Are You Ever Going Back to the Office?

Living and working at home in close quarters can get old pretty fast. But WFH has also proven to be so productive for so many people that they may never make that commute again. 

A whole bunch of us who have spent decades in the office have somewhat painfully but importantly learned just how efficient and productive we can be working from home (WFH). Now we have to make up our minds about what comes next.

Plenty of the bigger tech firms are suggesting that WFH is worthwhile for a lot of employees — “forever” according to Jack Dorsey from Twitter. Hundreds of other large and small businesses are saying it’s worth a hard look. Just the fact that Zoom meetings (for all kinds of physical and mental reasons) are automatically half the length of in-office confabs means that we’ve collectively saved jillions of wasted and unproductive hours that would have otherwise been spent listening to Stewart spew, Carl carp, and Polly pontificate. Longer home hours, of our own making, fewer unplanned interruptions, and complete control of our workdays (and nights) have given us a new perspective on how best to get our jobs done – and when and where to do so.

And honestly, how many of you are itching to return to the daily grind of dragging your sorry butt to some distant office – day-in and day-out – for what now increasingly appears for so many of us to be no good reason? Just putting the millions of hours we’re not spending commuting to better use has to be a huge boost to overall productivity.

Yes, I understand the growing desire to get out of the house and that WFH is impractical for a lot of people for a lot of reasons.  But that’s not the same as wanting to get back to your building so you can drink stagnant water from dormant pipes, constantly swab everything in sight with your Clorox wipes, and join the lines of people waiting to pile into sanitized elevators in small, socially-distant and masked groups. Aside from peer and superior pressure, a little FOMO and your significant other’s desire to boot you out the door, it’s hard to make much of a compelling case for a hasty return.

Read more: inc