Time is scarce. The blessing of WFH is that you start working with energy since you don't have to wake up 2 or 3 hours early (my case) and start investing your time to prepare yourself for work (both physically and mentally).
This is why the "9-5" is a false narrative: the moment you wake up, you're thinking and preparing yourself to go to work. This means that if I commute, the pressure of being on time + the time you take to prepare yourself to go to work becomes part of your work. Same goes when you finish working (detach yourself from work, commuting, etc...).
WFH gave us the opportunity to login 1, 2,...5 minutes before work, and logout instantly and be at home or wherever you are, giving us our time back.
You can't put a price on that. We're talking 1, 2... good hours of sleep, workouts, etc... And peace of mind when you get out of work (zero commuting stress, more time to be with your family, etc...).
The "WFH is killing X thing..." Is straight evil. Simple as that. More free time, productivity goes up because we're rested, quality of life improves, and somehow this is killing whatever? ... The heck with that...(excuse my french).
I sincerely hope SWEs, Devs, don't fall for "back to office" narrative and relenquish this newly found benefit in an economy that's moving towards less benefits.
We could go out of a limb and arguably say this is one of the best unplanned benefits for workers since working rights.
> you don't have to wake up 2 or 3 hours early (my case) and start investing your time to prepare yourself for work (both physically and mentally).
You forgot having to navigate traffic/subway and the people to get to work. And then settle down at your desk after the daily formalities. The former one causes a lot of cognitive tiredom.
Personally I really appreciate that work from home has been normalized, but I also have started to go to the office as often as possible.
I'm currently on a half empty commuter train and have just finished the worst task I can think of for the week (time sheets) and now I'll continue working on something else.
But if I was at home I'd probably have accomplished nothing yet, and even if I tried to do something, I'd expect to be repeatedly interrupted for the next 1.5h, by people that I love and can't turn away.
My brain is funny that way. Just the expectation that I might get interrupted prevents it from even starting on anything.
Edit: this is for me. I personally encouraged someone else to use the opportunity to work from somewhere else so they could be with their child last week.
I love that remote work is now both technologically possible and socially acceptable.
Agreed. When working from home I have to keep half a brain dedicated to what is happening around me at home. I typically get at most 90-120 seconds between interruptions of some kind from my family. You can't easily shut that out.
I guess having really small kids (babies and toddlers really) is the "issue" here, but I can't imagine it being much better until they are physically at school... but at that point you may as well just go to the office
I love that remote work has given me the ability to access more jobs in better paying areas but I really do miss the human interaction of being in the office. Not enough to take a local lower paying job.
Living in Australia, I had a phase of working for US clients that often required early morning meetings (7am), but then the rest of the day was up to me. I'd often do something a bit similar: Alarm for 6.50, slam down a bowl of cereal, and on the call at 7. Finish the call at 8, a bit of follow up stuff, then wander around in a daze until 11am, when I'd do a couple of hours work.
Then I'd take the afternoon off, and settle back down to work around 5, and do my most productive work from around 7 to 11pm, then bed.
I didn't love the early meetings, but I did like the bit where no one would bother me during my work day because they were all asleep.
The trickiest times were when I had to catch both a 7am US west coast meeting, and an 11pm US east coast meeting on the same day. Hard to go straight to sleep after an intense meeting.
Same experience as me, I'm living in Australia but my own clients (as well as my employers) are mostly in the US. Most of them are Mountain Time but there's clients on both east and west coast.
I've told both sets of clients there's a pretty good chance I'm going to be still awake at 2AM AEST so book meetings for their morning time and I'll likely be able to attend, even without much notice.
It probably seems a little odd to most but it's working well for me, I like 2AM AEST meetings. I don't like 7AM AEST meetings.
I've lived in Australia while working remotely for a UK company for the last 6 years, so I was legally permitted to go "[chuckle] that's not a night owl - THAT'S a night owl" while reading the friendly article, brandishing my 6pm starts at it.
Also an Australian here. Scheduling meetings to be respectful of both timezones is the bane of my existence... The # of times I've woken up at 6/7am or 10/11pm to cater for a director who's based in Austin or Seattle... I'm stressed even thinking back on it now.
I love the freedom it gives me during my day (like you explained very well) but looking back, I'm not sure if it's even worth it at the end of the day.
It's interesting that we consider people waking up later in the day to be the lazy ones, and not the people going to sleep early to be the lazy ones. I've still got heaps I can get done, and you're in bed? Lazy sod!
I think we should all get up after a healthy amount of sleep, and leave some wiggle room in there for nights where sleep didn't go to plan.
