Interesting and good read; and this is one of the reasons full time stay-at-home parents suffer burnout. Home *is* work; you’re on call 24/7 with no down time. Tasks are completed and then have to be done again with regularity; a never ending cycle.
Case in point: Was working on a documentary project with a company who was filled with vibrant, happy folk in February of 2020. Cut to August of 2020, working with them to release the project we saw the same people on Zoom after they had worked exclusively from home for five months and it was catastrophic.
All looked pale and demoralized, many didn't even bother to wash hair or tend to makeup. It was an incredibly depressing experience to see people so transformed and I'm 100% convinced it was due to them sitting at home and communicating via digitized voices and faces.
Perhaps in some ways, being at home is not so much the problem, but a reconnection with home life and other priorities suddenly opens their eyes to how much they actually, significantly hate their jobs. They used to have to 'go to work' and so exist in another environment, but now that they've discovered what other things they could be doing instead of being glued to zoom, work just sucks.
I'm not sure the whole problem is the inability to switch off or the intrusion of work into home (though that is a problem), I think it is also that now work is seen as literally and constantly interrupting home life, rather than originally where home life interrupted work (kids and pets video-bombing).
how do we know that wasn't the stress of lockdowns, mask mandates, potential vaccine mandates, and a whole host of other covid b.s. and not work from home stress?
I used to have a full-time job where I worked through lunches and stayed late to complete projects when needed, but when I got home, my husband and I enjoyed a creative explosion of writing, artmaking, documentary film editing, music composition, and whatever else we could cram into our evenings and weekends. Then we started our own business, and all private boundaries disappeared, and I found myself working around the clock to meet deadlines, answering emails from clients in the middle of the night, and springing into action as soon as anything was needed. I put off my own creative work for over a decade.
Then, last year, I started a Substack, and now I spend every possible moment writing, researching, and participating in this community, and I dread when I have to drag myself to work on a client project. Same workspace, same workaholism, but now I am doing my own passion work, and I leap out of bed in the morning and stay up for marathon sessions to finish an article and can’t wait to start on the next one.
I realize this is not the lesson you are stressing in this article, el gato, but for me, this is bliss, and I feel like I’m finally able to fulfill my life’s purpose—provided I can make it sustainable, because there are all those cats to feed.
The difference is your autonomy. You don't feel like a cog in someone else's machine. You built your own machine. That's a distinction that makes a world of difference. Cogs in someone else's machines need that locational boundary. They need to know the job is not them.
Well MAA started working from home with her own business. What you find when you have a business is that you are still beholden to someone (in this case probably clients). And if you are not smack in love with what you are doing (like she is with writing about her passions) then it can become drudgery. You still have to have some boundaries so the passion does not become something you resent or a cause for burnout.
You’re right, Raptor. I don’t think this could ever become drudgery, but I do have to be careful about consecutive marathon sessions as then my body starts rebelling with fatigue, which reminds me, I should crash soon.
Plus, I do hope I will one day have time to do something recreational again like watching a movie, but even that I am tempted to insist be related to my writing ;-)
I hope you get that time too! Selfishly, it would probably signal we have won. I have a strangle hold on that hope.
A side note: A long time ago I had a little blog that I created to amuse my sister. It was not private because I assumed nobody would be interested in reading it. Wrong. Two things came to pass. Many readers put pressure on me to write when I wasn't feeling it. If I missed a day it caused mild panic. That was depressing to me. Also one day a reader of the blog arrived at my door. I was actually out in my backyard, but heard the bell. When I came around she called out the name I used on my blog. I stopped blogging after that. Show no clues about your home location unless you eventually want someone at the door. It happens. Ditto for you Gato.
I know you were being serious, but it DID make me laugh. You are such a warrior. Love that.
If someone arrives at your door, I suggest being very sweet to them. You never know what a scorned fan might do. People be a little deranged sometimes. Hey also - if you write on Blogger they own your writing and can pull down your blog without any notice so all of your material is POOF gone. I wrote about utterly benign topics and one day they shut it down. They reinstated it after I balked (which was hard to do). They never explained why. Read all fine print. Also, someone used some of my posts for a paper in college. The professor wrote me and asked me if I was "x student". So funny and weird the online life.
I agree 100%. Myself, my partner and my adult son all are self employed and work from home. Many of the issues that el gato malo brings up in this essay ring true for me, especially the lack of boundaries between work and home life. I find myself scheduling zoom meetings on weekends and answering calls at all hours of the day and evening, but because I am my own boss, I can also find balance and take time when I need to unplug from work. It is a delicate balance though and I take el gato's words to heart.
Actually, El Gato mentions that he is similarly self directed.
I quit my perfectly lucrative job to be self employed because I was miserable when I didn’t feel self directed. So I am in the same situation.
This is what truly infuriated me about the technocratic response to the pandemic. The government decided that it was perfectly acceptable to force people to stop their chosen profession and just give them money. No. Even this post by El Gato makes the mistake of trying to universalize the experience of working at home as causing burnout.
Capitalism has some major problems, but it hopefully gives people the option of finding a way of making a living that is agreeable. The “new normal” technocracy is just going to result in the type of great resignation that we are seeing due to the loss of choice, whether the choice is to be self employed or work a regimented 9 to 5.
Yes, being self-directed is vital for me—and not having a boss (I’m responsible to clients but don’t feel I report to them). And even though I experienced the erasure of personal boundaries when we started our business, I would still never want to return to a day job as it is a joy being able to work at home together with our kitties and control our own (constantly fluctuating) schedule.
I would imagine that only to be as nice as you describe when you have a house, though, including a room that's only for work, where you can just shut the door.
At least for me it's like that. Working from home feels quite odd right now, as I don't have that. Not even an own corner just for work, I'm out of corners ;)
It does help making things better w.r.t. my rather late sleep phase, though. Not having to waste time on the road.
Actually, at that time, we had a minuscule apartment that was packed with books and so much crap, we only had a tiny little space in the living room to set up our shared workspace, so I can relate. A “room of one’s own” definitely helps but isn’t 100% necessary, although it would be more challenging if you have roommates engaged in other activities.
