how small or open) dedicated to working.
• kace91 7y ago
  adittionally to what others have commented, make sure that the room you're working in has enough sunlight and (I can't stress this enough) is well ventilated. It also helps if you can walk outside 5 minutes every hour or so (lawn, terrace, whatever's available). Somewhere where you have open air and you can focus your sight on things that are more than 5 meters away. As for the long commutes, I'm from a big european city and I still have almost a one hour commute to work. Granted, it's public transit so I can use the time somewhat (netflix on my phone, ebooks or whatever) but it's still two hours that I could otherwise use at the gym, having beers with friends or watching a movie.
  • gspr 7y ago
    > As for the long commutes, I'm from a big european city and I still have almost a one hour commute to work. Granted, it's public transit so I can use the time somewhat (netflix on my phone, ebooks or whatever) but it's still two hours that I could otherwise use at the gym, having beers with friends or watching a movie. Yeah true. I was thinking more of the American-style car commute. While I agree that time spent commuting is time lost, also on public transit, the American car commute seems like an absolute nightmare to me, far worse than WFH ;-)
    • grindgrind 7y ago
      A commute is a commute, at least in your car you are not jammed in with a bunch of people. You can also throw in a podcast, your own music, climate controlled to your liking. I would rather commute in a car than on a bus or train.
      • ghaff 7y ago
        I worked in downtown Boston for a bit over a year. Taking the train in was better than driving assuming I was going in and out during commuting hours when trains were fairly frequent. But it was still driving 10 minutes to catch a 6:30AM train and taking 90 minutes to get to my office including a short walk. 4 hours of commuting, even if very little of it was driving, was not something I could have sustained longer term even given that I traveled or worked from home a decent chunk of the time.
• cs02rm0 7y ago
  Might be worth checking CO2 levels, or leaving a door and window open.
• PragmaticPulp 7y ago
  > Does anyone feel the same? The study headline is that half of Americans prefer work from home. The other half either prefer working from an office or haven't made their minds up yet. In my experience managing remote teams, including some people who are new to WFH, many people struggle with the isolation of WFH. For others, the honeymoon phase is short-lived as cabin fever sets in. During normal times, the solution is to make an effort to get out of the house every day. Go to the gym, meet friends for lunch or dinner, and otherwise fill your in-person social needs somehow. The struggle with Coronavirus quarantine is that in-person social events are not allowed, so the typical solutions are much more difficult to apply. > My productivity has definitely dropped, and it feels like my brain never really fully turns "on". Now would be a great time to try a new morning exercise routine. Getting out of the house for even a 10-minute morning walk can make all the difference in the trajectory of your day. You can build up to a 30-minute run over time, but it's easier to engrain the habit if you start with a very low bar. Just get dressed, prepare a to-go coffee if you like, and go for a walk around your block. You might be surprised at how this sets a different tone for your day. Long commutes aren't great, obviously, but they do serve a functional purpose of partitioning your day between home and office. Try to find a replacement activity that performs the same partitioning step at home.
  • keiferski 7y ago
    It's not a matter of "they haven't come around to my opinion yet, but they will." Some people just like working with others, in person, face to face. And some activities are impossible to do from a computer screen, miles away (fashion or product design, for example.)
    • PragmaticPulp 7y ago
      > It's not a matter of "they haven't come around to my opinion yet, but they will." Exactly right. That's my primary problem with all of these opinion pieces that WFH is the future. Having managed remote/WFH teams for several years, including a lot of WFH veterans, I've seen a lot of the downsides of WFH that aren't immediately apparent in the first few months. It's difficult to convince people that long-term WFH has downsides because so many people want to believe that they are more productive and happier never leaving their own homes, when in reality that's not true for everyone. Especially over the long-term. For example: In my experience, the people who were most confident that they would be more productive at home were most likely to have performance issues after several months. Ironically, the people who were concerned that WFH might negatively impact their work were more likely to succeed because they made no assumptions and instead put in the effort to make their WFH experience a success.
• flatline 7y ago
  My work is all meetings all the time, now. I’m on the phone most of the day. Little things that used to take 20 minutes now take an hour. I used to enjoy working from home a couple days a week because I got some peace and quiet and knew I could catch back up with people when I returned to the office. I went from loving to hating my job in the last three weeks. I am also constantly distracted by having the kids around and, you know, the end of the world. It’s not the isolation I mind it’s having to still work with others under these conditions. I think you have to have a very particular set of circumstances to enjoy wfh under these conditions and I doubt half of Americans have them. I suspect they just have a lot of free time around the house “working” and their jobs could largely be replaced with automation in the near future, but maybe that’s just a bit of jealousy on my part.