It doesn’t really matter what time you get up, the most important thing is that it’s consistent every day. What I have observed is that people who wake up later tend to be all over the place for schedule.
The issue isn't people waking up later, but getting out of the bed 1 minute before the meeting. If you have your first daily at 10:00, you don't have to wake up 9:59, but maybe 9:00 and get mentally ready to work.
The first job I ever had required me to be someplace at 4am to start loading meat into a -30 degree freezer, and I’d do that until I lost all feeling in my hands, take a fifteen minute break, go back into the freezer until I couldn’t feel my hands again, take another fifteen minute break, then go back into the freezer a third time, then drive as home as soon as I got back enough feeling to get my car key into the door.
Decades later I get to sleep until 9, stay warm, do tech stuff all day, DoorDash brings lunch and dinner, take a shower and go to bed. No more commute. No more trying to drive in downpours and snow storms. If my stomach feels bad or I stayed up too late watching movies I can shut my eyes for a while. If I’m in the middle of a tough problem I can power through without worrying about having a parking space, or missing the last train, or having to shell out $300 for an unexpected hotel stay.
A world of difference from where I started, remote work is the best thing that ever happened.
I miss this about working from home. Wake up, put laptop on my legs, I'm at the office. Now I gotta burn gas, wake up earlier, get dressed. Just to do the same exact thing only in a different box. Maddening.
I respect the point in the articles regarding remote work leveling the playing field for people who are more productive later in the day. I myself find my best work is done between 8-11 pm.
> There are thousands like me and we don’t care what you think
If the author truly didn't care what others thought they wouldn't publish this article using such a humble-brag tone in Fortune IMHO. The same article could have been published without the egocentric narrative in the beginning and end and had the same effect.
I didn't find the introduction to be at all egocentric. You're reading a turn of phrase literally. "I don't care what you think" means "I will live this way regardless of your disapproval." Given that its a common phrase, I'm pretty sure you already knew that, so I don't know what the purpose of your comment is.
Working from your bed or your couch is not ideal for your back. If you exclusively do remote work, make sure you get an ergonomic chair and table and start a workout routine to strengthen your back muscle.
I know several people who developed severe back pain during Covid lockdown. Disc prolapse is a real risk for us office workers and is even worse if you stay at home all day having removed all physical routine from your life. I like to commute with my bicycle to the office every day (16km round trip) which gives me physical exercise w/o me forcing myself to go to the gym.
I stay up late about as often as I wake up early. I think this is far more common than being an "early bird" or a "night owl".
Working from home has taken away most of the pressure of an 8 hour schedule. What's actually important is just getting things done by a due date and being available for meetings. I very strongly prefer it this way.
Results and hours are very loosely correlated. There are times where my mind is so fresh I can do more than a day of work in just a few hours. There are other times where I am so mentally foggy I must work 10 hours straight only to still be behind. In both cases I am just as engaged with my work. Neither should be the expectation. It all evens out by the deadline, as it should.
I have mixed feelings on remote work as a whole. I have worked remotely for nearly a decade, but before that, I worked at a sort of artisanal bakery/ice cream shop for 4 years.
It was small enough that one person could prepare the ingredients and run the place on their own. We opened at 10:00, which meant that I needed to arrive around 6:00 or 6:30 to get the dough prepared, chop the fruit, make toppings, etc. The messiness of the work prevented you from using your phone too much, and as it was super early, no one wanted to text with you either. Even the early morning walk there (I lived nearby) was pretty peaceful.
So, from about 6:30 to 10:00 everyday, I was disconnected from society and the Internet and working with my hands. While remote work has paid 10x the salary and provided infinitely more flexibility, I still miss that experience of waking up early and working physically on real objects instead of popping open my laptop at the last minute. In the future, I hope that we rethink computer work and make it less cut off from our nature as physical beings.
What's stopping you from getting up at 0530 now and doing some hobby? This is exactly what I do - I absolutely love that first hour, it's like you're the only person on earth. I'm a natural early bird so your mileage may vary.
I work remotely, core time starts 11:00 but I wake up at 5:30 to study, do sports, and when I start to work around 9:30-10:00, I'm really productive. For sure I have to go early to bed, to get at least 7 hours sleep, but thats a nice trade-off.
It seems this article pushes for more asynchronous communication and it seems to be the healthiest way.
Something todoist's CEO has been pushing for a long time (no affiliation other than I like his work) - https://twitter.com/amix3k
It does have a potential to be a night-mare for the middle managers tho. But I'm betting on human ingenuity to solve that as well.