The "shut the door" thing was also meant for "closing work for today / weekend", out of sight, out of mind, not for shutting out noise from flat mates - I couldn't have those anyway, given my sleep schedule that would likely wreck me ^^
"but when I got home, ... creative explosion of writing, artmaking, documentary film editing, music composition, ..."
Gee, where did you take the mental energy for that after an, presumably, mentally exhausting workday, and then creative stuff to boot... I don't feel like doing anything on a workday after work.
Maybe you haven’t found your passion yet. Once you do, you’ll race home to get going on it—provided you don’t have a job that sucks too much out of you (in which case that might need looking at).
Simon Rodia conceived and built the Watts Towers every day when he got home from work for many years. He was in such a hurry to get home and get to work that he found traffic very frustrating. Then one day he had a brainstorm. He put a police strawberry light on top of his car and flashed it to get people out of the way. It worked great until one day someone told him the police were looking for him. He dug a hole on his property and buried the car. Problem solved!
Personally, I have found the only way to pursue what I want to do is live where I work. I need a lot of tools, a lot of materials, make a lot of noise and fire and I love living with it all. I don’t want to leave work, it is too interesting there.
Define "passion". My name on here is not for naught. I am interested in a lot of things :D I was hit much harder by the toilet paper shortage than others - I need those for my project TODO lists, nothing else is long enough! (ok ok, actually I upgraded to a computer, a... while... ago... but, the idea of the statement is still right)
Haha, in that case, maybe you already are doing your passion and don’t realize it, then! Or maybe you would feel it’s more creative if you assimilated the information you are hogging into blog posts or something like that :-)
Actually I'm a dilettante maker of music, and builder of things related to it. It's those kind of projects that have taken quite a backseat for a couple years. Well, especially 2 years. I resent the powers that be for doing to us what they're doing, but on top of that, I resent them for forcing me to make some new topic areas my "hobby", that was not by choice. (some would argue it was, I could also buy a TV again and hook myself up to the matrix, but I don't like the zombie feel)
My great resignation story is that I refused to get the clot shot. I loved working from home. My ex-company refused to allow me to do that without poisoning myself for no reason. I bet alot of resigned people have the same story.
Good for you for refusing the jab. It must have been difficult to leave a job you loved. Thank you for making that sacrifice. I am grateful I did not have to make that choice and could remain unjabbed and keep my remote job.
I'm in a similar position but am still technically employed (not getting paid). I work much more productively at home. I work in an open plan office which is a form of hell for me. I get constantly interrupted and the noise level drives me crazy. I'm struck by how many people here talk about work and being creative etc. To me, work is something you have to do and I try to get it out of the way so that I can get on with my life. Most jobs are pretty crappy and traditionally people have just made the most of it. I agree though that working from home means my bedroom is no longer a special private retreat for me. On the other hand, I save about 2 hours on travel and can work greatly reduced hours as I'm not being interrupted by other 'team' members (hate the T word). However, management insist that we have endless pointless meetings, I guess to justify their own jobs. No decisions are made at this meetings. At least I can turn off the camera and read emails while they drone on.
100% agree. Every office has its professional time wasters who are skilled at wasting others’ time as well. By transitioning to a home office I save not only the 3 hour (total) daily commute but the good hour or two each day when the chatty people stop by. So annoying.
Oh, yessssss! This is what I hated most about working in an office. I'm much too nice to say, "Hey, could you please leave now? I have work to do!" So I would spend so much time each day chit-chatting with people I didn't even like. Sorry, folks, but I'm much happier working from home all by introverted nerdy self!
Open plan offices are the worst! I moved to another state and went fully, permanently remote six weeks before the lockdowns. Many aspects of my role require technical problem solving, for which I need long stretches of time to concentrate. Life is much better for me working remotely because it’s so much easier to limit the interruptions. My company has employees in many different countries, so I’ve been used to working with people remotely for a long time. Thankfully the company I work for has a culture of respecting boundaries re: working hours. I’m in a different time zone from the rest of my team, but I keep their hours, which means my day starts a little early but also ends early. One of my favorite things about working remotely is that I can work from anywhere (which, thanks to in-flight wi-fi, includes airplanes), which has given me more flexibility to travel. Remote work isn’t for everyone, but for those who are suited for it and have the ability to maintain appropriate boundaries, it’s great!
Similarly, while I'm not 100% remote, my work has been very good with boundaries, since always really, but especially while working from home during lockdowns. It's super relieving to know that I can finish my work a little early on a friday, and if there's an email or chat message for me at 4:59pm, nobody will bat an eye if I don't get to it til mid-morning on Monday.
Gosh, is being so committed to work an American thing or what? I take breaks at home all the time so I can make personal calls, go for a walk, hang out my washing etc. I often don't respond to my emails (just delete) but I work for a government organisation so maybe you don't get the screeds of junk email that I do?
No shade CA, but is the NZ work ethic similar to Canada's (minus truckers) where it took us 2 weeks to get a copy of a receipt for a rental car? We kept getting the voicemail of this lady at Avis that said, "I will return your call within 7-14 days". Not like she was on vacation, this was just her standard turnover time. Us 'Mericans we're shocked. Anyway, your country is amazing and I am learning a lot about its brilliance, mystery, and beauty, watching 'Skeletons of NZ' recently. Hope you all get out of COVID madness soon!
Government departments and bigger businesses are like that so you don't want to change telco companies as it's a nightmare. More so now that they are using BOTs and 'agents' to respond to your queries. On the other hand, small businesses are great and usually will work stuff out for you. My husband is a builder and has heaps of work doing all the jobs bigger firms don't want to do but people want done! Have you been here? Yes, it's very beautiful but unfortunately the PM is a female version of Trudeau.
For my part, I don't work directly with customers and the work we do is measured in weeks not minutes, so a few days turnaround time on an email is usually ok, and team mates can ping me in chat if there's something I need to respond to more quickly. But yes, government is usually especially terrible for that sort of thing.
Being able to work anywhere has it's benefits. My son works in IT and he is looking at moving to Portugal where he can continue to work for his firm which is based in NZ.
Wait, are you still doing work while not getting paid for it, or was this before you were "put on unpaid leave"? Because I'm pretty sure expecting you to work while not paying you is illegal, even with an excuse of "not taking the jab".
