Who's the captain of your ship?

I’m taking the bait…

Columnists, I believe, get asked to write provocative articles and one in the Guardian yesterday was headlined “The evidence is in: working from home is a failed experiment.”

So.....

Of course, working from home has stimulated great debate over the last year and it's certainly challenged many people to think about their daily routines and what’s really important to them in their lives.

Recently though, more and more media commentary seems to be concentrated on negative beliefs about remote working and I wonder what’s leading people to these conclusions.

Cast your mind back to a time when you were in the office every day. How many conversations do you recall where colleagues spoke of how motivated they were by their daily commute, or how inspiring they found their office environment (very few of us have ever set foot in a Google office!) How many people regaled you with tales of exciting and stimulating meetings filled with purpose, energy, and ideas? And how many canteens and coffee stations were home to the sounds of colleagues expressing respect and admiration for the person who sat two desks away?

I once worked in an office affectionately known by the rest of the company as “the library.” A lot of people wouldn’t set foot in it, and quite a few of the people who had to sit there didn’t want to either!

Now, some of you will say you loved your commute. A beautiful time of solitude and reflection that set you up for the day. Some will say you loved your co-workers and the office banter that went along with them. All perfectly valid so hold those thoughts for a moment!

Then, come back to today. Things appear very different, don’t they? Change surrounds us, and change brings uncertainty. Uncertainty in turn forces us to question our beliefs, but our brains often won’t allow us to let go that easily, even when the beliefs we hold aren’t helping us.

Imagine this. You believe someone in your team doesn’t pull their weight, backstabs you at every turn, and can’t be trusted as far as you can throw them. You see them stroll into the office every day, chatting, drinking coffee, taking long lunches. You’re not doing anything about it, but your safe in the knowledge the evidence of their guilt is visible for all to see.

Now, you’re working from home and so are they. You can’t see the “evidence” anymore but your unconscious mind still tells you they’re a sneaky sod. So your conscious mind quickly fills in the gaps to help keep your belief alive. Of course, they’re not actually doing any work from home! They’re just sitting around watching YouTube and now I can’t see what they’re doing anymore, I trust them even less. If you step back from this for a moment, does it really make any sense? Is a person any more or less trustworthy because of where they happen to be spending their time?

One client said to me recently, “If you want to sit on your arse and do nothing all day, go to the office – people have been doing that there for years.”

So anyway, trust amongst colleagues has apparently declined in the last year. But trust between who? People who previously trusted one another or people who didn’t trust each other in the first place? If it’s the latter – which seems a lot more likely – then is it the place of work or the people involved who are the root cause of the issue?

Another interesting perspective is that remote working is “killing” innovation. This notion is especially amusing. Imagine the boss who complains “we used to have such a great culture of creativity and innovation, but now we all work from home and no one can come up with a new way for us to connect or share ideas.” Does anyone else see the irony? It’s as if imagination and invention only exist within the walls of a meeting room. With flipcharts. And Post-Its.

Isn’t it possible the “problems” you had before are the same problems you have now? If you didn’t trust people then, you still don’t trust them now. If your company lacked creativity or connectivity between colleagues, then guess what? It probably still does now!

Offices aren’t magical places that turn bored, unmotivated, unhappy people into Richard Branson the minute they walk through the door. But hey, neither are our homes! So if you brought your office chair home on day one thinking you could finally escape from everything you loathed about your 9-5, then there’s a good chance you’re still pissed off with most of the same things and a few more, because now you've lost the certainty of trudging to your desk every day.

Choose a different way of living

Is there another way? Absolutely.

Those of you who believe you took value from your commute demonstrate the other way perfectly.

The rest of us would say how could you possibly derive any satisfaction from that? Yet there’s that person lost in a book or learning something new on a podcast.

The truth is that any one of us can do anything we choose.

We can choose to enjoy our commute. We can choose to trust people. Or not.

And if you did enjoy your commute, then you may well have found an alternative moment of peace in your day. You’ve chosen to embrace the change and uncertainty that life brings.

If you’re a true innovator, then 12 months in uncharted waters is like manna from heaven to you, is it not?

In the same way, those of us who choose to see remote working as creating the “illusion” of independence and control over our lives, will more than likely see isolation and confinement instead of opportunity and potential.

Change is uncomfortable, but growth can only come with change. Besides, haven’t we been experiencing some sort of change our entire lives?

The truth is we get to decide how we experience the world. We choose what to pay attention to and what to filter out.

Ultimately, whether an office or a desk at home brings you satisfaction and fulfillment will be decided by no one but you.

So you can run negative thoughts about where you are today or you can choose instead to ask yourself, “what if this goes really well?”

Because you are the captain of your ship and that is a powerful job to have.