
Why are some people better at working from home than others? - BerislavLopac
https://www.bbc.com/worklife/article/20200506-why-are-some-people-better-at-working-from-home-than-others
======
Ductapemaster
One really positive thing I have found for myself in the WFH life is that I am
taking MUCH better care of myself. So far I have lost weight, started a
bodyweight workout routine, which I do in between meetings/calls/other work,
and have gained back 2 hours of my day by not taking transit into the city.
That's 2 more hours every day that I get to relax, work on a personal project,
hang out with my SO, or even crush out some work-related interest if I am
feeling motivated. It has also been a fantastic motivator and resource for
cooking — I can start dinner before my workday is over, cook myself lunch,
meal plan...

I also pay thousands of dollars to live in a cool place, and now I am finally
getting to enjoy it, and enjoy it with my SO.

At the end of the day, maybe I am less "productive", by normal standards, but
maybe I didn't need to be in an office for 8+ hours every day to get the parts
of my job done that need getting done.

There surely are parts of this that I want to change or can't wait to change,
but at the end of the day I am grateful for the forcing function to working
from home full-time.

~~~
amrrs
Actually it's the opposite for me, I've started taking so much junk snacks
(which wasn't available at Office), Less Walks and No proper schedule. Sleeps
off the time. Many a days just getting up and jumping into calls.

On the positive side, it's more quality time with family but I'm still
wondering how to fix the health part.

~~~
Xcelerate
> I've started taking so much junk snacks (which wasn't available at Office)

What I've found helps is to not buy snacks. I eat junk if it's available, but
if nothing is nearby, then I can't be bothered to go out and purchase it, so
I'll eat a grapefruit instead.

Another thing that I have found helps is to order a community supported
agriculture (CSA) produce box. A lot of farmers that supply restaurants are
losing a lot of business lately, and at least in the Bay Area, many are
starting to sell directly to consumers. I'm on a weekly schedule now where
every Wednesday I pick up a box of restaurant quality vegetables in SF, and
it's pretty fun because a lot of these vegetables are ones I've never even
heard of before. It has become a hobby to come up with new types of meals, and
it also gives my wife and I a nice break from the monotony to go for our
vegetable pickup excursion.

~~~
xyse53
One of my mottos: Good eating starts in the supermarket, not in the kitchen.

I can easily not buy potato chips. I don't even pretend like I'll control
myself and not eat a whole bag in one night if it's in the house.

~~~
PopeDotNinja
Do you have a second motto that helps me not stress eat all the good food I
just bought?

~~~
godelski
My motto is: if you're house is dirty, you're probably getting depressed.
Clean your house.

It'll probably help with the stress eating. Anxiety is a big culprit and it is
common these days.

~~~
Broken_Hippo
On the other hand, if my house is very clean and uncluttered, I'm probably
depressed/anxious and not spending time doing things I like. I personally
despise cleaning house, and minimal cleaning for practical reasons works for
me.

------
cmdshiftf4
Let me caveat the following by saying that I'm one who believes the future of
tech work is fully remote and personally hope to stay fully remote post-COVID.

I do not believe now is the time to be drawing comparisons or conclusions
between the office norm and the fully remote situation most of us have been
thrust into.

Sure, some people procrastinate more than others. Some people need more
management than others to keep going. Some people are better self-driven and
self-organized than others.

The effects of the externalities many are now faced with

\- worry over savings / the state of the market

\- job security as we watch others get laid off

\- how the kids are holding up, how will this impact their education and
future

\- sick family members

\- etc. etc.

renders it impossible to draw conclusions meaningfully e.g. "Susan was super
productive when we were working in the office, but she seems to have really
dropped off now that she's remote. Looks like remote isn't for her!"

or

"I was so effective in the office but now that I'm at home I can't seem to get
anything done, or focus, therefore I must not be cut out for remote work".

Whilst in the background you, or Susan, are facing a big drop in your 401k, or
you're worried your kids are watching too much tv at home all day, or Mom is
headed out to get groceries again when she really shouldn't be and there's
nothing I can do about it.

