Originally published April 22, 2020
Working from home is exhausting - a newsflash to those of you new to this world of juggling a house and children and laundry and a barking dog and, oh yeah, working a business all from the comfort of your own home. Which I have been doing for 16 years now. I was working from home when we did our best to conceal that we were working from home. We purposefully didn't engage the video call option when we had a GoTo Meeting conference call with a prospect or client. We didn't want people to know we were squirreled away in an office across the hall from a vomiting teenager, or that we had to work out a system to manage an unpredictable dog during sales calls, or that we had just gotten out of the shower and didn't have time to get dressed before the call (seriously, you do not always want to be on a video call,) or that Conference Room C was actually the Car, used when the dog couldn't be controlled or Michael was on the phone at the same time (he talks really loud on the phone). I laugh as I read about the difficult transitions people are making as they go from the office to home as a result of our country's effort to contain the Corona Virus, and are finding that it's actually more difficult to work from home than it is in the office. Especially with kids at home. What did they think we at-home workers have been doing for the past 20 years, since the internet made this whole concept possible? Looking back, it was hard. It was exhausting. I had no idea how hard it was until everyone else started doing it, and writing blogs and articles about it. I feel so validated. It's not as easy as it looks, is it? First, you have to be self-motivated, as every job description ever written requires. But you actually have to self-motivate when working at home. You have to get yourself up, out of bed, and to the computer. Which, as you get used to it, is not as difficult as it sounds. You (really) don't have to shower, get dressed, wash all the breakfast dishes, fight 30 minutes of traffic, clean up the coffee spill in the car seat, and walk from the parking lot to the office. You just roll out of bed, get some coffee, and get to work. Boom. You're working. Then, you'll become amazed at how much work you get done - and in half the time it took you at the office. Why? What you office workers don't account for is how much time you DON'T WORK in the office. How much time is spent driving to work, catching up with your coworker about the weekend, their kids, dinner plans, vacation plans, weekend plans, then time spent walking to meetings, driving to meetings, talking about the meeting, making coffee, talking with your coworker about making coffee, drinking coffee with your coworker, making lunch plans, going to lunch, coming back from lunch, talking with your coworker about your boss, talking with your boss about your coworker, reporting back to your coworker what the boss said, then driving home from work. How do you even get work done at work with all that going on? Very little of a work day in the office is actually spent working, which you don't realize until you work from home, without all those distractions. Stanford University even conducted a two-year study on a travel agency that sent employees home to work because office space was expensive. Employees were more productive, attrition decreased by 50 percent, and employees had fewer sick days and took less time off. And the company saved $2000 per employee on rent because they were able to reduce their space.
If you use your time wisely, as Michael often did, you can even sneak in a workday nap with the dog.
Second, there is the management of distractions. Summers were brutal, admittedly. Kids at home, coming in and going out, slamming doors, demanding food, looking for towels, confused about laundry, bored, unaware that mom and dad are working, i.e., earning money so that the children can go to a pool, on vacation, to the mall. As a result, I spent a lot of time talking with Isabel about work, what it is, and why it's important that I do it. When Isabel was 6-ish, when I had just started working from home, and she went to school everyday, she had an odd idea about what I was doing, but she suspected the car had something to do with it. At the time, I was a marketing consultant to a number of non-profit agencies and spent some time each day on-site, but did my work from home. Isabel must have had a frustrating day at school. "I can't wait until I'm an adult, and I have a car, and I can just drive around all day and do whatever I want, just like you do!" she accused me one evening, must have been before dinner when sugar levels were low. "Is that what you think I do? Drive around all day and do whatever I want?" I was flabbergasted. Then again, she was 6-ish. What did she know about work? I took the opportunity - and many others over the years, because kids never get it the first time - to explain that owning my own business and working from home is actually harder than working for one company, in an office; instead of one boss, each client is a boss, and I answer to all of them, and am responsible for producing positive market share for all of them, which if I don't, I get fired summarily and without ceremony, and without a safety net of unemployment compensation or severance pay. Working from home is a great way to show your kids what work is, even if they only think you type on a computer, surf the internet and have Zoom calls. They'll begin to understand that you have to do what someone else says for the bulk of the day, just like children do their parents, and that life doesn't just magically happen. It never ends, and it's hard work. And third, if you manage your time well (another quality every job description ever written requires), you can take your kid to the mall or the pool, because you've just accomplished twice the work in half the time it took you at the office, because you don't have those office distractions. Work is a necessary aspect of life. Without it, we have no meaning or purpose, nor can we provide for our families. If you're lucky, work is meaningful. I was lucky, when I began my discussions with Isabel about work, that I had meaningful work with agencies that fed the hungry, provided solace for the addicted, and fought racism and sexism. We talked about those things. She got it.
Left: Isabel wrote this when she was 6-ish on a chalkboard I had painted on the wall in my home office. It's all true.
Isabel is now relegated to working from home as well, as a student. She has chosen to do so on her own, at our cabin in rural Tennessee, near her school, which she can't go to. She's attending Zoom class, writing papers and turning them in on time, doing laundry, taking trash to the dump, vacuuming and learning how to make bread.
She did pretty good on the bread baking, below right.
God put us here to work. He worked for 6 days to get the world ready for us, setting the example of work. Then he put us to work. The Lord God took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to work it and take care of it. Gen. 2:15.
It takes work to take care of a family, keep a home organized, produce results for your client or boss. Living in the time of COVID-19 has made us all look at work differently. Some have adjusted to working at home, working other's jobs (parents who are now overseeing their children's daily school work), or unwillingly not working. The latter group has made those suffering while working at home a little less complaintive and more adaptive, because at least there is work to do.
I wonder what this new work paradigm will result in, after the Corona Virus abates and we learn how to live with it. I think extroverts will rush back to the office - they can't not talk to people all day. Introverts may adapt and convince their boss to let they stay at home - only if the kids return to school. And those who have been on hiatus will thankfully return either way.
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