There are pros and cons to working from home.
The pro is that we’re never far from a French Press, and the commute is short. The cons? Well, the University of Chicago recently released a paper damning our attachment to working in pajamas. Chicago found that WFH led to more meetings, and two hours more work each day. It also led to less focus and less output. Ultimately: we’re less productive WFH.
From the paper:
The findings resonate with each of us. Do we really enjoy being alone in our bedroom working? It makes me sad to think about all of those who’ve spent a year typing next to their unmade bed. Or beside a wet towel, hanging just out of shot of calls. It’s not an energy inducing environment.
But, if WFH makes us less productive, what is ‘productivity’? None of us grew-up dreaming of becoming wage-slaves with (or without) a desk. We wanted to be astronauts, or documentary film makers. Yet, many of us refer to ourselves as productive or unproductive in our corporate jobs. Yesterday, for example, I was unproductive. To who? And why?
As I wrote last week, outcomes are so contingent on chance it’s a muddle why we bother to make decisions at all. Moreover, Vilfredo Pareto noted that that 80% of consequences come from 20% of the causes. Pareto’s Law is surely under-cooking it: It’s often one thing which makes all the difference.
For example, at Yokeru our marketing strategy is simple. We’re a member of two industry leading bodies, and I send a few emails a week saying ‘hello’. Sometimes I have a call and make jokes about how the landline phone is the most digitally inclusive technology since the pencil. And that’s it! There is no Twitter maintenance, no blog-posting or seminar organizing, I don’t use LinkedIn much, and we don’t send Christmas cards. In contrast, someone in the industry accidently sent me their marketing strategy last week. It was a forty-page presentation that I could not un-pick—I was baffled. By comparason, our random emailing doesn’t look ‘traditionally’ productive, but it works for us.
Similarly, in life, there is often one problem that, when solved, can improve everything else. For me this was stopping drinking a few years ago. I am in awe about what a difference it’s made. Much more recently, it’s quitting caffeine: I’m much less manic (to the relief of those around me).
So with work, why are we so hung-up on productivity? Especially when ‘one thing’ makes all of the difference, and that doing that thing at all is likely down to chance.
The saddest of Chicago’s findings is WFH means fewer meaningful 1:1 time between people, and less networking. A lot happens from un-agenda’d conversations. We learn more. As we ramble on we discover things about ourselves and about the other person. We learn that someone’s cousin has just had a kid, or that we have to isolate for 10-days when returning to the UK. Ultimately, it’s human to chat. And back-to-back Zooms couldn’t be further from our evolutionary past on the great plains of Turkana.
The report goes on to recognize “productive accidents” (I love the concept):
While WFH is likely to remain a feature of modern workplaces, some aspects of in-person interactions cannot easily be replicated virtually, including the quality of collaboration and coaching, and “productive accidents” that arise from spontaneously meeting people (including those with whom there is not yet have a working relationship).
Introducing randomness into our lives increases the chance of wild things happening. This is one advantage of hanging about in Nairobi—there are brilliant people everywhere. In a similar vein, I try hard not to have work calls on Mondays or Fridays. This allows for long weekends in cabins. It gives space for the ‘is this the right thing to do?’ type of questions that get buried during the week. In light of this email, I’m going to get stricter on this rule.