I believe the sweet period when some sense of normality resumes but we're
still mandated to WFH because it'll be impossible to institute social
distancing effectively in cost-optimized open office spaces will be when we
can more effectively starting measuring and drawing conclusions over fully
remote work and its impact on people and the office.

~~~
james_s_tayler
Honestly, it's just not for some people. And that's ok.

~~~
lazyasciiart
Thats true. The point of the comment is that the set of people who just aren't
cut our to work from home happily and productively is a lot smaller than the
set of people who can't work happily and productively _right now_ , no matter
where they work.

~~~
james_s_tayler
Well, that's fair enough.

------
radicalbyte
If you have a baby and two young children around who you also have to
homeschool for 8 hours a day then you're not going to be "productive" working
at home.

People who slack at work by hide it by having lots of meetings / playing
politics are useless whilst working-from home because they don't know how
operate when their productivity is more visible.

~~~
analog31
I first experienced this roughly a year ago when I was having a discussion
with a colleague in China, and she happened to be at home because of the time
zone difference. All of a sudden, a baby started screaming and all hell broke
loose. She was so embarrassed, but we all just laughed it off and she realized
that we weren't annoyed at all.

When we all went on lockdown recently, I noticed that at first people were
careful to create a "proper" workspace that was not only silent but also
photogenic for their camera. Naturally, a kid sees a closed door with the most
interesting new thing in the house happening on the other side. The only
proper recourse is to bang on the door.

Even within just a few weeks, things have relaxed considerably. Now, I rarely
attend a meeting, even when there are higher-ups in attendance, where there
are not kid noises in the background, folks going on "mute" to deal with a
meltdown, even just letting the kids play in the same room. Going shopping
during the work day, when the stores are less crowded, is completely normal
now.

When all of this started, some folks said: "Finally this will normalize
working from home." Maybe it will go even further, and normalize folks having
a real life.

~~~
acituan
> Maybe it will go even further, and normalize folks having a real life.

I absolutely love this. I love seeing my colleagues contextualized in their
private spaces, that reflects their personal choices, humanity, wholeness. In
the office this is reduced to a 2x5' desk.

Office as a space also has a sense of self-importance to it. It is not unlike
a church or a stadium where the purpose of the gathering is super-salient and
the participants' rich humanity is backgrounded. Working from home, it is
harder to be reduced to one's function as a worker, it is impossible to forget
that you are a human with a life when constantly surrounded by the cues that
remind you of that life, in the space that you live that life.

~~~
analog31
Totally agreed. At the same time, I also feel that someone should be able to
separate work and life if they want to. I have one colleague who never turns
her camera on, which is perfectly OK too.

------
ergothus
As of this writing, a lot of comments are sharing their varied personal
experiences in WFH.

Which is good, because they are all more interesting and valuable than the
article, which skips the "varied" part and basically lumps everything in to
"if you have troubles working from home, you need more willpower"
(paraphrase).

I found it insulting and was a bit surprised to see what I assumed to be
American work-fetish from a BBC article.

There are LOTS of reasons because people are very different and our
environments are very different. I don't have kids, I am easily distracted by
visuals or sounds in my periphery, I have a separate room for my home office,
I don't have neighbors that share a wall or live above my ceiling, I have good
internet service, I'm an introvert...so yeah, I have an easier time working
from home. But those that don't, they obviously just lack dedication to work.
Garbage.

~~~
opportune
I think willpower is an important factor, but not the only one. The bigger
issue is viewing lack of willpower as a personal moral failing rather than
something that can be fixed with practice and attention. I really buy into the
fact that willpower is like a muscle that you can exercise and that there
_are_ real practical ways to improve it. I've seen huge increases in my own
focus and working ability in the last five years - part of that due to a
maturing prefrontal cortex but in large part also because I've taken concrete
steps to improving it (and reducing procrastination).

That is not to say that all distractions are easily fixed or that everybody
_should_ have great focus and attention.

