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Comment by katbyte | Hacker News Reader

You know what WFH is way WAY more for efficient and good for? A employees health, wellbeing and happiness! which imho is more important than profits or the company.

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That's not a universal opinion. All of the people on my team would prefer to be in the office 2 or 3 days a week. Some people find it's positive for their mental health to see and interact with other people, in person, regularly.

It is possible they are not telling you the truth.

That's A) super arrogant, B) completely ignoring the fact that we're social animals and introverts are a minority in the overall population.

"All of the people on my team would prefer to be in the office 2 or 3 days a week" - I am just pointing out that if people feel like they are expected to be in the office at all, they are unlikely to say anything less than "2 or 3 days a week" regardless of how they feel.

With non-pandemic WFH you can see and interact with other people, in person, regularly, outside of work. Hobbies, cafés, bars, etc.

What if you also want to interact with colleagues?

One can arrange to interact with them outside of work hours.

If anything, it would be more honest then to, say, arrange to work solid 3 hours in the morning, then have 2 hours off (where you can socialize with whoever you want), and then work solid 3 hours in the afternoon.

For all the talk about the difficulty of separating 'work' and 'normal' life when WFH, some people seem perfectly happy to mix 'work' and 'socializing' in the office.

I get that as is, some people miss being in the office. It just seems like the pandemic presents a unique opportunity for moving to a better structure, whatever it may be, than simply go back to the old one. So I think it is interesting to speculate what that new structure could be for knowledge workers.

> If anything, it would be more honest then to, say, arrange to work solid 3 hours in the morning, then have 2 hours off (where you can socialize with whoever you want), and then work solid 3 hours in the afternoon.

I don't decide these things, just operate within the given framework. Which doesn't support your setup in general.

Before the pandemic WFH means I saw my friends and family far far more often - work with them during the day, more time to hang out, travel with them. And even co workers we’d arrange to work at a cafe or park. I socialized far more then at any office

I was the biggest advocate for WFH in the last year but recently I feel pretty down. Life feels so repetitive. Part of it is possibly lockdown, but a bigger part I think is that I have way more free time to think about things. All the shitty things about open office and commuting seemed to serve as a distraction that kept me more occupied. It's weird. I'm not saying WFH is bad, but there are definitely some effects that I hadn't anticipated.

then go drown your tears in triple distilled vodka you big baby.

We've banned this account for breaking the site guidelines. Not cool.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Me to, exactly this and going into the office a few days a week has really helped me in the last few weeks.

For me it's slacking of at the office without feeling guilty. Taking 10 minute coffee breaks, walking 5 minutes to the next toilet. At home I have far less interruptions and feel the need to be constantly available in Teams.

That's just your own private imaginary wall that you built up in your mind. Nobody else had a hand in putting it there.

Just tear it down and resist the urge to be always available. It gets much easier over time, I promise.

Yep, it's groundhog day. Wake up, make coffee, sit down at the computer. Everything having anything to do with work happens on that screen. Every day is the same.

But what's different? Before, it was:

Wake up, make coffee, drive an hour to work, sit down at the computer. Everything having anything to do with work happens on that screen. Every day is the same.

I hate to be cliche, but social encounters and the mythical "hallway conversations" are what stop work from being groundhog day for me. Very little productivity happens on the computer, that's just the time to write up whatever solution I've spent my day working on away from said desk.

I used to eat with some colleagues every week despite them being in a different team. Now, I don't bother even dropping a private message. It sounds silly, written out, but it's also means of death of many of my adult friendships and acquantances. And if I had joined the company in this climate, I wouldn't know them at all.

So in other words, you would rather take the blue pill?

Sounds like removing the distractions gave you time to think and allowed you to see things more clearly. That sounds great! Now you can face the things that came up head on rather than distract yourself from them. Why would you want to 'sleepwalk' through life instead via constant distractions? Maybe there is more to life, and getting rid of distractions is the first step to realizing it.

WFH has been good for neither my health, well-being, nor productivity.

Please speak for yourself. This is not true for everyone.

I thought so myself. But after having spent > 1 year at home I don’t think it’s sustainable. Separating work and home becomes increasingly difficult.

I agree. I'm working about 5 productive hours a week now. Nobody is supervising me, nobody is tasking me with any work. But I'm still getting paid so not making waves.

But that's entirely your choice. If you like it, fine.

While WFH you could also seek out things to work on and go at it.

Both are true working from the office as well.

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