  • gspr 7y ago
    Re the last parts: I sure hope you're right, but I think we're both a bit jealous and/or afraid that it is we who are ill-suited for a coming WFH future :-/
    • vsareto 7y ago
      If you could magically remove commutes or make it automated, I'd still be on-board with working in office. The only good commutes are near empty roads with nice scenery while I enjoy morning coffee and listen to the news. Many people had to get used to long commutes in terrible traffic after all. Hopefully the answer is that we all just gravitate towards companies that prefer one culture over another.
      • _curious_ 7y ago
        Perhaps the future will be a mix...downsized offices that can accommodate a max % of company-wide employees at once? 50%? A place where the CEO/csuite/salespeople can have meetings and others can really come and go as needed. If I recall, WeWork was getting into this market/model whereas they'd sublease space for a smaller number of companies, sometimes even just one enterprise.
  • 7y ago
• stelios313 7y ago
  Its crazy how exactly this describes my mental state when i am "working" from home.. I have colleagues that swear by it though, so i guess it differs from person to person
• tarsinge 7y ago
  Personally it took me at least two years to learn to work from home. The key for me is actively rebalancing your social life and interactions on outside of work activities. That's not intuitive because we are so used at getting some interactions everyday automatically in a job, so if you don't take action you will end up in a social deficit very fast.
  • gspr 7y ago
    > The key for me is actively rebalancing your social life and interactions on outside of work activities. That not intuitive because we are so used at getting interactions automatically in a job, so if you don't take action you will end up isolated very rapidly. This seems reasonable. It's a shame it's a bit hard to try out these days ;-)
  • xur17 7y ago
    I'm about 2 years into working from home, and recently came to a similar conclusion. Unfortunately rebalancing your social life is a bit challenging given the circumstances :). If I might ask - what was your approach for increasing outside of work activities. I recently moved to a new city, so I'm still figuring this part out.
• chadlavi 7y ago
  That's definitely part of the appeal to me. 45min one way of walking plus subway (and ±10min for subway schedule shenanigans, thanks MTA) is gone, so now I have a significant chunk of free time at the beginning and end of my day. And as a subway commuter, there's also definitely a "getting yourself mentally prepared to go out into the world and endure the subway" period that I'm quite glad to skip.
• dbingham 7y ago
  Extrovert / introvert. You're clearly more towards the extrovert part of the spectrum. Please try to have empathy for people on the introverted part of the spectrum who cannot fathom being forced into an office with tons of people distracting them all day every day. Heretofore they (save for a lucky few like me) have been forced to not just fathom it, but live it. The "half" of Americans mentioned in the article probably has heavy overlap with those introverts. Honestly, your post reads pretty heavily to me of "status quo privilege bias". You fit the current status quo very well, and are expressing worry that a change to that status quo would hurt you, with out extending empathy to those the current status quo hurts badly. The world is not going to flip to fully remote work. It's likely going to inch towards remote work being more prevalent or available. What you are expressing is a case of "When you're accustomed to privilege (your way of working being privileged in this case), then equality (remote work being equally available) feels like oppression." Not saying that makes you evil or any thing, just pointing out that this is a pretty standard human bias that gets expressed and winds up working to defend harmful status quos all the time. Worth being self aware of.
  • gspr 7y ago
    > Extrovert / introvert. You're clearly more towards the extrovert part of the spectrum. That's the thing: I don't consider myself very extroverted! Probably on the extrovert side of the scale, but very moderately so! > Please try to have empathy for people on the introverted part of the spectrum who cannot fathom being forced into an office with tons of people distracting them all day every day. Heretofore they (save for a lucky few like me) have been forced to not just fathom it, but live it. Oh I do, I really do. I guess I'm just a bit (selfishly) scared of what awaits people like me in the future. If we allow ourselves a lot of optimism, workplaces will see the need to accommodate both kinds of people to a great extent :-) > Honestly, your post reads pretty heavily to me of "status quo privilege bias". You fit the current status quo very well, and are expressing worry that a change to that status quo would hurt you, with out extending empathy to those the current status quo hurts badly. You may be right, but to defend myself on this point I think it is in part fueled by the overwhelmingly positive press WFH seems to be getting in this crisis. Nobody is writing articles exhalting the virtues of regular offices (rightly so), and I guess I have all this praising of WFH a bit stuck in my throat at this point - it leaves me thinking "is it me there's something wrong with?" > The world is not going to flip to fully remote work. It's likely going to inch towards remote work being more prevalent or available. I guess I'm just afraid it'll be a reinforcing cycle driven by potential real-estate savings on the part of both employers and employees, and infrastructure savings on the part of society.
