Solid advice mate. Why didn't I think of just not doing it? It's so simple it's almost genius. Just don't do it. Wish I'd thought if that sooner. It was staring me in the face the whole time. Just... Don't do it! Of course. Silly me. Silly me for continuing to do something day in day out that I obviously don't like or want to do, but could just opt not to but for some reason don't. I wonder why that is...
I don't quite get your flippance - you weren't doing it before, and are now doing it. What's changed? Why are you working extra hours at home when in the office you wouldn't have?
What's the externalities here? Why has 2 hours downtime turned into 2 hours more work, rather than 2 hours of downtime at home?
I admit the OP was blunt, but it's not a ridiculous question - where has the time gone?
Sorry, just me venting my frustrations at how my disability once again gets the better of me.
It's not at all a ridiculous question, no. It's a completely fair one. It's a dick move on my part to react like that without any context as to why. Suffice to say in my case it's akin to asking a drug addict why don't you just not take the drugs?
I'm very "field dependent" meaning my behavior is influenced by my environment to an outsized degree. It's not all under my voluntary control. The absolute best, and sometimes only, way to get myself to what I want/need to do is to create an environment that doesn't give me the option not to do it. Having a bus that is leaving soon and won't be one for another hour gives me the kick in the pants I need to tear myself away from what I'm doing and head home. The bus gives me nothing else to do, so I read. When it was WFH my environment didn't force me to do anything, so with those guard rails gone I lost control, which is pretty natural for me.
> being harder to control how much we work at home
I find this really hard to relate to though, I know the lines do get blurred and overworking by a bit is easier (personally, I maybe close the lid at 6:10pm rather than 5:59pm), but I can't see how (in any non-toxic work environment) the boundaries can get so blurred in such a short space of time to extend the working hours in a day by 25%.
If it was perfectly acceptable to log off at 6pm when you were in the office, I don't see how it's "the fault" of homeworking that's pushing that to 7pm. Likewise - if you were in the office for 9am, why log on at 8am at home?
If the only thing stopping some people from overworking themselves are simple environmental cues, that sounds like something that needs to be solved, and solved quickly for homeworking (and by any non-asshole manager). It's unlikely it's not going to be a major part of knowledge working in the future. For a lot of us, we're already months into doing this full time by now, and likely, months away from even venturing back into the office part time.
> If it was perfectly acceptable to log off at 6pm when you were in the office, I don't see how it's "the fault" of homeworking that's pushing that to 7pm. Likewise - if you were in the office for 9am, why log on at 8am at home?
One of the reasons which is strong at the moment is legitimately fear of losing your job, losing other work, being demoted or at least stuck, and that you're not being judged on vague presence any more, so you're being judged more strongly on what visibly shows remotely.
You think you are doing lower quality work while at home. Maybe you are. Perhaps home has extra distractions, like other people, or your mind can't stay focused as easily as it could at the office. Certainly for those with children at home it's a big problem.
So you feel you need to make up for it by working a bit longer.
Especially because your boss can't see you working.
Maybe you think you are working, but you worry your boss doesn't think so. You have a lingering doubt that maybe your boss thinks you're "clocked in" but you're not really working, you're browsing Facebook or HN or whatever half the day.
Actually, if you had measured it objectively, you spent a surprisingly large amount of time at the office browsing Facebook or HN or whatever before. Your boss did know, but it wasn't a problem, as long as you kept up enough good work to keep things going. As long as the standard set by your coworkers was something you lived up to. The benchmark was set in the office and by your coworkers.
But now, you're wondering if your output still looks good. Because your presence is more doubtful, competitive feelings about productive output and visibility signals sit in the back of your mind.
You're not used to working at home enough yet. So you start to think like an over-conscientious freelancer. Paying attention to your output more. Worked 9-5 with a lunch break, and realised you only "really" did 4 hours good work that day. Feeling like you should probably clock in 8am-7pm to make sure you're seen to be present at least, and maybe you'll end up "really" doing 5 good hours and it will be ok when the performance assessment arrives.
Your boss tells everyone to work normal hours as before. That they don't want burnout or stress.
But you have seen both sides of HR by now; you know friendly platitudes like that are quickly forgotten when the company makes an executive decision to let people go.
I completely get all of those points - however almost all of them aren't really exclusive to homeworking. It exacerbates them, for sure, but all are based on underlying presenteeism and imposter syndrome.
Most would be present were you in a regional office and "corporate" were calling the shots, or your manager's manager is in your New York office and doesn't see what their skip levels are doing locally.
A lot of them are even present when your desk is only a row over from the rest of your colleagues, and you're at a tangent with the flow them.
The problem here isn't so much working from home, it's going from visibility to non-visibility. Open plan offices to, essentially, private offices. These feelings would begin to manifest themselves if they simply rejigged the office design, and mitigating and building resilience of this is needed whether in the office or otherwise.
That being said, having children at home is hard. And a lack of appreciation of the impacts of those I feel falls under my point about toxic environments.
Yes, "downtime" in this context being "non working time". Whether it's "relaxing" or not is a different question - and, again personally, commuting certainly isn't contrasted as being relaxing compared to home life.