This article (like most discussion of these work styles) conflates remote work and work-from-home. I feel it would _greatly_ help clarify discussion to keep in mind that these aren’t the same thing: the latter (WFH) is _mostly_ a subset of the former (work from a location of your choice), and of the two, “remote” is _much more enabling._
WFH is okay. It beats an office. But it blurs the lines between work and not-work life further than they already are unless you’re highly skilled in setting boundaries, and if you have kids or other dependents it’s a fresh challenge to stay focused every day.
Working remotely, in non-pandemic times, opens up real possibilities. The young and the restless can try the nomadic worker thing; that looks like it’s be fun for a while. Coworking (in the small community sense, not WeWork) gets you the separation of work and home on your own terms and can be a fabulous balance for the extroverts (and also introverts) among us. And WFH gets rolled in there as well.
At present moment, as the world suddenly is all doing this at once, while confined at home—of course these concepts will be conflated. But let’s be deliberate to ensure we aren’t setting ourselves up for a world where managers get suspicious of you for leaving the house during work hours. That sounds worse than the situation we started with.
WFH is okay. It beats an office. But it blurs the lines between work and not-work life further than they already are unless you’re highly skilled in setting boundaries, and if you have kids or other dependents it’s a fresh challenge to stay focused every day.
Working remotely, in non-pandemic times, opens up real possibilities. The young and the restless can try the nomadic worker thing; that looks like it’s be fun for a while. Coworking (in the small community sense, not WeWork) gets you the separation of work and home on your own terms and can be a fabulous balance for the extroverts (and also introverts) among us. And WFH gets rolled in there as well.
At present moment, as the world suddenly is all doing this at once, while confined at home—of course these concepts will be conflated. But let’s be deliberate to ensure we aren’t setting ourselves up for a world where managers get suspicious of you for leaving the house during work hours. That sounds worse than the situation we started with.