• suls 7y ago
  I came across this video message [1] from a previous submarine captain which I think is relevant in the WFH context as well. He mentions having a routine, clean environment, enough downtime, de-escalate conflict early and communication as key ingredients to coping with self-isolation. Start by figuring out a routine for you and try to stick to it. [1] https://www.bbc.com/reel/playlist/coronavirus-covid19?vpid=p0884k8x https://www.bbc.com/reel/playlist/coronavirus-covid19?vpid=p...
• UnpossibleJim 7y ago
  Oddly, I'm in the exact opposite camp. The constant drop in's and busywork meetings at the office were taking up an hour a day, at least. Now, I do have an office to work in and my mom comes out to help with our son and my in laws live a few blocks away (we're luckier than most). So our set up makes it so I have a foundation to succeed with work from home, but if things were "normal" and school were in session I'd love to do this 3 or 4 days a week and go into the office for weekly meetings. Even though, we're doing those over ZOOM right now. EDIT: formatting
• karmelapple 7y ago
  Just note that you’re not just working from home; you’re at home in the middle of a worldwide pandemic, attempting to get some work done. (That idea came from a tweet I read that I can’t find right now) Everyone’s productivity is down when we’re preoccupied with if loved ones or ourselves might get into a dangerous health situation. I’ve worked from home for nearly a decade, and I also feel my productivity is down. I’m choosing not to beat myself up over it, and trying to check in mentally with myself throughout the day to see if I’m spending my time the best way possible, even more than I usually do. So if you feel your productivity is unacceptably down now, consider waiting until the pandemic is over - which could be a very long time - and then try again. For now, stay safe and healthy.
  • stjohnswarts 7y ago
    My productivity is up by at least 50% because I have less meetings and less people dropping by my desk unexpectedly
• hef19898 7y ago
  It's kind of funny how the 21st century created office and factory jobs. For the most time, people worked where they lived. Maybe we realize now that technology allows us to move a huge portion of office work back to where people live. Not necessarily a bad thing if you ask me!
• _curious_ 7y ago
  Sounds like you have not yet developed the mindset/means to adapt...but you can if you choose to!
  • stronglikedan 7y ago
    I can adapt to a hot poker in the eye, but I would never choose to. ;-)
    • _curious_ 7y ago
      Many adaptations are not made by conscious decision or willingly, instead they are born from necessity. You may not have a choice?
• bpyne 7y ago
  You have a higher need for social stimulation than some people. My productivity has gone up measurably. In normal times, I get plenty of social stimulation outside work so I don't need any from work. While I think many organizations will retain remote work for some percentage of their workforce when the crisis is over I don't think we're about to have a revolution. The generations in charge came of age with face-to-face being the way people got things done. They aren't going to change.
• agumonkey 7y ago
  I'm not from that generation but I wonder if people in the 50s or 60s saw long commute as a proof of progress and something to look for. Meaning better and cheaper cars, more "opportunities", bigger companies and centralized hubs far away, etc etc
  • mikestew 7y ago
    I'm in my 50s, and I have struggled to keep commute times to a minimal my entire life. I currently am working for less than I am accustomed to simply because I have a private office and a 20 minute commute (or a reasonable 30 min. bike/scooter ride). A little less money won't kill me, but one more rush-hour commute across that WA-520 bridge just might. I can't say that my parents differ on this topic. I'll note that your comment was not the easiest to parse, so perhaps I misunderstand you.
    • agumonkey 7y ago
      Sorry, let me simplify (or try to): Was driving a lot seen as a positive thing in the 50s ? and if so, did it led to a distorted urban organization where job hubs were always way too far and now we're seeing the negative side of this, because driving is linked to pollution, and wasted time rather than progress/future/freedom. I hope it was clearer :D
• totalZero 7y ago
  Would you feel the same if you had a dedicated office, or if you had a videoconference meeting to start the day? That way the feng shui and social pressure would still be there, but you don't lose part of your day (and income) in commuting to and fro.
• sologoub 7y ago
  So what will you do when you inevitably retire? We’ve spent our lives making work the center (US probably more so than EU). What you are describing can read as “I can’t bare WFH” or it can be “the pandemic severed me from my social circle, that happened to be at work”. For me, at some point I realized that work friends replaced most of my social circle, but when I changed companies, I lost touch with most of them. This felt disturbing when I realized that and I have since made the effort to cultivate the friendships and keep in touch better. This had the side-effect of no longer relying on the office for friendship/social contact outside of family/SO. I really don’t think we are talking about adapting to WFH, as much as we are seeing the effects of social structures that have emerged from concentrating people in offices. These have some overlap with work (promotion politics in most places?), but are largely orthogonal to the actual work at hand.