~~~
Fr0styMatt88
Can you give any tips on where to start? Any particular books or anything you
found helpful in giving you practical ways to exercise your willpower?

~~~
opportune
Not really books, but stuff I've picked up via osmosis, mostly from the
internet:

First, the biggest way to make improvements quickly is to make sure you are
getting good sleep, exercising regularly, and eating well. This does huge
benefits for mood, alertness, and energy. Also if you drink, smoke weed, or
take some other non-stimulant drug regularly that you don't need to be taking
- stop. Not only do these impede focus while under the influence and for a day
or two after, they also prevent you from getting high quality sleep (which is
why you get very vivid dreams after ceasing regular use for a few weeks - you
are catching up on REM sleep).

Second, set small bite sized goals. Instead of thinking about the long path
ahead, it's better to think about what is the first thing you need to do. That
really helps me prevent procrastinating. You can also do what I think of as
"reverse procrastinating" where you tell yourself you'll take a 30m break from
procrastinating right now to get something done - usually I end up getting in
the zone and working for longer than 30m.

Taking breaks is also helpful. The frequency/length depends on the person and
for me changes from day to day. If you catch yourself slacking or losing
focus, or stuck on something, get up and walk around. When I'm at work I
basically drink 5+ diet sodas a day, partially for the caffeine, but weirdly
enough also because it makes me pee a lot so it forces me to get up and walk
around every 1-2 hours.

The goal setting, and seeing them to completion or at least making good,
sustained effort, is the part that improves over time with practice.
Eventually you start setting larger goals and can start planning more (if you
are like me, paralysis by analysis is really easy to fall into, so you have to
take it easy here). I'm by no means some kind of self-actualized ubermensch,
but these have really worked for me, to the point where I've transitioned from
a serial procastinator in college - doing almost everything day before, day
of, or late if the penalty was low - to someone who actually does stuff in
advance and spends almost the entire workday working.

------
pier25
I've been working from home for the past 10 years and I don't think I could go
back to a regular office.

\- I can work at my own natural pace whenever I want. Some days I work 4
hours. Some days I work 12 hours until 1-2 am.

\- If I need to buy something I just do it. I can go to the supermarket at the
best times.

\- I can eat home made food and follow any schedule I wish. My SO also works
at home and we're doing intermittent fasting 4/20\. We start eating at 2pm and
stop at 6pm.

\- I loooove espresso. To give you an idea my espresso setup costs more than
my work setup and I roast my own beans. No office could provide me with this.

\- We have 2 large dogs and we just couldn't abandon them for 8-10 hours every
day. I don't know how people do that.

\- We can live wherever we want and we don't have to pay extra to live in a
nice house. Gone are the days of living in apartments without garden.

~~~
lucb1e
> Some days I work 4 hours. Some days I work 12 hours until 1-2 am.

Do you track those hours to make sure you don't think you worked enough but in
fact consistently work too little or too much? Wondering because I had that
problem (working slightly too much every week).

~~~
pier25
I've never measured it but I've learned to work as much as I can without
getting into burnout territory. On average I think I now work 50-60 hours per
week.

Most of these 10 years I've been working as a freelancer or now building my
thing. Even when I was working for a company for a couple of years I was
completely independent as far as time management goes.

~~~
lucb1e
Wait, why would you "work as much as [you] can without getting into burnout
territory"? That sounds like you consistently and deliberately work more than
you get paid for. Do you enjoy the job that much or is there some other
reason, if I may ask?

~~~
pier25
Like I explained in my previous comment, I work for myself now.