Sorry if I wasn't clear! I work for an online school and it's been possible to work from home on some days for a few years. With the virus drama, we've all been working at home for extended periods, sometimes going in to the office for a day or two a week. Education was mandated for the vax in November last year and a small group of us were given permission to work from home until the end of the year. The school year starts in February here, so we had to go through a 'process' which determined we needed the vax even though our contact with students is rare. We have been legally challenging this. Yesterday the government has revoked the mandate from 4 April so I should be able to resume working. I haven't been doing any actual work while on unpaid leave. I did get the virus though but the govt still would love me to get the clot shot!! Because reasons..............
Such irony. Thank you for standing your ground. I expected same but fell into a wfh exemption with division I work for. Can never set foot in the offices again. Need to include substack as an attention grabber. Adding one more hour of no work/guilt to my day. I’ve went from 20 to 80 in the 20/80 rule. Nice seeing how the other half lives, *the ones that sat all day watching youtube videos, two hour lunches and excellent at recruiting others to do their work. I always felt too committed. Now I cram weekly work into a couple late night or all nighters.
One of the best decisions our construction company made at the beginning of the "pandemic" was to keep everyone possible working in the office. We debated sending office folks home, as that's what the "health experts" recommended. Ultimately, we decided if our field guys were deemed essential and had to go out and do their jobs, we should too. So many peers went the opposite direction and were miserable because of their new WFH status.
In Germany the film was called something like "2022 - those who want to survive". So when I, too, was reminded of it, I couldn't help but notice that Bill must be about ready by now with his bug goo or whatever he uses. Maybe he found it amusing.
They could even make an actually tasty product that makes intuitive sense given the name, like, mix mukimame with some green-ish lentils, there you have it.
Completely disagree with this take on teleworking. I've worked remote for over 15 years with various companies and groups. I've never seen burnout as a result of working remotely. I've definitely seen burnout from terrible managers (generally bad people overall) and their unrealistic expectations. All it takes, is good communication and properly set expectations. I work fewer hours than I ever have working remote, yet everything gets done, and nobody is bitching. My recommendation to people struggling with this is: "be an adult! learn to say No!"
I agree. If you are a social butterfly working at home will kill you since 50% of the workday at the office is socializing. I prefer just to work, and I can do that much better at home.
when i was working during the pandemic, there was a huge difference between introverts and extroverts on the work from home issue. the introverts were loving it...fewer interruptions, less chit chat, ditching the cubicle, more focused concentration, etc. extroverts hated it because they couldn't walk around the office and talk to everyone.
I agree. I enjoyed reading the article nonetheless, but I saw these things all play out when commuting to offices. Home interruptions are replaced with co-workers' constant interruptions, and you'd always hear how nobody has time to "get anything done" because of it. I definitely got 12am weeknight calls for stupid reasons, and the "sorry," was insincere. These issues I've encountered in all companies.
I once got a mark on my annual review for setting boundaries by not going to after-work happy hours. This was when I was always in the office, but left at 4:30 (since I came at 7:30).
By the way, I also got a mark at that company for, if I came in at late (8am), leaving at 5pm. They said I need to be consistent at the time I come in. Of course, if I come in at 7:30 and left at 5, they said they were a-okay with that. "Remote work" wasn't allowed except when it meant working at home after leaving the office.
That company is either ridiculous, or trying to get rid of / underpay you for some other reason they don't want to say out loud, or both.
I take feedback seriously and find ridiculous criticisms on formal reviews demoralizing and stressful. I wonder if this is a better place to look for causes of burnout. Maybe some of this bad behavior tends to increase massively when people don't see each other regularly. I would expect it to make managers see employees as less human and reviews as more of an unwelcome burden, and hold back darker impulses a little less.
I tend to agree with you Bits-n-Nibbles, but I think the part that sticks with me is the remote work for the younger generation. I think as a general rule the 20-30-somethings these days don't have the expertise in boundary setting. The physical office tended to enforce that, whereas working remote one has to enforce it oneself.
The difference is that the percentage shifted during covid lockdowns to being the majority on remote work and that triggered a lot not the issues described in the article.
I'd love to go back to the office, but my employer requires the 2-year-old, 2-dose, EUA regimen still. It's a joke.
And, before that, they screwed everything up by converting all our private offices into open space. Everyone used to have a (small) office with a door and a whiteboard and lots of quiet time. They took the wheels off that, too. Because Zuckerberg liked to wear a hoodie and hack around other people or something.
"unremitting bludgeoning and intrusion is what drives despair."
Confiscatory taxation, regulation, inflation, over-reaching legal risk... as a doc so many of my colleagues express frustration. The professional class in this country is a captured and subdued cadre . A lot of us make higher than average incomes and dont want to do anything to buck the system. Because of massive government intrusion into the practice of medicine, the administrative burdens and costs have become too much for one or even a small group of doctors to handle. More and more doctors sell out to private equity and large not for profit medical systems. The docs become cogs in a giant crony fascist machine. We swore an oath, many of us are well meaning and well intentioned but now many of us feel trapped in a dysfunctional system; dependent on the state for licensure and income. The cognitive dissonance is disturbing to many. Many choose to simply ignore the perverse incentives and conflicts of interest and keep their heads down, follow the script and do the best they can.
Most of the docs I know in NNJ who are younger and healthy took the covid shot and allowed their minor children to get it as well. If they didnt get the shot they risked losing hospital privileges . Their children would not be able to attend colleges.
Almost everybody caved in to fear and peer pressure and were infected with group think.
and this is the best description I can find of "stakeholder".
You get put into a position where you have to comply or lose everything. The kicker is that everything can be taken from you whenever it suits someone who has power over you, anyways.
That is your "stake" and the situation makes you desperate to keep it. Once we get to that place, any action becomes justifiable as long as it preserves your hold on it.
We decided to move from our state after the local school district started addressing us parents 'stakeholders' in all their emails. It started at the beginning of COVID, when everything trended toward "comply or ....".
