Poll: Do you prefer the office or work from home?

I’m the opposite. Part is that I irrationally hate lifestyle change. Part is that I work with so many teams.

I hated switching. I liked my busy workspace and being able to jump in and help people around me, get info, etc. I had the benefit of also having a private office I could retreat to when I needed long focus time.

I also love routine. I like predictability of my schedule.

But so much of the teams I primarily work with had been spread across the country. 3 cities at the time. They missed out on the hallway chatter and always felt behind.

After a couple months, I got into my groove. I was collaborating with the folks outside my city (and building) much better. But I was overwhelmed by notifications, and was working too many hours.

I disabled all chat notifications on my phone. I started enforcing a beginning of the day and my kids pop in to remind me it’s over (I lose track of time when I’m focused).

Those teams are now in 6 cities. I’ve learned to schedule collab time, offer myself up to teach new folks when I have time and jump in on things I don’t know the same way.

I also schedule 1 hour meetings with close coworkers for 10 minutes of decision just so the conversation can wander. We have an open biweekly call to just joke and wander into something brilliant.

Folks got super aggressive with meetings. So I block off focus time on my calendar and reject meetings that should be emails. I reject emails for things that should be public. I ignore “good morning” chat messages from people I don’t know. When I’m focusing, I disable notifications and turn my speakers off.

I’m more productive and collaborative now. I have more control with people not able to just walk up to my desk. I’m not distracted by others’ more appealing problems except when I plan to be. Folks in other cities have equal access as local.

I also switched to waking up early for my quiet time at home, before the kids wake up, and not staying up late. I stopped eating lunch out, but always take an hour away. Sometimes I just eat a snack and take a power nap. I quit drinking soda. I stopped caffeine after noon. COVID got me doing outdoor activities that I love regularly out of necessity.

I’m 60lbs lighter than when COVID hit, and just feel a lot healthier. It wasn’t an arching intentional goal, just a change here and there to feel better.

Also, I’m naturally an introvert. At work people don’t see that because I am jovial, kinda loud, and opinionated. But when I clock out, I’m done. I just want to chill with my family.

I’ve dabbled in hobbies. Outdoors stuff like fishing and hiking. Picked up sewing bags and masks. Small home improvements. Goofing around with guitars and drums. Making my own guitar pedals. I just don’t force myself to finish anything, it’s just entertainment.

We’re starting back “hybrid” soon, with “team days.” For some that’ll mean 2-3 days per week in office.

But my teams aren’t local, so I really only see that happening when we can get folks traveling again for planning events. I’m not going to the office to Zoom, when I can do it at home without shoes. Maybe the occasional whiteboarding session. I haven’t found an adequate digital replacement for that.

The office itself is another matter. Like most offices, mine is an open plan office, so continuous noise, constantly people talking, phones and the works, and that's not counting casual interruptions. There's days where I arrive at the office, some people see my face, and I know in advance they'll drop by one after another to "talk".

I take countermeasures for the noise. I work with noise suppressing headphones on, playing some music that gets me "in the zone". A large chunk of my work requires long periods of concentration, so with some downtempo music I hardly hear the guy in the desk next to me shout on the phone about god knows what.

The interruptions are what gets me most. Just as you're "in the zone" working on an interesting problem, that guy who saw your face in the morning decides to come by to have a chat. They've got a problem they want your opinion on, which for the most part is okay, or they want to have a short pre-meeting to prep an actual meeting which is almost guaranteed to be a waste of time. The problem is that you get pulled out of "the zone", and you need a few minutes to get back in there and get back to your line of thinking. There's days where the interruptions are almost continuous. A coworker once joked I should setup a system with tickets at my desk, like at a butchers shop in the '80s, so you can call a number for the next person to step up. There have been days in the office, where I have done very little except for getting in the zone, being interrupted, having to find the zone again, and being interrupted.

There's a hurdle now with WFH for the real time wasters, the useless pre-meetings have all but disappeared except in the cases where there's a problem that actually requires an in-depth discussion beforehand, which I suppose would be "useful" pre-meeting. I've also noticed that the casual problem solving discussions have become more well thought out in most cases, because for some reason people seem to think more about the problem before asking my opinion, so I'm quite pleased with that.

We keep the teams together via an informal coffee break twice a week. It's basically a lunchbreak where someone plans a half hour meeting, invites a bunch of people and you talk about whatever you want to talk about. The topics vary: sports, news, entertainment, rumors, sometimes just talking shop. The coffee breaks at the office tended to sometimes lead to interesting conversations and ideas. I suppose that if I were to miss something, those conversations during the random coffee break would be it.

The commute disappearing has given me a lot of time to spend on something useful. Sometimes that's more work, most of the time that's spent on myself and the people around me. In general I'm happier nowadays, gained some time to exercise, spend more time with loved ones, and in general things feel less rushed than they did before. Having more time on weekdays has made the weekends less busy.

For work-home separation I have a ritual. I have a small office setup at home, desk, comfy chair, monitor and something to play music on. Every morning I make myself a thermos of coffee, walk into my office and close the door, grab my laptop from my bag and set it up, and start working. At the end of the day, I put the laptop back in the bag, clean up the desk, grab my thermos and wash it out in the kitchen. It creates a mental boundary, a moment in time where "home ends, work begins" and "work ends, home begins".

I've been to the office once this year, which was a matter of necessity to physically deliver something. I have zero intention of going back to the office multiple times a week. Company policy has changed and WFH will remain the way it is now, but if it changes back to the way it was, I will likely start looking for other opportunities. I won't mind going to the office every now and then, for example once a week on average, but I don't intend on doing that commute again every day.

There's some thing that are less convenient with WFH, but for the most part, the benefits have largely outweighed the detriments.