~~~
lucb1e
If that explained it, I wouldn't be asking :-)

Or do I misunderstand that 'working for yourself' means that you have your own
company and you work for customers? If you really just work for "yourself" and
nobody pays you (I don't think that's what you mean, but I'm not a native
speaker so perhaps I'm missing something) then I understand that you just work
as much as you like. But if someone pays you, why would you work more time
than you get paid for rather than spending that time on a hobby or with family
and friends? Even if you're not paid/bill by the hour, I assume you can't ask
a rate much higher than competitors even if you get projects done faster
because customers would just go elsewhere; they'd expect you work normal hours
and get it done in a normal amount of time. Or at least, that's what it seems
like from my perspective but since you work more there has to be a flaw in the
logic somewhere.

~~~
pier25
"working for myself" means I don't have a contract with a company to exchange
a fixed amount of daily hours for money. I do have freelancing clients which I
budget per hour but they don't care how and when I work, they just see the
results. I'm also building a SaaS so it's up to me how I want to work.

> _But if someone pays you, why would you work more time than you get paid for
> rather than spending that time on a hobby or with family and friends?_

If for example I'm working on a 200 hour freelance project I don't spend more
time that I got paid. I just do the work at my own pace.

I do spend time doing other activities than working. What do you think I do on
those days I only work 4 hours :)

When I was mostly freelancing (now I'm mostly working on my SaaS) I took a
couple of days off after finishing each project, sometimes even a 2-3 weeks
after big projects.

When I was working as an employee they didn't pay me to work X hours per day.
They paid me for results and didn't care how or when I worked either. I admit
there were situations where I did give more than what I got paid for, doing
things outside my responsibilities, and that was a mistake. I did that because
it was an education company I joined with great ideals, not because of the
money.

I learned from those years as an employee that I simply don't have an employee
mentality. For example I treated my bosses as I treated my clients. As a
freelancer or running your own company you're measured by the quality and
efficiency of your work so you learn to care about that. Employees around me
were trying to work as little as possible and only cared about their paycheck.
They didn't care about solving problems or being efficient. For example, there
was this programmer (who didn't work for me) that preferred to spend a couple
of hours every day doing a manual report instead of automating it and be given
more work. Of course he was friends with the IT manager, another person with
employee mentality.

------
fullito
I actually thought i'm the type of person who needs the office.

Apparently i'm not. That gives me great hope for my future plan to do home
office when buying a farm.

Just yesterday i did nothing in the morning and worked highly concentrated and
efficient until 10pm (that was a one time thing normally i'm quite punctual as
i had an private appointment).

When working at the office, i have to hurry to be on time and at the evening
i'm stressing on going home because i wanna see my wife and a wanna eat
something. Now my wife is here anyway and i'm much more flexible now.

~~~
ndespres
I like the flexibility, but you have to be conscious to still set boundaries.
Having to leave the office to catch my train on time is a great motivator to
make sure everything is wrapped up and I don't linger at the office. When work
is at home, what's another 15 minutes, or 30, or 2 hours.. I'm hearing from my
coworkers that they are having a hard time with separating at the end of the
day, when "going home" is just going into the other room (or disconnecting
from the VPN).

~~~
hanniabu
> I'm hearing from my coworkers that they are having a hard time with
> separating at the end of the day

Yup, the thing I always try to remember is tomorrow's another day and that
whatever I'm working on likely isn't as important as I'm making it out to be.

------
gorgoiler
I’m an introvert and a teacher. In class I successfully turn myself into a
charismatic extrovert.

I have 80+ teenage pupils to manage remotely, with me on camera for a
significant amount of that time. I find it _very easy_.

All pupils have an iPad. We all have full accounts in Microsoft Outlook and in
Google Classroom, Forms, Docs and Meet.

Being remote has made me tighten up my document formatting game. I just set up
a nice asciidoctor template to make classroom materials have a bit more wow
factor for the assignments and ideas I post online.

The tools hold pupils to deadlines. It’s a boundary they respect and it gets a
lot more out of them. They find remote work a lot harder than I do of course.
It makes school feel a lot more tiring.

(Periods have about 30% face time and the rest they are left to work under
their own steam — with parents no doubt pushing them on my behalf.)

We will go back to school eventually and we had all these tools before but I
don’t feel we used them to anything like the full extent we do right now.
Remote teaching has really changed the game for me, for the better. It’s not
something I’d choose to do — for their sake — but I’m enjoying what it’s
helped me learn and look forward to carrying a ton of techniques over into the
new school year.

------
mns
Everyone is different and the whole thing depends on so many things, that
there is no one solution fits all. I started my career or a good part of it as
a freelancer and then with my own company that was fully remote in a time
where home office wasn’t even a thing. I loved it, I was working for myself, I
could work whenever I wanted, could take time off, but also had big projects
where I was working 7 days a week for a month. I didn’t care because in the
end I was young and single and life was simple.

Now, working in a company, I miss the office so much. I don’t like this lack
of border between work and personal life. I didn’t sign up for this, my home
is my own space and I don’t want calls, I don’t want anything related to work
in there. I don’t like having my work laptop and equipment in my personal
space and office, I don’t like switching laptops just so that I can do
something else that I like. The thing is, I like the office where I work, I
like my colleagues, I like our lunches, I like the social interactions, it was
always a nice change of space where I could fully focus on my work, knowing
that when I leave the building, work is done and I’m switching to my other
environment.

------
markbaikal
While working in an office, I considered myself one of the more productive
members of my team, and one colleague called me the most productive team
member. Now, working from home, I am often standing up, walking around and
dreaming for hours. I am glad I was allowed to return to an office alone this
Monday. I am not 100% sure it is all due to WFH because my assigned project
changed at about the same time but I can only hope I'll recover when I'm in an
office again, even if nobody else is there to watch over me.