I completely agree. The always on is a huge trap that I fell into myself early in the pandemic. I'm a manager of a team of software engineers. I liked the boundary that the office brought between my professional and personal life, however, it always seemed to invade during times of emergency. I'm on call 24/7 to be able to support those folk that pay the bills. I can live with that. What I struggled with was getting up early (was an early riser) and instead of doing personal things, I would hit my laptop at 7am to get some work done. And then still being "at work" until 6-7 pm. It made for a very long and exhausting day. Even a type A workaholic personality like myself couldn't keep it up for long. 10 months in I had a moment of clarity and starting setting boundaries. I won't sit down at the laptop before 9AM. I have an hour block daily on my calendar for a lunch time break even if I don't eat as time away from work. Finally unless something is on fire, I log off at 5-5:30 and just keep my phone nearby. It did wonders for my mental health.
Are there other stresses? Sure. Like the landscapers that always seem to be on my block with their infernal leaf blowers. The housekeeper (g-d bless her) who comes once a week to do the bits I don't like to do, has a habit of chasing me from room to room. Fortunately my kids are 18 and don't require constant attention to keep them from killing themselves or setting fire to the house. My elderly parents are another story and always traipsing through my home office. Fortunately they are now trained to think before interrupting me with "is this something you would have called me at the office for?" The cats I can't do anything about and my team has become accustomed to periodic gibberish text via Slack and just greet the cat who just said hello to them.
I do miss being in the office. The organic, social aspect of the interaction. I don't miss the hour commute into NYC, nor do I ever want to step foot in that destroyed city again until saner heads prevail and put it back together again like Giuliani did years ago (I'm old enough to remember the city before him). And now my company has closed the office in the city and converted us all to remote workers so I couldn't go anywhere even if I so chose. When my little corner of crazy blue lib bergen county becomes sane again, I might pick up my laptop and go sit at Starbucks for a change of scenery and cast.
We're gonna need a better number system because calling this 100% correct doesn't encompass a fraction of it. The ravaging hordes came with a router and a company laptop so we'd be distracted from the stink.
This is serfdom and all the young 'uns stuck their necks out eagerly for the iron collar and didn't realize no one ever hands you its key. You gotta cut off the hand holding it and free yourself.
Thank God you've got cats at home to help defuse the rage because the feel of that fur and the sound of those purrs are probably essential to keeping you sane. Ain't it like being eaten from the inside out, watching the destruction of a full generation and the one rising?
Also another downside of being at home all the time is access to 24/7 mainstream news. That will destroy your mental health. Boundaries are the key to all happiness.
But *having* access and actually accessing it are different things. I've worked from a home office since 1992, and I think I can say that I literally have never accessed the news, other than in August 1992 to watch the progress of my namesake hurricane.
I've had March Madness running in the background (before the NCAA became dead to me), and every April I configure 2 of my 3 monitors to stream The Masters; ditto The Open and the Ryder Cup, etc., all during work hours- so I do run the boob tube and equivalents, but for entertainment, not news. Otherwise, Alexa is playing music.
It seems like everything in the past 2+ years has been a descent into madness.
When the state shut down in March 2020, our office told us we could work from home or office, & for the first few weeks, I was the only person in the office. I knew myself well enough to know that w/out the external structure of coming up to the office, sitting @ my desk & working on the computer for the requisite 8 hour day, I’d be a complete failure @ working from home. From home, I knew I’d find all sorts of excuses to do things I wanted or needed to do instead of work. Plus, my bosses knew they could contact me during those 8 hours & nothing more unless it was really urgent or important. “Home” would never have remained a refuge if I’d been working from there
My husband recently started a new job and their policy has always been WFH. We were delighted by this as I'm a homemaker (homeschool our son) and can keep everything running quietly and smoothly. A spare bedroom on the second floor has been turned into an office and has two windows that look out over trees so his office is nicer than many offices he's had over the years. I fix meals and he takes breaks when he's able to and on nice days takes the dogs out to the backyard for some frisbee catching. And not to forget: the people he comes across in the hallway are always people he wants to see. 😀
Our situation is ideal and certainly not one that everyone can replicate but we consider it a blessing.
Agree with your point of view. If your main needs (food, shelter, etc.) are taken care of, tranquillity is being able to manage your own time as you please, as much of the time as possible.
In an office environment your can rarely do this, particularly in jobs where you have to 'communicate' with other people a lot. But if you have a WFH arrangement where the communication element can be controlled, and if you don't have a psychological need for being with other people a lot of the time, then WFH is as good as it gets.
Of course, if you're a person who frequently craves 'getting out of the house', or whose intimate home relationships are troublesome, then going to the office may be the better option.
I’ve never had to deal with the work from home thing, because I’m an ICU nurse. Burn out has been a hot topic in the medical world too though. And I’ve wondered for months how much of that was basically self sabotage. I work in pediatrics, so we never experienced covid the way adult ICU’s did. But I assume that a normal respiratory season for adults is similar to kids, you stay busy for several months and get really smacked for a couple of those. Packed ER’s, every room full, diverting patients…business as usual. So if we had gone through covid minus the media/government involvement, how likely is it that people would have just chugged through without giving it much extra thought? I think it’s pretty likely
WFH also steals the personal/social part of work (and post-work gathering), which is key especially for the younger people in the work force, those without family lives at their homes. More recent college and law school grads who have not even seen their “coworkers” in person.
Interesting and good read; and this is one of the reasons full time stay-at-home parents suffer burnout. Home *is* work; you’re on call 24/7 with no down time. Tasks are completed and then have to be done again with regularity; a never ending cycle.
And every day feels like Monday
Especially the weekends...
Preach. 🙌
Case in point: Was working on a documentary project with a company who was filled with vibrant, happy folk in February of 2020. Cut to August of 2020, working with them to release the project we saw the same people on Zoom after they had worked exclusively from home for five months and it was catastrophic.
All looked pale and demoralized, many didn't even bother to wash hair or tend to makeup. It was an incredibly depressing experience to see people so transformed and I'm 100% convinced it was due to them sitting at home and communicating via digitized voices and faces.
Perhaps in some ways, being at home is not so much the problem, but a reconnection with home life and other priorities suddenly opens their eyes to how much they actually, significantly hate their jobs. They used to have to 'go to work' and so exist in another environment, but now that they've discovered what other things they could be doing instead of being glued to zoom, work just sucks.
