Working from home
December 11th, 2007 by Cali & Jody
We’re not sure what’s funnier, the actual advice presented in this blog p0st or the frequency with which we see the same . . . ideas . . . packaged . . . in . . . slightly . . . different . . . ways.
Our favorite is the idea that it’s easier to get your work done if you’re dressed for it. As the MarketWatch blogger notes, a “crisp shirt” beats PJs all day long. (Maybe the crisp shirt material interacts with the nerves in your skin, which sends special messages to the brain that spur on productivity . . . yeah, that’s it.)
Other bits of advice are equally absurd. Bar the door to your office, don’t do chores, keep “normal” business hours. In other words, even though working from home means you’re free to do your job in whatever way you see fit, your goal is to mimic the office environment as best you possibly can.
The underlying assumptions running through these posts are all based on the same fantasy about the workplace: that it’s optimally efficient. Real work can only happen is in a special sacred place called an office. These offices are temples of focus and discipline, where people show up at 8 am, hit the ground running, and work, work, work until 5 pm, not counting a half hour for lunch and two fifteen-minute breaks.
But we all know this is nonsense. Work does happen in offices, but so does an awful lot of goofing off, spacing out, wasted or duplicated effort, chasing down false emergencies, miscommunication, and general confusion and incompetence. If the workplace truly functioned the way we’d like to believe it functions then maybe all this advice about how to work at home would be worth something. But it doesn’t, so then what?
Maybe the answer is to make working from home look as little like working in an office as possible. Maybe the best advice is to tell people who are working from home to take life as it comes. Do you work when you need to do your work; do something else when you don’t. Or do both. If you want to answer e-mail, then answer e-mail. If you want to play with your kids for an hour, then play with your kids for an hour. If you want to fold laundry and talk to a client on the phone at the same time, all while being dressed up like a pirate . . . well, really why not? As long as the work is getting done, it shouldn’t matter what it looks like.
This advice is great if everyone else in your workplace enjoys as much flexibility as you do, but there are some good reasons why telecommuters follow these rules, too. As with everything, moderation and balance is the key. If you’re folding laundry all day, you may find that you’re getting fewer results than you might need to!