> I don't have dedicated remote work space and that really eats into my productivity. Also being home and having no external pressure to keep working I can already see any breaks people tend to take are way longer than what they would take at the office. (Now someone is going to tell me that this just shows that people need more breaks, but I don't believe that)
> It also helps with my physical fitness. Now it is super hard to go to the gym in the morning just to come back home. When I commuted to work the gym was just on the way and it was easy to get out of the bed and go work out.
> Food is also big draw. Now I have to worry about what I eat every day and make my food. That's extra stress and cognitive pressure that is completely avoided when I get to just eat lunch from office's cafeteria.
> And of course other social aspects i.e. since I am already outside it is easier to do other stuff, but when I'm still in my underpants at home after work it is way harder to dress up and go do stuff.
These are the typical reasons I see for going to the office and they all boils down to you not wanting to make your own food, not having the self discipline to work out at home, and getting started in the morning.
I mean, it's fine, but I think it's helpful if we realize what going to the office is just making some people like yourself more comfortable, and others less comfortable.
Because to me, that commute is killing me, and getting interrupted in the office is wiping out any energy I have at all to commit to working. At home I have food I selected myself to eat and I have a nice twin monitor setup with a comfortable chair and silence to focus. My workout routine is body weight exercises right before lunch, and I have time to relax and have a shower as well since there is no pressure.
I'm the same. Working from home means i no longer have to spend 2-3 hours commuting each day (add many hours to that for times when the trains breaks down, which is annoyingly often in Sweden).
I have also noticed that my own productivity has skyrocketed now that im working from home and dont have the regular office distractions. I can put on music that i like myself, sit in silence while drinking coffee and think about what im currently doing and how to solve a current issue.
However! It should be noted that i do miss the office from time to time, i havent been there in 1,5 years now. And will probably visit a couple times a month in the future when things start to clear up. But i will never go back to full-time-office-work.
P.S. it should be noted that i do have a dedicated "office" room in my house which is a luxury not many have. This helps alot with working from home. Had i had to do this from my living room or my kitchen i would have not survived this mentally.
At my work, we are currently in a kind of hybrid situation, where people come in 2 days a week. I am not sure if visiting a 'couple of times a month' is a viable option.
There is still a benefit to it if you are in a project where you need to have in-depth, technical discussions. But the social benefits of being at work, and the 'chance encounters' which would help starting new projects or to bounce ideas of someone are largely gone.
I am curious to see how companies will handle this. Our boss wanted to have feedback from the team on how to handle this in the future and suggested to introduce a weekly 'work on site' day (and make all other days optional), which I think is a decent idea which we should try.
Making own food that is the same quality as the hot foods at cafeteria is easily 1 hour a day extra.
Not being around colleagues affects more than just self-discipline, you lose the random encounters with colleagues that often leads to new ideas and collaborations.
These differences are real. And even if productivity is not affected, the new ideas that normally sparked from random interactions are diminished.
I dont even care about random encounters that lead to ideas, i miss them because they were random and had relationship at work with people with whom i have no work overlap whatsoever,yet we bonded while making coffee and other type of office routine activities. Now, i rarely recognize people on slack
You see it as OC making excuses or not having discipline, I see it as you wasting valuable time by taking it upon yourself to do things you can ask or pay others to do for you. You might as well reprehend OP for working smart because you work unnecessarily hard.
I mean, the attack is so deeply personal yet you don’t know anything about OC’s circumstances. Maybe OC knows how to cook a little but he really sucks at it? Or he’s just not interested? Or he doesn’t have as much free space at home as you do? There are so many possibilities and you’re very quick to blame it on discipline, lol.
I could pick part your routine/things as well, but that would be as silly as what you did. Your routine works for you, you can keep it. My routine suites me and I am going to keep it. I see no actual argument here.
> I don't have dedicated remote work space and that really eats into my productivity. Also being home and having no external pressure to keep working I can already see any breaks people tend to take are way longer than what they would take at the office. (Now someone is going to tell me that this just shows that people need more breaks, but I don't believe that)
> It also helps with my physical fitness. Now it is super hard to go to the gym in the morning just to come back home. When I commuted to work the gym was just on the way and it was easy to get out of the bed and go work out.
> Food is also big draw. Now I have to worry about what I eat every day and make my food. That's extra stress and cognitive pressure that is completely avoided when I get to just eat lunch from office's cafeteria.
> And of course other social aspects i.e. since I am already outside it is easier to do other stuff, but when I'm still in my underpants at home after work it is way harder to dress up and go do stuff.
These are the typical reasons I see for going to the office and they all boils down to you not wanting to make your own food, not having the self discipline to work out at home, and getting started in the morning.
I mean, it's fine, but I think it's helpful if we realize what going to the office is just making some people like yourself more comfortable, and others less comfortable.
Because to me, that commute is killing me, and getting interrupted in the office is wiping out any energy I have at all to commit to working. At home I have food I selected myself to eat and I have a nice twin monitor setup with a comfortable chair and silence to focus. My workout routine is body weight exercises right before lunch, and I have time to relax and have a shower as well since there is no pressure.