I'm not sure the whole problem is the inability to switch off or the intrusion of work into home (though that is a problem), I think it is also that now work is seen as literally and constantly interrupting home life, rather than originally where home life interrupted work (kids and pets video-bombing).
how do we know that wasn't the stress of lockdowns, mask mandates, potential vaccine mandates, and a whole host of other covid b.s. and not work from home stress?
I used to have a full-time job where I worked through lunches and stayed late to complete projects when needed, but when I got home, my husband and I enjoyed a creative explosion of writing, artmaking, documentary film editing, music composition, and whatever else we could cram into our evenings and weekends. Then we started our own business, and all private boundaries disappeared, and I found myself working around the clock to meet deadlines, answering emails from clients in the middle of the night, and springing into action as soon as anything was needed. I put off my own creative work for over a decade.
Then, last year, I started a Substack, and now I spend every possible moment writing, researching, and participating in this community, and I dread when I have to drag myself to work on a client project. Same workspace, same workaholism, but now I am doing my own passion work, and I leap out of bed in the morning and stay up for marathon sessions to finish an article and can’t wait to start on the next one.
I realize this is not the lesson you are stressing in this article, el gato, but for me, this is bliss, and I feel like I’m finally able to fulfill my life’s purpose—provided I can make it sustainable, because there are all those cats to feed.
The difference is your autonomy. You don't feel like a cog in someone else's machine. You built your own machine. That's a distinction that makes a world of difference. Cogs in someone else's machines need that locational boundary. They need to know the job is not them.
Well MAA started working from home with her own business. What you find when you have a business is that you are still beholden to someone (in this case probably clients). And if you are not smack in love with what you are doing (like she is with writing about her passions) then it can become drudgery. You still have to have some boundaries so the passion does not become something you resent or a cause for burnout.
Wish you luck MAA.
You’re right, Raptor. I don’t think this could ever become drudgery, but I do have to be careful about consecutive marathon sessions as then my body starts rebelling with fatigue, which reminds me, I should crash soon.
Plus, I do hope I will one day have time to do something recreational again like watching a movie, but even that I am tempted to insist be related to my writing ;-)
I hope you get that time too! Selfishly, it would probably signal we have won. I have a strangle hold on that hope.
A side note: A long time ago I had a little blog that I created to amuse my sister. It was not private because I assumed nobody would be interested in reading it. Wrong. Two things came to pass. Many readers put pressure on me to write when I wasn't feeling it. If I missed a day it caused mild panic. That was depressing to me. Also one day a reader of the blog arrived at my door. I was actually out in my backyard, but heard the bell. When I came around she called out the name I used on my blog. I stopped blogging after that. Show no clues about your home location unless you eventually want someone at the door. It happens. Ditto for you Gato.
Yikes, that’s terrifying!! Thanks for the warning 😬
And yes, you’re exactly right—I keep telling myself I can relax once we defeat tyranny and end democide.
I know you were being serious, but it DID make me laugh. You are such a warrior. Love that.
If someone arrives at your door, I suggest being very sweet to them. You never know what a scorned fan might do. People be a little deranged sometimes. Hey also - if you write on Blogger they own your writing and can pull down your blog without any notice so all of your material is POOF gone. I wrote about utterly benign topics and one day they shut it down. They reinstated it after I balked (which was hard to do). They never explained why. Read all fine print. Also, someone used some of my posts for a paper in college. The professor wrote me and asked me if I was "x student". So funny and weird the online life.
I agree 100%. Myself, my partner and my adult son all are self employed and work from home. Many of the issues that el gato malo brings up in this essay ring true for me, especially the lack of boundaries between work and home life. I find myself scheduling zoom meetings on weekends and answering calls at all hours of the day and evening, but because I am my own boss, I can also find balance and take time when I need to unplug from work. It is a delicate balance though and I take el gato's words to heart.
Exactly!
Actually, El Gato mentions that he is similarly self directed.
I quit my perfectly lucrative job to be self employed because I was miserable when I didn’t feel self directed. So I am in the same situation.
This is what truly infuriated me about the technocratic response to the pandemic. The government decided that it was perfectly acceptable to force people to stop their chosen profession and just give them money. No. Even this post by El Gato makes the mistake of trying to universalize the experience of working at home as causing burnout.
Capitalism has some major problems, but it hopefully gives people the option of finding a way of making a living that is agreeable. The “new normal” technocracy is just going to result in the type of great resignation that we are seeing due to the loss of choice, whether the choice is to be self employed or work a regimented 9 to 5.
Yes, being self-directed is vital for me—and not having a boss (I’m responsible to clients but don’t feel I report to them). And even though I experienced the erasure of personal boundaries when we started our business, I would still never want to return to a day job as it is a joy being able to work at home together with our kitties and control our own (constantly fluctuating) schedule.
You also get to choose your clients, or at least choose not to work with the unpleasant ones again. The boss isn't as easy to dismiss.
💯
I would imagine that only to be as nice as you describe when you have a house, though, including a room that's only for work, where you can just shut the door.
At least for me it's like that. Working from home feels quite odd right now, as I don't have that. Not even an own corner just for work, I'm out of corners ;)
It does help making things better w.r.t. my rather late sleep phase, though. Not having to waste time on the road.
Actually, at that time, we had a minuscule apartment that was packed with books and so much crap, we only had a tiny little space in the living room to set up our shared workspace, so I can relate. A “room of one’s own” definitely helps but isn’t 100% necessary, although it would be more challenging if you have roommates engaged in other activities.
The "shut the door" thing was also meant for "closing work for today / weekend", out of sight, out of mind, not for shutting out noise from flat mates - I couldn't have those anyway, given my sleep schedule that would likely wreck me ^^
Haha, gotcha.
"but when I got home, ... creative explosion of writing, artmaking, documentary film editing, music composition, ..."
Gee, where did you take the mental energy for that after an, presumably, mentally exhausting workday, and then creative stuff to boot... I don't feel like doing anything on a workday after work.
Maybe you haven’t found your passion yet. Once you do, you’ll race home to get going on it—provided you don’t have a job that sucks too much out of you (in which case that might need looking at).
