As a consultant for the past five years, I’ve often supported clients from home. Not always - it depends on the client, and some do prefer me onsite - but much of my work can be done remotely. And I’ve enjoyed that aspect of my work. Nonetheless, for a number of reasons, the new COVID-19 induced WFH scenario has been much harder. And that got me thinking about why. Here are some possible theories:
- EVERYONE is working from home now. And that means there’s nobody to just call at the client’s office when you need something done quickly or have a question. And there’s no static concept of office hours (more of that below). So you have to send emails, texts, make calls and hope the person you need is working at the time, not trying to attend to suddenly not-so-simple personal tasks, like grocery shopping. If they’re not available you wait. Multiply that by the number of people in an organization and it’s not hard to see how everything takes much longer.
- Online conferencing for meetings is never ending and often difficult to get started. There’s always someone who can’t connect, can’t see the shared screen, etc.
- The day stretches out well into the evening, sometimes late, because of the above issues.
- Unless you live alone, you’re sharing your home office now with another adult, not to mention it may also be a home classroom for kids (I’m a DINK so this is not a problem for me). That means coordinating work schedules is now as complicated within the household as it is within the virtual office.
- In my old WFH days (ie, until 2 weeks ago), if I needed to get out of the house, just for a change of scenery, I could always take my laptop and phone to the public library or Starbucks. That’s not an option right now.
In some ways the current situation has made me think about how I work from home in the future post-pandemic world. And that may be a good thing in the long run. But in the short term it’s exhausting and stressful.
What do others think? Have you found ways to make things go more smoothly? Or maybe you need to just vent like I did. Feel free!