P.S. If you’re a remote-working parent check out my weekly newsletter for remote-working parents https://thursdaydigest.com/
I know it’s a weird place to find a newsletter exactly for you. The transition is off, but I'm working on putting myself out there more ruthlessly. I guess it’s true what Seinfeld said, like when we can make our own people we just care less lol
> Nope! I want every last millisecond of sleep I can get
Here is a radical thought: Value the first minutes of your night sleep just as much as the last ones and just go to bed a little earlier.
All this "but it's in my genes" may not be entirely false but its significance is dramatically overemphasized and mostly serves as a covenient excuse for people to not get their act together.
I value my sleep time, which is why I'm not going to bed earlier than when I actually feel like it, as it usually results in hours spent on useless disorganized thinking about everything and not sleeping much.
> Value the first minutes of your night sleep just as much as the last ones and just go to bed a little earlier.
What a weird suggestion. That person clearly prefers nighttime to morning time. Why would they trade being awake in the night for being awake at morning?
I have determined that my unproductivity is just "warm up" time.
If something is due tuesday I'm guaranteed to spend most of monday angry about all the meetings "in my way" knowing damn well even if I didn't have the meetings I'd just be ruminating about the remaining work instead of actually doing it.
As a result, monday night is when everything gets done. This warm up dramatically increases the quality of the work delivered.
I lost 8kg during the lock down... because every morning i had time to go for a bike ride before "start time".
The lack of commute was amazing for my health lifestyle.
Now that I'm back in the office.. I'm still down 4kg but its going back on.
I envy that sort of a remote late-to-rise ethos (or circumstance). I've a couple of kids and the youngest dictates the sleep/wake cycle of the rest of us - usually he's up around 5:15am and full of restless energy. On the plus side, any calls I have with the West Coast or Asia usually happen with the kids are asleep, so the house is nice and quiet.
However, without remote work I'm not sure I could function, a commute and physically being in an office from 9 to 5 would mean all the family schedules would be seriously re-worked. Plus, I'd see the kids only at the weekends since they'd be in bed by the time I got home.
I hate that. In the company where I work, the meetings are 11 AM, and you can clearly see that people wake up 10:59 and have no clue where they are, what they did yesterday and what they have to do today. It is such a waste of energy and time to have to go through all "hmm, yesterday.. I.. hmm"
Tell me about it. But not just that I'm a night owl, I mean to lead a normal adult life you pretty much need some sort of rhythm unless your partner is also a night owl.
But I've already worked remotely for 6 years and I find that with our nordic winter darkness I can be outdoors and enjoy the sun during the day and put in my hours when the sun sets. This I feel should be the norm up here in the nordic lats, when the sun starts setting at 3pm.
Be outdoors during the day, work later during the afternoon.
It's 10 minutes minimum for me, and it's still painful. 20-30 minutes works best. How can one even open their eyes clearly after just a few minutes, let alone think?
I’ve been working from home for a long time (originally since 2008 while it was still a college side job that I started in 2006), when I was younger, I would only start working at 10 or even 12 (10 is roughly when my boss starts working). This was also the time when I used an alarm that required solving math questions to turn it off.
Now? I wake up between 4 and 5 (30-60 seconds after I wake up I’m fully dressed) and spend the time until 6 to read the news, play games etc. Then I start working at 6 and stop working around 14:00 when I start preparing dinner.
I have some time for myself in the very early morning, later the afternoon and evening are work-free.
How did you get better at waking up? I’m still in the category of requiring many alarms that take hours to wake me. Have done a lot of stuff like move to a room where sun shines on me in the morning, additional automated lights, an alarm playing talk radio. Considering buying a machine for thousands of dollars that will make my bed uncomfortably cold and vibrate my chest.
There are several chronotypes, not everyone is wired to wake up early in the morning but society is organized that way and hurts those who don't conform. Remoting allows each to better adjust, even if it's just a couple of hours.
I remember when I was younger I would often work until 7am because due to startups nature the work includes a lot of communication with founders, and I myself used to live in Russia, while the startups were in San Francisco / Los Angeles.
Today, If I stay until 6am the next day I am almost guaranteed to have a headache and be worthless, but working in the evenings is still my prime time. My colleagues often tell me "dude, it's 11pm where you are at, go to sleep", but at this point that's my 2nd nature.
Still, many people in the same company manage to work the "normal" 8am-6pm days, so I guess to each their own.
[+] [-] elforce002|3 years ago|reply
This is why the "9-5" is a false narrative: the moment you wake up, you're thinking and preparing yourself to go to work. This means that if I commute, the pressure of being on time + the time you take to prepare yourself to go to work becomes part of your work. Same goes when you finish working (detach yourself from work, commuting, etc...).