“You’ll race home…”
Simon Rodia conceived and built the Watts Towers every day when he got home from work for many years. He was in such a hurry to get home and get to work that he found traffic very frustrating. Then one day he had a brainstorm. He put a police strawberry light on top of his car and flashed it to get people out of the way. It worked great until one day someone told him the police were looking for him. He dug a hole on his property and buried the car. Problem solved!
Personally, I have found the only way to pursue what I want to do is live where I work. I need a lot of tools, a lot of materials, make a lot of noise and fire and I love living with it all. I don’t want to leave work, it is too interesting there.
🤣🤣🤣
I love that anecdote and am saving it!!
Define "passion". My name on here is not for naught. I am interested in a lot of things :D I was hit much harder by the toilet paper shortage than others - I need those for my project TODO lists, nothing else is long enough! (ok ok, actually I upgraded to a computer, a... while... ago... but, the idea of the statement is still right)
Haha, in that case, maybe you already are doing your passion and don’t realize it, then! Or maybe you would feel it’s more creative if you assimilated the information you are hogging into blog posts or something like that :-)
Actually I'm a dilettante maker of music, and builder of things related to it. It's those kind of projects that have taken quite a backseat for a couple years. Well, especially 2 years. I resent the powers that be for doing to us what they're doing, but on top of that, I resent them for forcing me to make some new topic areas my "hobby", that was not by choice. (some would argue it was, I could also buy a TV again and hook myself up to the matrix, but I don't like the zombie feel)
Sounds intriguing! Makes me think of Brian Dewan (http://briandewan.com/) as he builds his own instruments:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CnOQtUemjG8
Never return to the Matrix, no matter how desperate you get!!
Yep. My substack is nowhere near sustainable.
Yeah, I have a long ways to go but am hoping to get there eventually as we only have so much room left on our credit cards ;-)
My great resignation story is that I refused to get the clot shot. I loved working from home. My ex-company refused to allow me to do that without poisoning myself for no reason. I bet alot of resigned people have the same story.
Good for you for refusing the jab. It must have been difficult to leave a job you loved. Thank you for making that sacrifice. I am grateful I did not have to make that choice and could remain unjabbed and keep my remote job.
I'm in a similar position but am still technically employed (not getting paid). I work much more productively at home. I work in an open plan office which is a form of hell for me. I get constantly interrupted and the noise level drives me crazy. I'm struck by how many people here talk about work and being creative etc. To me, work is something you have to do and I try to get it out of the way so that I can get on with my life. Most jobs are pretty crappy and traditionally people have just made the most of it. I agree though that working from home means my bedroom is no longer a special private retreat for me. On the other hand, I save about 2 hours on travel and can work greatly reduced hours as I'm not being interrupted by other 'team' members (hate the T word). However, management insist that we have endless pointless meetings, I guess to justify their own jobs. No decisions are made at this meetings. At least I can turn off the camera and read emails while they drone on.
100% agree. Every office has its professional time wasters who are skilled at wasting others’ time as well. By transitioning to a home office I save not only the 3 hour (total) daily commute but the good hour or two each day when the chatty people stop by. So annoying.
Oh, yessssss! This is what I hated most about working in an office. I'm much too nice to say, "Hey, could you please leave now? I have work to do!" So I would spend so much time each day chit-chatting with people I didn't even like. Sorry, folks, but I'm much happier working from home all by introverted nerdy self!
Open plan offices are the worst! I moved to another state and went fully, permanently remote six weeks before the lockdowns. Many aspects of my role require technical problem solving, for which I need long stretches of time to concentrate. Life is much better for me working remotely because it’s so much easier to limit the interruptions. My company has employees in many different countries, so I’ve been used to working with people remotely for a long time. Thankfully the company I work for has a culture of respecting boundaries re: working hours. I’m in a different time zone from the rest of my team, but I keep their hours, which means my day starts a little early but also ends early. One of my favorite things about working remotely is that I can work from anywhere (which, thanks to in-flight wi-fi, includes airplanes), which has given me more flexibility to travel. Remote work isn’t for everyone, but for those who are suited for it and have the ability to maintain appropriate boundaries, it’s great!
Similarly, while I'm not 100% remote, my work has been very good with boundaries, since always really, but especially while working from home during lockdowns. It's super relieving to know that I can finish my work a little early on a friday, and if there's an email or chat message for me at 4:59pm, nobody will bat an eye if I don't get to it til mid-morning on Monday.
Gosh, is being so committed to work an American thing or what? I take breaks at home all the time so I can make personal calls, go for a walk, hang out my washing etc. I often don't respond to my emails (just delete) but I work for a government organisation so maybe you don't get the screeds of junk email that I do?
No shade CA, but is the NZ work ethic similar to Canada's (minus truckers) where it took us 2 weeks to get a copy of a receipt for a rental car? We kept getting the voicemail of this lady at Avis that said, "I will return your call within 7-14 days". Not like she was on vacation, this was just her standard turnover time. Us 'Mericans we're shocked. Anyway, your country is amazing and I am learning a lot about its brilliance, mystery, and beauty, watching 'Skeletons of NZ' recently. Hope you all get out of COVID madness soon!
Government departments and bigger businesses are like that so you don't want to change telco companies as it's a nightmare. More so now that they are using BOTs and 'agents' to respond to your queries. On the other hand, small businesses are great and usually will work stuff out for you. My husband is a builder and has heaps of work doing all the jobs bigger firms don't want to do but people want done! Have you been here? Yes, it's very beautiful but unfortunately the PM is a female version of Trudeau.
For my part, I don't work directly with customers and the work we do is measured in weeks not minutes, so a few days turnaround time on an email is usually ok, and team mates can ping me in chat if there's something I need to respond to more quickly. But yes, government is usually especially terrible for that sort of thing.
Being able to work anywhere has it's benefits. My son works in IT and he is looking at moving to Portugal where he can continue to work for his firm which is based in NZ.
Wait, are you still doing work while not getting paid for it, or was this before you were "put on unpaid leave"? Because I'm pretty sure expecting you to work while not paying you is illegal, even with an excuse of "not taking the jab".
