[HN Gopher] Why are some people better at working from home than...
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Why are some people better at working from home than others?
Author : BerislavLopac
Score : 40 points
Date : 2020-05-09 21:03 UTC (1 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.bbc.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.bbc.com)
| fullito wrote:
| I actually thought i'm the type of person who needs the office.
|
| Apparently i'm not. That gives me great hope for my future plan
| to do home office when buying a farm.
|
| Just yesterday i did nothing in the morning and worked highly
| concentrated and efficient until 10pm (that was a one time thing
| normally i'm quite punctual as i had an private appointment).
|
| When working at the office, i have to hurry to be on time and at
| the evening i'm stressing on going home because i wanna see my
| wife and a wanna eat something. Now my wife is here anyway and
| i'm much more flexible now.
| ndespres wrote:
| I like the flexibility, but you have to be conscious to still
| set boundaries. Having to leave the office to catch my train on
| time is a great motivator to make sure everything is wrapped up
| and I don't linger at the office. When work is at home, what's
| another 15 minutes, or 30, or 2 hours.. I'm hearing from my
| coworkers that they are having a hard time with separating at
| the end of the day, when "going home" is just going into the
| other room (or disconnecting from the VPN).
| hanniabu wrote:
| > I'm hearing from my coworkers that they are having a hard
| time with separating at the end of the day
|
| Yup, the thing I always try to remember is tomorrow's another
| day and that whatever I'm working on likely isn't as
| important as I'm making it out to be.
| gorgoiler wrote:
| I'm an introvert and a teacher. In class I successfully turn
| myself into a charismatic extrovert.
|
| I have 80+ teenage pupils to manage remotely, with me on camera
| for a significant amount of that time. I find it _very easy_.
|
| All pupils have an iPad. We all have full accounts in Microsoft
| Outlook and in Google Classroom, Forms, Docs and Meet.
|
| Being remote has made me tighten up my document formatting game.
| I just set up a nice asciidoctor template to make classroom
| materials have a bit more wow factor for the assignments and
| ideas I post online.
|
| The tools hold pupils to deadlines. It's a boundary they respect
| and it gets a lot more out of them. They find remote work a lot
| harder than I do of course. It makes school feel a lot more
| tiring.
|
| (Periods have about 30% face time and the rest they are left to
| work under their own steam -- with parents no doubt pushing them
| on my behalf.)
|
| We will go back to school eventually and we had all these tools
| before but I don't feel we used them to anything like the full
| extent we do right now. Remote teaching has really changed the
| game for me, for the better. It's not something I'd choose to do
| -- for their sake -- but I'm enjoying what it's helped me learn
| and look forward to carrying a ton of techniques over into the
| new school year.
| mns wrote:
| Everyone is different and the whole thing depends on so many
| things, that there is no one solution fits all. I started my
| career or a good part of it as a freelancer and then with my own
| company that was fully remote in a time where home office wasn't
| even a thing. I loved it, I was working for myself, I could work
| whenever I wanted, could take time off, but also had big projects
| where I was working 7 days a week for a month. I didn't care
| because in the end I was young and single and life was simple.
|
| Now, working in a company, I miss the office so much. I don't
| like this lack of border between work and personal life. I didn't
| sign up for this, my home is my own space and I don't want calls,
| I don't want anything related to work in there. I don't like
| having my work laptop and equipment in my personal space and
| office, I don't like switching laptops just so that I can do
| something else that I like. The thing is, I like the office where
| I work, I like my colleagues, I like our lunches, I like the
| social interactions, it was always a nice change of space where I
| could fully focus on my work, knowing that when I leave the
| building, work is done and I'm switching to my other environment.
| myles_mv wrote:
| Discipline?
| haram_masala wrote:
| I'm finding myself to be terrible working from home, but (a) I
| have kids, one of whom needs a lot of supervision, (b) the only
| real focused workspace I have is in my unfinished basement, and
| it's as dank and awful as most such basements are. I've ended
| several workdays wheezing and coughing.
| cmdshiftf4 wrote:
| Let me caveat the following by saying that I'm one who believes
| the future of tech work is fully remote and personally hope to
| stay fully remote post-COVID.
|
| I do not believe now is the time to be drawing comparisons or
| conclusions between the office norm and the fully remote
| situation most of us have been thrust into.
|
| Sure, some people procrastinate more than others. Some people
| need more management than others to keep going. Some people are
| better self-driven and self-organized than others.
