Imagine it is August 2021 at 8 a.m.. You’re sitting at your home office, wearing comfortable clothing. Sure, dressing for success is important in communicating the company’s values when meeting with clients and it actually helps with productivity, but it’s great rolling out of bed and not having to worry about what to wear.
Finally, your ‘office’ isn’t chilly, because 53% of people have complained about the office temperature. You’re drinking actually drinkable coffee or whatever your drink of choice is because your fridge is a few feet away. Sometimes, as you type, your pet comes over to you and you give them a quick scratch on the ear. You don’t know it but this action gives you a spike of dopamine, a brain chemical linked to feeling happy.
At noon, you step away, actually step away from your desk for lunch. “More than 6 in 10 professionals eat at their desks.” The dinging emails fade into the background as you walk to the fridge for a plethora of options, not just a sadly packed lunch you quickly threw together that morning or snacks that you buy from a vending machine. Over half of employees eat unhealthily at work. Now you can take the time to cook yourself a nice meal, or maybe you’ll call a friend and have lunch together at that restaurant down the street. Maybe your kids are home for the summer and you decide to use this time to have lunch as a family or play in the backyard. You may not be surprised to know that 86 percent of Americans sit all day, every day, during work and it’s hurting you. Sitting all day makes it more likely for you to pull a muscle and can cause “fatigue in the back and neck muscles and puts high tension on the spine.” Working from home makes it easier for you to go for a walk because we have to remember to stretch our legs. A new study shows that taking a “15-minute walk during a lunch break provides employees with better focus and less fatigue during the afternoon hours.” Don’t want to go for a walk? You can watch Netflix, read, or literally do anything you want without the fear of coming off as lazy or unproductive to your boss.
Whenever your thirty-minute/hour lunch is up, you go back to work. Instead of sitting in your office, you decide you need a change of scenery. After all, there is an outside world. You can fall into the plush heaven that is your couch, or you can get some fresh air and sit outside.
Hours pass and it’s 4:35. You usually clock out at 5:00, but you know what, you’re actually done with your work. You don’t need to pretend to be busy. Instead, you close your computer and leave for the day…no battling traffic. The “average American is traveling 26 minutes to their jobs — the longest commute time since the Census started tracking it in 1980, up 20 percent.” With no driving, you’re already home. That’s almost an hour overall saved each day. This could be the future of working.
Of course, not everyone will thrive at working from home like introverts might. There will be people who need face-to-face interactions, who need the structure of being in an office. By no means am I saying that the future will be 100% remote, but I believe a hybrid in-office/remote working schedule will be a perk/benefit offered by companies, just like a higher base pay or more time off. Many big companies are already offering extended working from home. While we still have some issues to work out, like how work / life balance can be worse while working remotely, how emails are less effective at communicating (in fact, they are 34 times less successful than face-to-face meetings) and how we might be hurting sustainable efforts by staying home, this is an exciting opportunity and I’m excited to see where it goes.
Image credit: Rajesh Balouria