#WFH is still a thing and how does it look like?

I know, sorry, there are countless posts, articles, blogs, and news around #WFH since Covid19 is challenging us, but I still feel like writing about it publicly as well - which I really seldom do.

A post from Vivasvan Shastri caught my attention. Mainly because the adoption of the so-called “hypecycle” couldn't better visualize the reality. From an early excitement about the "new normal" leading to a peak where everyone finally caught up on the buzz around it. Now, towards end of August, the reality may look bleaker for most of us. As Vivasvan wrote, the new normal needs shaping to get back on track.

Any form of wellness seems to be critical and desperately needed now for many of us privileged knowledge-workers in our still-not-so-perfect home-offices.

Why is that? Likely because we're learning slowly that:

• This pandemic is truly persistent and even after 6 months, the only viable hope for any improvements (as compared to the "before") is and will be a reliable and trustworthy vaccine while we're still longing for the back-to-normal instead of finally accepting the real truth. There is seldom a simple black and white. The future ahead of us won’t be white again.
• WFH isn't only a challenge for people with kids. Everyone faces the problem of setting clear boundaries, structuring your day, simulating an 'office live', or even a commute. Please read this article: "The productivity pitfalls of working from home in the age of Covid19" by Adam Gorlick
• Zoom and Co are the new conference rooms. As tiring as it is, it seems there's an unexplainable need for us to stick to conferencing as much as we can. Before Covid19, we were fighting to get a conference room, and then being in such most of the day was draining us. We didn't really like it, but we just moved over to the virtual version of it - which is draining us as well.

But we're also learning in our new form of working and living in one spot that there are actually quite a number of rather positive things happening.

• Most of the dynamics, either in conference rooms, office spaces, and social gatherings have vastly disappeared or fundamentally changed. Especially in virtual meetings, only one conversation at a time is possible and this can be a great equalizer. While everyone just gets his tiny window on one of the many conferencing tools, things like extreme body-language or seating arrangements don't count anymore.
• We're more flexible in terms of schedules and mandatory breaks. Before WFH, we were quite sticky to schedules, office hours framed by our commutes. Now, we're much more conscious about personal favorite schedules like the early birds or the colleagues who prefer to work at night and snooze a bit more in the morning. Or if someone just needs a mental break it's also ok because we've learned to be more understanding.
• Productivity did not drop, but patterns of it changed. At least for me, I can tell that I have waves of intense productivity, benefitting from the isolation in a room, not getting distracted by anything for 2-3hrs in a row. Such waves are barely possible in an office environment, especially if it's an open space concept. Others may not have such experiences, but I'm certain that almost everyone has found his own ways and times of being productive until now.
• Another quite prominent observation caused by sudden WFH arrangements is that there are finally true conversations about the mandatory shift to better workforce protection in terms of information- and cyber-security. While many companies saw their traditional perimeter imploding within days there was a sudden instant boom, not only towards cloud-based solutions like zoom, Slack, and you-name-it, but also a strong demand for solutions that are allowing our workforces to be anywhere. Topics such as Zero Trust Architecture and #cloud-native got back on stage and I expect to see a lot of innovations ahead in this area. The uplift of classic VPN's will just be an interim measure before more modern and better fitting approaches are maturing.

Beyond what I wrote now, I'm hesitant to make any predictions. Ok, at least one: I do believe that WFH will be quite a normal thing even after battling this pandemic. Going through this situation and still adjusting to it, getting to a point where we don't feel it as an exception anymore, and truly understand that everything has changed - forever, we will realize that there is a chance.

Do we need offices like we were used to? I highly doubt it. Isn't this also a chance to really change and innovate? Living in Singapore for a couple of years, knowing that this country is able to act fast and decisive, I hope the new normal will lead to an even better environment to work and live in. The chance is to transform not only the way we work. Mostly from home, maybe going to an office or shared workspaces once or twice a week, but in a transformed environment. An environment that is not dominated by skyscraping office towers, cars, insane rush hours, tons of waste produced by the workforces due to the lack of more sustainable options and need for convenience...

I do hope that we take this chance seriously. New housing developments like this one pointing into the right direction.

The current crisis provides an opportunity to reconsider our lives and reshape it in a way that has less impact on our environment and therefore our lives. Some may say it differently, but also this crisis is man-made. Please keep that in mind while you keep doing what you have to do.