|
| The effects of the externalities many are now faced with
|
| - worry over savings / the state of the market
|
| - job security as we watch others get laid off
|
| - how the kids are holding up, how will this impact their
| education and future
|
| - sick family members
|
| - etc. etc.
|
| renders it impossible to draw conclusions meaningfully e.g.
| "Susan was super productive when we were working in the office,
| but she seems to have really dropped off now that she's remote.
| Looks like remote isn't for her!"
|
| or
|
| "I was so effective in the office but now that I'm at home I
| can't seem to get anything done, or focus, therefore I must not
| be cut out for remote work".
|
| Whilst in the background you, or Susan, are facing a big drop in
| your 401k, or you're worried your kids are watching too much tv
| at home all day, or Mom is headed out to get groceries again when
| she really shouldn't be and there's nothing I can do about it.
|
| I believe the sweet period when some sense of normality resumes
| but we're still mandated to WFH because it'll be impossible to
| institute social distancing effectively in cost-optimized open
| office spaces will be when we can more effectively starting
| measuring and drawing conclusions over fully remote work and its
| impact on people and the office.
| moron4hire wrote:
| Because some people are just better at their jobs and don't need
| to be rode crop to do it.
| hatmatrix wrote:
| I wouldn't say that I'm very productive at home, but I'm also not
| any more productive at the office.
| 3fe9a03ccd14ca5 wrote:
| I've found the WFH experiment very unsurprising. Diligent and
| reliable coworkers are just as diligent and reliable. People who
| were iffy in person are basically non-existent WFH.
| andybak wrote:
| So you dispute that "struggles in the office but thrives WFH"
| is a real category?
| wait_a_minute wrote:
| For the same reason some people are better at working from the
| office than others - they just do the work and are diligent about
| putting in the time required. Someone who is motivated to do the
| work will do the work from anywhere. I'm one of those people. If
| I didn't want to be doing the work, I'd be shirking my duties at
| the office too. And tech is still good enough for us workers that
| I'd go down the street for a new job before I ever got to the
| point where I didn't want to do the work anymore.
| radicalbyte wrote:
| If you have a baby and two young children around who you also
| have to homeschool for 8 hours a day then you're not going to be
| "productive" working at home.
|
| People who slack at work by hide it by having lots of meetings /
| playing politics are useless whilst working-from home because
| they don't know how operate when their productivity is more
| visible.
| forinti wrote:
| Also, some people are terrible at written communication and
| just can't do without face-to-face conversations.
| srl wrote:
| We have video meetings, though. WFH hasn't really changed the
| amount of written communication in my work.
|
| My closest collaborator falls pretty squarely under "terrible
| at written communication", but we still have sufficiently
| frequent face-to-face time to be about as productive as
| before.
|
| I'm in agreement with the general sentiment elsewhere in this
| thread, though. I've found nothing about people's WFH
| productivity that's surprising. People with kids are
| handicapped, but are often determined enough to find a way to
| make it work. For everybody else, it seems like the
| inequality in productivity just goes up, and it's harder to
| mask non-productivity by socializing well.
| thomk wrote:
| Our solution is that I go to bed at 8pm and get up at 4am and
| work like mad until breakfast which is around 9am. Thats 5h of
| uninterrupted coding time, which is about the max my old brain
| can handle anyway. The hard part is doing 'working hours'
| business, but hey, I just email everyone from the potty.
|
| Sorry, ahem, bathroom.
| ergothus wrote:
| As of this writing, a lot of comments are sharing their varied
| personal experiences in WFH.
|
| Which is good, because they are all more interesting and valuable
| than the article, which skips the "varied" part and basically
| lumps everything in to "if you have troubles working from home,
| you need more willpower" (paraphrase).
|
| I found it insulting and was a bit surprised to see what I
| assumed to be American work-fetish from a BBC article.
|
| There are LOTS of reasons because people are very different and
| our environments are very different. I don't have kids, I am
| easily distracted by visuals or sounds in my periphery, I have a
| separate room for my home office, I don't have neighbors that
| share a wall or live above my ceiling, I have good internet
| service, I'm an introvert...so yeah, I have an easier time
| working from home. But those that don't, they obviously just lack
| dedication to work. Garbage.
| MattGaiser wrote:
| I haven't found the results of WFH to be surprising.
|
| The self-motivated people are getting just as much if not more
| work done.