~~~
MattGaiser
How much of that walk around time is just time saving from other things?

I'm also called productive by my team and I do the same as I save so much time
by not having to deal with interruptions, leaving meetings on in the
background, and and being able to work through lunch.

~~~
markbaikal
None of the walkaround time is saved from other things I'd say. I don't work
through lunch, my lunch break has gotten longer because I make food instead of
eating in the canteen, and lunch is one of the enjoyable times when I do not
feel guilty for not working. The 'enjoyable because I do not feel guilty for
not working' is somewhat true for the meetings now as well.

------
JesseMReeves
I've always been a night owl and WFH seems to fix my mental health after years
of trying to force myself to work during "normal office hours" (let's just
agree to call them bricklaying and farming hours) in noisy office environments
(I'm doing a mixture between natural science and AI which requires plenty of
focus).

I'm slowly regaining trust in my ability to focus, getting into flow, and feel
"normal" again. I'm starting my day with food-related stuff, sports and work
communication, then going for an open-end session only towards late afternoon
when communication slows down, working into the night.

------
theonemind
I don’t get how some people work different hours at home. Generally, I have to
have Slack availability and then the meetings all get scheduled around the
standard 9-5 times. So I have to work the same times anyway, or else I will
just look like I don’t work.

Work from office seems like a lose-lose situation however. I have to commute,
and at work, I just waste more time because showing up counts as work. I sort
of wish I felt more at ease at home. I mostly work harder. So the one-size-
fits-all-butts-in-seats, in some cases, falls into that stupidity where one
party (the employer) causes a loss for both parties without benefits, because
they’ll make no effort to figure out what works best for who and just have a
dumb blanket policy.

~~~
SyneRyder
_> I don’t get how some people work different hours at home.. _

Not every company will have a stack of meetings or require you to be on Slack.
For 10 years I did WFH for a company where everything happened via email, and
it was designed to be asynchronous. That meant I could choose any hours to
work, and I often worked at night & slept in through the morning. As long as
the work got done and milestones were finished on time, it didn't matter.

My personal opinion, but if a company is requiring you to work _synchronously_
from home, something has gone a bit wrong and their processes are fragile.
It's like multi-threaded code but the threads are always blocked waiting on
each other. (In that case, the company is probably just doing WFH to save on
rental costs and to get the employees to buy the office equipment instead.)

At least in those cases you still get the benefit of designing the work
environment you want with the gear you want, but you miss out on the time
flexibility.