Sorry if I wasn't clear! I work for an online school and it's been possible to work from home on some days for a few years. With the virus drama, we've all been working at home for extended periods, sometimes going in to the office for a day or two a week. Education was mandated for the vax in November last year and a small group of us were given permission to work from home until the end of the year. The school year starts in February here, so we had to go through a 'process' which determined we needed the vax even though our contact with students is rare. We have been legally challenging this. Yesterday the government has revoked the mandate from 4 April so I should be able to resume working. I haven't been doing any actual work while on unpaid leave. I did get the virus though but the govt still would love me to get the clot shot!! Because reasons..............
I honor your right to make that decision. Your conscience is intact. 👍🏻
My company backed away from it at the 11th hour, but I was ready to make the fire me.
Such irony. Thank you for standing your ground. I expected same but fell into a wfh exemption with division I work for. Can never set foot in the offices again. Need to include substack as an attention grabber. Adding one more hour of no work/guilt to my day. I’ve went from 20 to 80 in the 20/80 rule. Nice seeing how the other half lives, *the ones that sat all day watching youtube videos, two hour lunches and excellent at recruiting others to do their work. I always felt too committed. Now I cram weekly work into a couple late night or all nighters.
One of the best decisions our construction company made at the beginning of the "pandemic" was to keep everyone possible working in the office. We debated sending office folks home, as that's what the "health experts" recommended. Ultimately, we decided if our field guys were deemed essential and had to go out and do their jobs, we should too. So many peers went the opposite direction and were miserable because of their new WFH status.
The WEF wants you to eat bugs and soylent in your co-working and co-living space (aka gulag). Metaverse will provide the latest NPC updates.
I have been reminded of “Soylent green” many, many times throughout the past few years.
Soylent Green took place in 2022 lol
In Germany the film was called something like "2022 - those who want to survive". So when I, too, was reminded of it, I couldn't help but notice that Bill must be about ready by now with his bug goo or whatever he uses. Maybe he found it amusing.
You have the German film 'the Hamburg Syndrome' as well. Only 40 years too early.
according to imdb.com:
..Jahr 2022... die überleben wollen...
...year 2022... who want to survive... (gtranslate)
They could even make an actually tasty product that makes intuitive sense given the name, like, mix mukimame with some green-ish lentils, there you have it.
Hah, I might actually try how that tastes.
Completely disagree with this take on teleworking. I've worked remote for over 15 years with various companies and groups. I've never seen burnout as a result of working remotely. I've definitely seen burnout from terrible managers (generally bad people overall) and their unrealistic expectations. All it takes, is good communication and properly set expectations. I work fewer hours than I ever have working remote, yet everything gets done, and nobody is bitching. My recommendation to people struggling with this is: "be an adult! learn to say No!"
I agree. If you are a social butterfly working at home will kill you since 50% of the workday at the office is socializing. I prefer just to work, and I can do that much better at home.
when i was working during the pandemic, there was a huge difference between introverts and extroverts on the work from home issue. the introverts were loving it...fewer interruptions, less chit chat, ditching the cubicle, more focused concentration, etc. extroverts hated it because they couldn't walk around the office and talk to everyone.
I agree. I enjoyed reading the article nonetheless, but I saw these things all play out when commuting to offices. Home interruptions are replaced with co-workers' constant interruptions, and you'd always hear how nobody has time to "get anything done" because of it. I definitely got 12am weeknight calls for stupid reasons, and the "sorry," was insincere. These issues I've encountered in all companies.
I once got a mark on my annual review for setting boundaries by not going to after-work happy hours. This was when I was always in the office, but left at 4:30 (since I came at 7:30).
By the way, I also got a mark at that company for, if I came in at late (8am), leaving at 5pm. They said I need to be consistent at the time I come in. Of course, if I come in at 7:30 and left at 5, they said they were a-okay with that. "Remote work" wasn't allowed except when it meant working at home after leaving the office.
That company is either ridiculous, or trying to get rid of / underpay you for some other reason they don't want to say out loud, or both.
I take feedback seriously and find ridiculous criticisms on formal reviews demoralizing and stressful. I wonder if this is a better place to look for causes of burnout. Maybe some of this bad behavior tends to increase massively when people don't see each other regularly. I would expect it to make managers see employees as less human and reviews as more of an unwelcome burden, and hold back darker impulses a little less.
I tend to agree with you Bits-n-Nibbles, but I think the part that sticks with me is the remote work for the younger generation. I think as a general rule the 20-30-somethings these days don't have the expertise in boundary setting. The physical office tended to enforce that, whereas working remote one has to enforce it oneself.
The difference is that the percentage shifted during covid lockdowns to being the majority on remote work and that triggered a lot not the issues described in the article.
I'd love to go back to the office, but my employer requires the 2-year-old, 2-dose, EUA regimen still. It's a joke.
And, before that, they screwed everything up by converting all our private offices into open space. Everyone used to have a (small) office with a door and a whiteboard and lots of quiet time. They took the wheels off that, too. Because Zuckerberg liked to wear a hoodie and hack around other people or something.
What's good for Zuckerberg, is good for all. Learn it, love it, live it, suckahs.
"unremitting bludgeoning and intrusion is what drives despair."
Confiscatory taxation, regulation, inflation, over-reaching legal risk... as a doc so many of my colleagues express frustration. The professional class in this country is a captured and subdued cadre . A lot of us make higher than average incomes and dont want to do anything to buck the system. Because of massive government intrusion into the practice of medicine, the administrative burdens and costs have become too much for one or even a small group of doctors to handle. More and more doctors sell out to private equity and large not for profit medical systems. The docs become cogs in a giant crony fascist machine. We swore an oath, many of us are well meaning and well intentioned but now many of us feel trapped in a dysfunctional system; dependent on the state for licensure and income. The cognitive dissonance is disturbing to many. Many choose to simply ignore the perverse incentives and conflicts of interest and keep their heads down, follow the script and do the best they can.
Most of the docs I know in NNJ who are younger and healthy took the covid shot and allowed their minor children to get it as well. If they didnt get the shot they risked losing hospital privileges . Their children would not be able to attend colleges.
Almost everybody caved in to fear and peer pressure and were infected with group think.
and this is the best description I can find of "stakeholder".