|
| The people who are chatty in the office are more unproductive at
| home simply because the main reason they stopped chatting was
| because the boss walked by. I don't think they are more
| productive as shirking work in the office is equally easy. Just
| claim to be doing "background research."
|
| Work from home just removes the outside influences, causing
| people to become more like who they would otherwise be.
|
| In my case, I ignore meetings and just have them on in the
| background. I am barely in attendance. I can't do that in the
| office as my managers/team are watching. That is my one
| behavioral change.
| cameronbrown wrote:
| Kids.
| markbaikal wrote:
| While working in an office, I considered myself one of the more
| productive members of my team, and one colleague called me the
| most productive team member. Now, working from home, I am often
| standing up, walking around and dreaming for hours. I am glad I
| was allowed to return to an office alone this Monday. I am not
| 100% sure it is all due to WFH because my assigned project
| changed at about the same time but I can only hope I'll recover
| when I'm in an office again, even if nobody else is there to
| watch over me.
| MattGaiser wrote:
| How much of that walk around time is just time saving from
| other things?
|
| I'm also called productive by my team and I do the same as I
| save so much time by not having to deal with interruptions,
| leaving meetings on in the background, and and being able to
| work through lunch.
| markbaikal wrote:
| None of the walkaround time is saved from other things I'd
| say. I don't work through lunch, my lunch break has gotten
| longer because I make food instead of eating in the canteen,
| and lunch is one of the enjoyable times when I do not feel
| guilty for not working. The 'enjoyable because I do not feel
| guilty for not working' is somewhat true for the meetings now
| as well.
| Ductapemaster wrote:
| One really positive thing I have found for myself in the WFH life
| is that I am taking MUCH better care of myself. So far I have
| lost weight, started a bodyweight workout routine, which I do in
| between meetings/calls/other work, and have gained back 2 hours
| of my day by not taking transit into the city. That's 2 more
| hours every day that I get to relax, work on a personal project,
| hang out with my SO, or even crush out some work-related interest
| if I am feeling motivated. It has also been a fantastic motivator
| and resource for cooking -- I can start dinner before my workday
| is over, cook myself lunch, meal plan...
|
| I also pay thousands of dollars to live in a cool place, and now
| I am finally getting to enjoy it, and enjoy it with my SO.
|
| At the end of the day, maybe I am less "productive", by normal
| standards, but maybe I didn't need to be in an office for 8+
| hours every day to get the parts of my job done that need getting
| done.
|
| There surely are parts of this that I want to change or can't
| wait to change, but at the end of the day I am grateful for the
| forcing function to working from home full-time.
| chrisseaton wrote:
| > One really positive thing I have found for myself in the WFH
| life is that I am taking MUCH better care of myself.
|
| I think people are going to come out of this one of two ways -
| half will come out fitter, mentally and physically, more
| positive, with new interests and skills and stronger
| relationships, and the other half are going to come out a mess
| (understandably.)
| tayo42 wrote:
| I'm coming out of the this less fit, mostly because my
| workouts depended on being out of the house. gyms being open.
| Or freedom to travel to somewhere.
|
| Im also not eating as fresh as I normally do. I can usually
| get fish and vegetables and cook the day of. Now I gotta
| stock up on groceries for the week to reduce shopping
| frequency.
| amrrs wrote:
| Actually it's the opposite for me, I've started taking so much
| junk snacks (which wasn't available at Office), Less Walks and
| No proper schedule. Sleeps off the time. Many a days just
| getting up and jumping into calls.
|
| On the positive side, it's more quality time with family but
| I'm still wondering how to fix the health part.
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| Yeah, I'm exactly the same. I'm definitely a creature of
| schedule, and in "normal" times I go to the gym regularly, am
| more efficient at work, etc. Now everything just kind of
| "melds together" for me and even with more time without the
| commute I find my energy levels are consistently way, way
| done.
| ck425 wrote:
| I was the same until about 5 weeks in, then the isolation got
| to me and I reverted to food and sleep to manage my emotions
| and I wiped out all my progress in two weeks.
|
| It's important to remember that this is not a normal state of
| affairs, this doesn't accurately reflect WFH. I'm personally
| curious ot try WFH more once we return to 'normal'.
| lonelappde wrote:
| > maybe I am less "productive", by normal standards
|
| What are normal standards?
| Noos wrote:
| Some people need to go to a gym to do their exercise, some people
| are okay with a home gym. It's little to do with diligence or
| anything, people have different styles of motivation or drive.
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