It's been two years now that I've been working from home 100%. I've been
to the office two or three times, but only to pick something up.
I have mixed feelings about this.
I'd say I'm pretty introvert and I don't need a ton of human contact.
Still, after such a long time, it's starting to get to me -- which does
come as a surprise to me. You really start to lose touch with reality,
in a way. Crazy. We have daily video calls, which somewhat mitigates the
problem: At least I get to see those faces. But being at the same desk
in the same appartment, day in, day out ... ugh.
I've been back at the office today to actually *work* there. There's a
couple of things to note.
First, it's not like I'm getting a "rush": "Oh, hey, people, yaaaaay!"
Similarly, when I'm working from home, I don't think: "Oh, this is
boring, I feel so isolated, I need people." No, I feel pretty normal in
both cases -- at first. The changes are creeping up slowly over time.
This is really interesting, because it means I don't actually *notice*
those changes. It's like the metaphor with the frog slowly boiling.
Second, my productivity drops massively in the office. I've noticed that
in the past, too, but today it was very obvious. It might be because I
haven't been there for so long. The thing is, it's not like we're
constantly chatting -- I really do try to work on my tasks. But my brain
is in "social mode", I think, and there's not as much brain capacity
left to do the actual work. :-)
Third, commuting to the office is like meditation. Most people noticed
this very early in the pandemic. I did, too. I tried to mitigate it by
actually reserving time to meditate at home. It doesn't really work,
though. When I'm commuting, I literally have nothing to do and I
*cannot* do anything. (I'm not a smartphone addict, I'm still capable of
simply sitting in a bus.) At home, I might decide to do the dishes after
all. Note that I might not actually *do* it, I might just *decide* to do
it -- and that's enough of a distraction. Maybe that means that I suck
at meditation, I don't know. :-)
I'd like to switch to a mixed model: 2 days at the office, 3 days at
home. I might wait some more weeks, though, because Covid numbers are
still super high here in Germany. Or maybe not, I'm not sure if it still
matters.