------
haram_masala
I’m finding myself to be terrible working from home, but (a) I have kids, one
of whom needs a lot of supervision, (b) the only real focused workspace I have
is in my unfinished basement, and it’s as dank and awful as most such
basements are. I’ve ended several workdays wheezing and coughing.

~~~
cma
I'd recommend at least getting a quiet dehumidifier and an air purifier.

------
MattGaiser
I haven't found the results of WFH to be surprising.

The self-motivated people are getting just as much if not more work done.

The people who are chatty in the office are more unproductive at home simply
because the main reason they stopped chatting was because the boss walked by.
I don't think they are more productive as shirking work in the office is
equally easy. Just claim to be doing "background research."

Work from home just removes the outside influences, causing people to become
more like who they would otherwise be.

In my case, I ignore meetings and just have them on in the background. I am
barely in attendance. I can't do that in the office as my managers/team are
watching. That is my one behavioral change.

------
dlkf
The discussion so far is largely unproductive, because it is conflating "WFH
life" and "we're in the midst of a global pandemic and we can't do our
favourite activities." Personally I'm hating my current situation, but if I
could go to a concert or plan a vacation, WFH might be awesome. I really have
no idea.

------
gargs
I am of the opinion that autonomy plays a major role in whether you enjoy
working from home or not. If you have the autonomy to execute on a clear
purpose that you have planned for yourself, there is seemingly no difference
in whether that work is carried out in an office or at home. In my experience,
all the need for constant feedback and 'catching up' is mostly a side effect
of poor project management caused by kicking off work on unbaked requirements
or where the estimations haven't been done well or where the dependencies were
assumed to be in some state while they're not really there.

That said, you could still catch up from home, if not more, simply because you
don't have to scurry around looking for a quiet place or finding the
colleague.

------
imafish
I’m an introvert with two small kids at home. They do not disturb during work
hours (b/c wife).

WFH has been a blessing these two last months. Minimum interruptions. I am
probably 10-20% more productive than in the Office.

Schedule:

\- get up at 8

\- eat b/f with kids

\- work 8:30-12

\- lunch + exercise 12-1pm

\- work 1-5pm

It just works. I am much happier, less fatigued due to no commute AND I get
exercise.

------
thrower123
A lot of people don't really do anything but churn and make sound and fury,
signifying nothing.

There's much less cause for engaging in that behavior when everyone is working
from home, so it becomes more apparent that they don't actually do anything
productive.

------
gamesbrainiac
As a rule of thumb, what I've figured out is that people who have kids at home
are far less productive than people who don't have kids.

------
2019-nCoV
It mostly comes down introversion levels. While natural extroverts have always
had the upper hand, contemporary technology is reversing this trend:

Dating: moving from bars to apps

Social: moving from third places to apps

Working: moving from the office to apps

~~~
alexpetralia
Software by the technologists, for the technologists!

------
wait_a_minute
For the same reason some people are better at working from the office than
others - they just do the work and are diligent about putting in the time
required. Someone who is motivated to do the work will do the work from
anywhere. I'm one of those people. If I didn't want to be doing the work, I'd
be shirking my duties at the office too. And tech is still good enough for us
workers that I'd go down the street for a new job before I ever got to the
point where I didn't want to do the work anymore.

------
ydb
Some people are more motivated than others.

Just like some people are more intelligent than others, or more athletic than
others... some are more self-motivated and can work through their own
initiative rather than relying on external input (such as managers).

