Find a life outside of work.
It's not condescending.
Many people have spent years neglecting their home life and personal life in favor of work life.
People have been actively encouraged by employers to do this. But at the end of the day for some people pandemic was a blessing and others it was a curse and for most this distinction rests on how much energy people spend prior to the pandemic maintaining their non-office life.
Office life will never return to the way it was pre-pandemic. Absolutely for some people this situation sucks, but it isn't going to resolve itself. I've seen countless people in HN comments like this effectively waiting for things to go back to the way there were: they won't.
Things will change, and they will improve but if you're waiting for a return to feel good again, you will never feel good again. If you want to stop feeling bad, you need to actively start figuring out new possible ways to feel better.
Working on building relationships with friends, neighbors, members of your local community is a good place to start.
I think this is absolutely right.
It will vary by company of course. But more people will be fully remote and, based on a bunch of different studies I've seen, in-office will probably be 3 days a week or so for most people. Now I would expect co-located teams to coordinate some but I doubt that the 9-5 everyone in the office world will be the norm at most companies for the foreseeable future.
Empathy is the opposite of condescension; if you want to show someone that you're on their level, and genuinely want to convince them, you should try to state their premise in your own words, and then show the advantages of your outlook.
> If you want to stop feeling bad, you need to actively start figuring out new possible ways to feel better. Working on building relationships with friends, neighbors, members of your local community is a good place to start.
I have friends in several different social circles.
Some of us still desire a concrete separation between personal and work lives.
Not only that, but some of us find there are significant benefits and upside to being able to socialize with our teammates and even management because those work relationships are great resources later. Someone is much more likely to want to help you get unblocked if they've formed a connection with you before. Otherwise you're just "that other person working on that other project and since it doesn't block me from my work then why should I spend any time, despite having the prior experience to assist you"?
And that's just one example.
I have work computer and a fun computer. Once the workday ends, the work computer gets shut and I don't open it again until 9am the next workday. Separation complete.
I did WFH for years prior to pandemic and found it much easier to work less hours. Spent many long lunches with friends, took time out of the day for personal projects, made sure to schedule remote meetings with old friends and former coworkers during the middle of the work day.
It's possible it might be that your current office has a terrible culture (most companies failed the transition to WFH). Realistically you shouldn't have to be working more than 30hrs a week, and not being in an office means you don't have to do any more "performance" work. It might be as easy as finding a new employer that has a more realistic sense of work life balance.