You get put into a position where you have to comply or lose everything. The kicker is that everything can be taken from you whenever it suits someone who has power over you, anyways.
That is your "stake" and the situation makes you desperate to keep it. Once we get to that place, any action becomes justifiable as long as it preserves your hold on it.
We decided to move from our state after the local school district started addressing us parents 'stakeholders' in all their emails. It started at the beginning of COVID, when everything trended toward "comply or ....".
I completely agree. The always on is a huge trap that I fell into myself early in the pandemic. I'm a manager of a team of software engineers. I liked the boundary that the office brought between my professional and personal life, however, it always seemed to invade during times of emergency. I'm on call 24/7 to be able to support those folk that pay the bills. I can live with that. What I struggled with was getting up early (was an early riser) and instead of doing personal things, I would hit my laptop at 7am to get some work done. And then still being "at work" until 6-7 pm. It made for a very long and exhausting day. Even a type A workaholic personality like myself couldn't keep it up for long. 10 months in I had a moment of clarity and starting setting boundaries. I won't sit down at the laptop before 9AM. I have an hour block daily on my calendar for a lunch time break even if I don't eat as time away from work. Finally unless something is on fire, I log off at 5-5:30 and just keep my phone nearby. It did wonders for my mental health.
Are there other stresses? Sure. Like the landscapers that always seem to be on my block with their infernal leaf blowers. The housekeeper (g-d bless her) who comes once a week to do the bits I don't like to do, has a habit of chasing me from room to room. Fortunately my kids are 18 and don't require constant attention to keep them from killing themselves or setting fire to the house. My elderly parents are another story and always traipsing through my home office. Fortunately they are now trained to think before interrupting me with "is this something you would have called me at the office for?" The cats I can't do anything about and my team has become accustomed to periodic gibberish text via Slack and just greet the cat who just said hello to them.
I do miss being in the office. The organic, social aspect of the interaction. I don't miss the hour commute into NYC, nor do I ever want to step foot in that destroyed city again until saner heads prevail and put it back together again like Giuliani did years ago (I'm old enough to remember the city before him). And now my company has closed the office in the city and converted us all to remote workers so I couldn't go anywhere even if I so chose. When my little corner of crazy blue lib bergen county becomes sane again, I might pick up my laptop and go sit at Starbucks for a change of scenery and cast.
We're gonna need a better number system because calling this 100% correct doesn't encompass a fraction of it. The ravaging hordes came with a router and a company laptop so we'd be distracted from the stink.
This is serfdom and all the young 'uns stuck their necks out eagerly for the iron collar and didn't realize no one ever hands you its key. You gotta cut off the hand holding it and free yourself.
Thank God you've got cats at home to help defuse the rage because the feel of that fur and the sound of those purrs are probably essential to keeping you sane. Ain't it like being eaten from the inside out, watching the destruction of a full generation and the one rising?
Also another downside of being at home all the time is access to 24/7 mainstream news. That will destroy your mental health. Boundaries are the key to all happiness.
But *having* access and actually accessing it are different things. I've worked from a home office since 1992, and I think I can say that I literally have never accessed the news, other than in August 1992 to watch the progress of my namesake hurricane.
I've had March Madness running in the background (before the NCAA became dead to me), and every April I configure 2 of my 3 monitors to stream The Masters; ditto The Open and the Ryder Cup, etc., all during work hours- so I do run the boob tube and equivalents, but for entertainment, not news. Otherwise, Alexa is playing music.
Resist the urge!
100% agree. I should amend my statement to read that boundaries are the key to happiness but a hard stop on mainstream news is a requirement!
Also, configuring multiple monitors to watch golf majors. That's key, too...
Can't you just turn it off??
Turned it off in 2020 but the issue may exist for many others who do not.
Sucks if you watch news. I listen to bebop. Much more conducive to working from home.
And the fridge.
It seems like everything in the past 2+ years has been a descent into madness.
When the state shut down in March 2020, our office told us we could work from home or office, & for the first few weeks, I was the only person in the office. I knew myself well enough to know that w/out the external structure of coming up to the office, sitting @ my desk & working on the computer for the requisite 8 hour day, I’d be a complete failure @ working from home. From home, I knew I’d find all sorts of excuses to do things I wanted or needed to do instead of work. Plus, my bosses knew they could contact me during those 8 hours & nothing more unless it was really urgent or important. “Home” would never have remained a refuge if I’d been working from there
My husband recently started a new job and their policy has always been WFH. We were delighted by this as I'm a homemaker (homeschool our son) and can keep everything running quietly and smoothly. A spare bedroom on the second floor has been turned into an office and has two windows that look out over trees so his office is nicer than many offices he's had over the years. I fix meals and he takes breaks when he's able to and on nice days takes the dogs out to the backyard for some frisbee catching. And not to forget: the people he comes across in the hallway are always people he wants to see. 😀
Our situation is ideal and certainly not one that everyone can replicate but we consider it a blessing.
Agree with your point of view. If your main needs (food, shelter, etc.) are taken care of, tranquillity is being able to manage your own time as you please, as much of the time as possible.
In an office environment your can rarely do this, particularly in jobs where you have to 'communicate' with other people a lot. But if you have a WFH arrangement where the communication element can be controlled, and if you don't have a psychological need for being with other people a lot of the time, then WFH is as good as it gets.
Of course, if you're a person who frequently craves 'getting out of the house', or whose intimate home relationships are troublesome, then going to the office may be the better option.
I’ve never had to deal with the work from home thing, because I’m an ICU nurse. Burn out has been a hot topic in the medical world too though. And I’ve wondered for months how much of that was basically self sabotage. I work in pediatrics, so we never experienced covid the way adult ICU’s did. But I assume that a normal respiratory season for adults is similar to kids, you stay busy for several months and get really smacked for a couple of those. Packed ER’s, every room full, diverting patients…business as usual. So if we had gone through covid minus the media/government involvement, how likely is it that people would have just chugged through without giving it much extra thought? I think it’s pretty likely
WFH also steals the personal/social part of work (and post-work gathering), which is key especially for the younger people in the work force, those without family lives at their homes. More recent college and law school grads who have not even seen their “coworkers” in person.
Or their classmates! Covid is stealing their college experience as well