That's not a bad thing, either! We should encourage those self-motivated
people to work however makes them the most productive members of our economy.
That is incredibly crucial for the times that we live in.

~~~
danielscrubs
When I was a manager I'd always just say to the people under me that they
where driven, until they actually started to be motivated. It's a great little
trick that made everyone happier, works on teaching programming too.

I don't think it's that easy as self-motivation as a scale, it's all about the
environment and task that makes people the most productive.

I always want there to be someone with insane amounts of grit and ask how they
do it. Insane amounts of grit would be: \- Six pack and can run a marathon
when old. \- Recognised in their field. \- Earned enough through work (not
through the insane rise in housing prices) to be able to stay in their home
for a decade without working.

Checking all these boxes, would be the master of grit.

------
higeorge13
It's a little bit too early to judge whether WFH works for everyone and i
think that some companies are doing a wrong move deciding to go fully remote
forever at these circumstances. The main point is that we were forced to work
from home due to a global emergency, but it is way different to do it by
choice and in companies formed with a remote work culture. Also i think there
is some excuse for employees' current lack of productivity (due to the health
concerns or summer break approaching) which will probably change in the next
few months. People are probably seeing WFH as a chance to do their work from a
beach house, an island, next to a pool and it's perfect because it's summer
but most of them will hate it in the winter.

Hence i foresee a lot of people currently loving it will change views after a
few months or so and also a lot of companies getting frustrated with their
employees and will request the majority of them to return to their premises.

------
unsignedint
I'm definitely in the group that works better in the office:

1) My productivity seems to be polarizing. In some day I feel I have
accomplished a lot more, but in other days not great. Generally, many things
seem to take longer to attain.

2) My working environment simply sucks. I only have cluttered desk with my
personal equipment. I improvised the TV to use as my secondary monitor, but is
definitely not optimal from ergonomic standpoint, so mostly ended up working
on the tiny laptop screen. I upgrade to better chair, and that at least helped
me a lot.

3) I don't have air conditioning, and if the WFH prolongs, this will be
problematic.

4) My workout level certainly has dropped for a while after the lockdown WFH
started. I have gradually improved this, by establishing daily walking, and
remote work out sessions.

------
angry_octet
If I were not prone to procrastination, I wouldn't be reading articles from
bbc.com that I found on HN.

But procrastination isn't the problem, I can do that at the office too. The
office even has many avenues of approved procrastination. No, the problem is I
am not working at home by myself, in blissful isolation, but with a number of
other people who demand my time and attention.

I have read a number of "The self-motivated people are getting just as much if
not more work done" posts, and to be frank, that is codwobble. Even self-
motivated people experience pandemic anxiety and financial pressure, and have
partners and children who they need to spend time with.

------
onemoresoop
I find myself being more relaxed and because of that I indulge in breaks and
brcause of that I end having to put in some work here and there at night after
my kid fell sleep. So it feels like my whole day is work, lighter but
permanent work.. At least its on my mind. The moment i was leaving the office
work was out of mind. In an ideal world I’d do wfh 2-3 days a week and the
rest in the office. I even miss my routine and buss ride to work. Some of it
is I suspect simply isolation nonsense, im now saving 1.5 hours of commute
which can’t possibly be worse

------
Madmallard
Same reason some toddlers pass the marshmallow test and others don't.

~~~
tibbydudeza
Thanks you made me google it ... wow interesting.

------
echelon
I'm finding WFH incredibly distracting for an odd reason: my home office is
where I work on my side hustle.

Having to share my innovation space with _work_ work is jarring, and I'm
having a lot of difficulty disentangling the two. I now spent a lot of my
_work_ day thinking about my startup since I'm in the place where I used to do
that in isolation. Ultimately I'm now a lot less productive at both. It's
driving my focus and energy down.

------
aszantu
I've had so man bad experiences with ppl that I just came to hate them in
general. I feel bothered by noises from outside, I hate my neighbour who just
wants the house clean and asks me to clean outside of my room. She just wants
a friend, but she akss for a thing back to just talk about how bad her back is
and blabla... I liked the first few weeks of quietness when social distancing
started,no I'm bothered by every noise that comes into my space.

------
richardjennings
Some people have ideal conditions to work in at home. Some people will
struggle with increased costs and induced domestic stresses. Some people can
communicate and socialise remotely. Some people will struggle to find reason
to leave the house. Some people will repurpose commute times and flexibility
to their advantage. Some people will stop looking after themselves.

------
enriquto
It depends a lot on your family situation. If you live in a small flat, locked
down with a couple of young kids, then working from home is impossible.

------
iambateman
The article has some official-sounding theories about WFH, which may be a
little more high-minded than necessary?

Success working from home boils down to two things: 1\. Desire to work from
home and 2\. Space free from distraction.

I am the only long-term WFH guy working with an office of 40 “In office” folks
who have found themselves at home. Some of them complain, others don’t. Some
of them have toddlers (!!), others don’t.

