The Deep Societal Issues the Cult of The Office Ignores
Your closest social contact being dictated by your employer's HR policy – where the strongest common bond is your companies bottom line & when that changes those relationships likely end – should not be seen as a good thing.
That doesn't mean you shouldn't enjoy working with your colleagues, nor does it mean that the office does not lead to lasting relationships. Instead, it recognizes that this should not be the reason why we allow a broken mode of working to continue to exist robbing us of our quality of life.
The office, in its current form, contributes to deep societal issues of isolation and loneliness more than remote work ever will. The anger and hate that this generates in people when it is said merely confirms this point. The alternatives are important to notice, all of which are empowered by leaving the office as a full-time place of work.
Spend more time with friends and family. Develop hobbies where you forge deep meaningful relationships with people whom you share things in common with. Throughout history, this has been a source of meaning. Only in the last 50 years, and to an even greater extent the last 30, have we began to associate meaning with our job title rather than the quality of our closest interpersonal relationships.
The office is not the only source of blame. Comparison as the thief of joy delivered relentlessly over the super-computer mobile devices that perpetually inhabit our attention contributes to a greater or equal extent. But make no mistake. Having to sacrifice hours a week commuting to a physical space to work on equipment designed to be used anywhere on the planet has been an increasing problem.
The office started out as the best place on the planet to do deep focussed work. Private offices existed to provide workers with the isolation they needed to do deep focussed work without distractions. As the price of real estate rose, open plan working was forced upon us, and rather than acknowledging its failing we excused the distractions with the promise of 'collaboration, communication, and teamwork'. Examined more closely, productivity has flatlined as technology that should of supercharged our performance has emerged and led to marginal gains at best.
The instantaneous gratification of office work prevents us from achieving our full potential at work. Synchronous working, where we are continually and relentlessly available, has failed. It may be convenient and enable us to pad out an 8 hour day most effectively, but it refuses to see what's been right obvious for nearly half a century.
We never emerged from industrial revolution working schedules. Factory line working, optimized for manufacturing processes, has remained as knowledge working has become the predominant work done inside offices.
Remote work is needed to enable a new paradigm. The future of work means empowering your workers to do the best work they've ever done in their lives. That means working when they want, from wherever they do their best work. That means embracing more asynchronous forms of working in order to measure productivity by output rather than the number of hours someone spends sat in a chair inside an office.
Remote work means organizing work around your life rather than sacrificing living for work.
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IT Consultant
4 年My dad received his Computer Information Systems degree just as I was starting high school and my sisters were finishing grade school. Part of his struggle to find work after college was the lack of remote working options. My parents didn't want to uproot their kids. They didn't want to abandon their long standing friendships. They seriously considered it, but it would have been a burden. Plus, moving would have been incredibly expensive and we poor. My dad may very well have been too poor to get a job. Remote work could have saved him from choosing between money and the happiness of his family. Remote work could have brought us out of poverty.