  • gspr 7y ago
    While I haven't thought as far as retirement, I don't think I agree with the basic sentiment here. It's not that I need my "work friends". It's that I need my "work friends" while working. If I and all my "normal friends" were financially independent and didn't work (somehow I find it easier to picture, albeit far more unlikely, than retirement – go figure), I wouldn't feel robbed of social interactions at all. Well, maybe in the pandemic, but that's besides the point. "Work friends" have some special properties: they share the good and the bad of this work thing you're currently enjoying or stressing about. They're both trapped at work, which hopefully is an interesting enough place, yet it's hopefully not the center of anyone's lives. I think there's some value to this shared experience, even though it of course doesn't "outrank" "real friendship".
    • sologoub 7y ago
      Interesting view. I’m not a psyc major, but that almost sounds like a coping mechanism with the “trapped” sense. From that angle, office doesn’t sound like that happy of a place either. Sincerely hope that you are able to untrap yourself in all circumstances and get back to the happier state!
• deleted 7y ago
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• proverbialbunny 7y ago
  >My productivity has definitely dropped, and it feels like my brain never really fully turns "on". It feels a lot like those times in university I decided to study for exams from home instead of going to campus. I can't explain it, but 9 out of 10 times it just feels bad, like the way your brain feels if you've spent the day watching TV or something (when, in fact, I haven't). This doesn't even begin to consider the social punctuations of work that are essential to my psychological well-being. > >Does anyone feel the same? I can't believe no one mentioned it yet: Mental compartmentalization based on where you are is a very real thing. Everyone experiences it, some more than others, and if you want to be productive working from home, learning how to work with it is of key importance. For good work from home hygiene it's required that you isolate a physical space dedicated for work only tasks, like a home office. Some people can get away with having a separate computer or seperate user to separate their space while using the same desk. Having a work account that blockes reddit, ycombinator, youtube, and the like helps, but as a general rule of thumb the easier it is to switch spaces, the smaller the isolation between them. ie, if switching users takes 10 seconds the isolation is small, but if you need to walk two minutes across the house, it's going to be a much stronger isolation. This is one of the tricks the rich use, by having an office far away from their bedroom in their house. If you don't have things in your room to play with, like a tv or something, then the digital space separation works well, but if you find yourself fiddling with a tv all day while on your work account, it may cause problems. Alternatively, having background noise can help and turning on a ratio or tv in the background while working can accelerate productivity. It depends on your mental frame and how you think of it. In your situation it may be better to set up an ad hawk work space in your kitchen or living room. This space separation is recommended in just about every work from home guide you will find, and it is a well studied phenomena, going back to the vietnam (or korean I forget) war where they were able to get 98% of solders off of heroin using the same tricks: the addiction was tied to physical cues like a physical room, or a friend. Get rid of those physical cues and the mental part of the addiction would vanish for all but those using drugs to avoid their problems. Same mental process, but studied in a drastically different subject.
• JauntTrooper 7y ago
  My commute is definitely a big part of why I strongly prefer to work from home. Every workday I'd waste 7am - 9am and 6pm - 7pm in transit or getting ready (putting on a suit, shining my shoes, packing lunch, packing/wearing rain shoes so my dress shoe soles don't get ruined, getting the kids ready for daycare etc.). It feels like I have an extra 3 hours in my day. The commute was also mentally and emotionally exhausting: making sure I caught the subway on time, cramming into a packed train so I wouldn't miss it and have to wait another 20 minutes, listening to make sure the train didn't suddenly go express and skip my stop, being alert for people that pickpocket you or might get confrontational... I don't miss the social aspect of work at all, but that might be more specific to my workplace (an investment bank). The people are nice enough, but there's little socializing and coworkers are often out traveling. I spent most of the time on the phone with people in other states anyway, even before this crisis. I think I've actually been more productive. That said, working remotely has been a difficult adjustment. I am working a lot - basically nonstop 8am to 8pm, with a few very late nights recently - and haven't found a way to disconnect in the evenings yet. My wife and I are very anxious, but it's tough to disentangle the WFH experience with the anxiety we feel about family and friends getting sick, the heightened risk of being laid off, our upset clients dealing with shuttering their businesses, the dire headlines, and the broader uncertainty of how society will emerge from this crisis.