------
fendy3002
As a programmer, apparently for me the best will be WFH with coming to office
in between, let's say 1 or 2 days a week, based on ongoing tasks.

While wfh and online conference brings so much benefits, it cannot replace the
value of face to face meeting. There are some problems that can be easily
tackled with physical discussion, that can be complicated with online meeting
/ conference.

------
PeterStuer
I started WFH when the company I worked for had moved to a place where
commuting meant 3 hours stuck in traffic each day.

I never 'missed the office'. I found most people that do are confusing work
with having an actual social life, which they lack because they spend the time
it would take to build one listening to podcasts while stuck in traffic.

------
olnluis
I've been a remote worker since before the lockdowns started. My life is more
of a mess now because work has become more intense since everyone started
working remotely. It would be easy to ignore a single person asking for favor
at 8PM but sometimes it's a whole team discussing stuff at night.

------
hatmatrix
I wouldn't say that I'm very productive at home, but I'm also not any more
productive at the office either.

------
Eridrus
I feel.lioe so much of this discussion misses that all of these things about
people are both situational and mutable.

I've done some WFH on every job I've had, with wildly different results,
depending on how motivated I was to do the work.

Just because WFH did not work for you once doesn't mean you're not suited to
it.

------
cameronbrown
Kids.

------
Avshalom
no mention of babies, kids, teens, spouses or parents

------
f0rfun
Because they have no young kids

------
saeranv
>> “All of this said, chronic procrastinators will procrastinate just about
anywhere,” Pychyl adds. “That’s just something that’s inherent. It’s just your
disposition, and it’s not going to change overnight.”

Well that's depressing.

------
jokoon
You need a home office, a separate room in your home. It's too easy to get
distracted otherwise. Simple as that.

~~~
l_davis
Some of us don't have the space for a separate home office. That being said, I
WFHed part time before the pandemic, so the new part for me is being home 100
percent of the time. My workspace is a table in my (multipurpose) living room.
I've made a small tweak or two since the pandemic but it is basically the same
as before. My work and personal habits are better since the pandemic started.
Several reasons. Part is that it is springtime, and I am much less of a couch
potato naturally then. And the other part is that I have been taking the risks
of getting sick and the associated issues like the economic problems seriously
and making conscious efforts to take care of my health, reorganize my home,
take steps towards bolstering my economic security, etc. I think that small
distractions are OK (it's actually unhealthy to stay in your chair for too
long) as long as they are kept under control.

~~~
teddyh
CGP Grey did a video about the importance of having different spaces for
different activities¹, and in one of the comments for the video², one Vallejo
B. said that they have handled the lack of physical space by using tricks to
fool the mind into _thinking_ it is a different space, using different
lighting, sounds, tastes for different modes. Like stage set design, a simple
difference goes a long way, and as long your own brain is fooled, it works.

1\.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=snAhsXyO3Ck](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=snAhsXyO3Ck)

2\.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=snAhsXyO3Ck&lc=Ugzl3DOl0s0oS...](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=snAhsXyO3Ck&lc=Ugzl3DOl0s0oSv6osRp4AaABAg)

------
davidjnelson
Written communication skills are crucial to successful remote work. Both
writing and reading.

------
Noos
Some people need to go to a gym to do their exercise, some people are okay
with a home gym. It's little to do with diligence or anything, people have
different styles of motivation or drive.

------
3fe9a03ccd14ca5
I’ve found the WFH experiment very unsurprising. Diligent and reliable
coworkers are just as diligent and reliable. People who were iffy in person
are basically non-existent WFH.

~~~
andybak
So you dispute that "struggles in the office but thrives WFH" is a real
category?

~~~
3fe9a03ccd14ca5
I actually wonder about such a person. Do they exist? I haven’t had enough
time WFH to tell.

~~~
andybak
Yeah. It's me for a start.

------
myles_mv
Discipline?

------
moron4hire
Because some people are just better at their jobs and don't need to be rode
crop to do it.