WFH gave us the opportunity to login 1, 2,...5 minutes before work, and logout instantly and be at home or wherever you are, giving us our time back.
You can't put a price on that. We're talking 1, 2... good hours of sleep, workouts, etc... And peace of mind when you get out of work (zero commuting stress, more time to be with your family, etc...).
The "WFH is killing X thing..." Is straight evil. Simple as that. More free time, productivity goes up because we're rested, quality of life improves, and somehow this is killing whatever? ... The heck with that...(excuse my french).
I sincerely hope SWEs, Devs, don't fall for "back to office" narrative and relenquish this newly found benefit in an economy that's moving towards less benefits.
We could go out of a limb and arguably say this is one of the best unplanned benefits for workers since working rights.
[+] [-] unity1001|3 years ago|reply
You forgot having to navigate traffic/subway and the people to get to work. And then settle down at your desk after the daily formalities. The former one causes a lot of cognitive tiredom.
[+] [-] reitanqild|3 years ago|reply
I'm currently on a half empty commuter train and have just finished the worst task I can think of for the week (time sheets) and now I'll continue working on something else.
But if I was at home I'd probably have accomplished nothing yet, and even if I tried to do something, I'd expect to be repeatedly interrupted for the next 1.5h, by people that I love and can't turn away.
My brain is funny that way. Just the expectation that I might get interrupted prevents it from even starting on anything.
Edit: this is for me. I personally encouraged someone else to use the opportunity to work from somewhere else so they could be with their child last week.
I love that remote work is now both technologically possible and socially acceptable.
[+] [-] wccrawford|3 years ago|reply
I feel this so much. I realized this about myself a few years ago, and even with that knowledge it's been really hard to fight.
[+] [-] mattlondon|3 years ago|reply
I guess having really small kids (babies and toddlers really) is the "issue" here, but I can't imagine it being much better until they are physically at school... but at that point you may as well just go to the office
[+] [-] Gigachad|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] gedy|3 years ago|reply
That's what I experience going to office! WFH is only place I can focus.
[+] [-] stevage|3 years ago|reply
Then I'd take the afternoon off, and settle back down to work around 5, and do my most productive work from around 7 to 11pm, then bed.
I didn't love the early meetings, but I did like the bit where no one would bother me during my work day because they were all asleep.
The trickiest times were when I had to catch both a 7am US west coast meeting, and an 11pm US east coast meeting on the same day. Hard to go straight to sleep after an intense meeting.
[+] [-] LilBytes|3 years ago|reply
I've told both sets of clients there's a pretty good chance I'm going to be still awake at 2AM AEST so book meetings for their morning time and I'll likely be able to attend, even without much notice.
It probably seems a little odd to most but it's working well for me, I like 2AM AEST meetings. I don't like 7AM AEST meetings.
[+] [-] insin|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] deviation|3 years ago|reply
I love the freedom it gives me during my day (like you explained very well) but looking back, I'm not sure if it's even worth it at the end of the day.
[+] [-] bamboozled|3 years ago|reply
It's absolutely insane how hard 6am meetings are for me compared to 7am or 8am starts as when I'm back in Sydney time.
When I have to get up early, I'm just less productive, end of story.
[+] [-] ehnto|3 years ago|reply
I think we should all get up after a healthy amount of sleep, and leave some wiggle room in there for nights where sleep didn't go to plan.
[+] [-] Gigachad|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ycombinete|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pelasaco|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] zxcvbn4038|3 years ago|reply
Decades later I get to sleep until 9, stay warm, do tech stuff all day, DoorDash brings lunch and dinner, take a shower and go to bed. No more commute. No more trying to drive in downpours and snow storms. If my stomach feels bad or I stayed up too late watching movies I can shut my eyes for a while. If I’m in the middle of a tough problem I can power through without worrying about having a parking space, or missing the last train, or having to shell out $300 for an unexpected hotel stay.
A world of difference from where I started, remote work is the best thing that ever happened.
[+] [-] post_break|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] smithcoin|3 years ago|reply
> There are thousands like me and we don’t care what you think
If the author truly didn't care what others thought they wouldn't publish this article using such a humble-brag tone in Fortune IMHO. The same article could have been published without the egocentric narrative in the beginning and end and had the same effect.
[+] [-] maxbond|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] iinnPP|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] G3rn0ti|3 years ago|reply
I know several people who developed severe back pain during Covid lockdown. Disc prolapse is a real risk for us office workers and is even worse if you stay at home all day having removed all physical routine from your life. I like to commute with my bicycle to the office every day (16km round trip) which gives me physical exercise w/o me forcing myself to go to the gym.
[+] [-] sublinear|3 years ago|reply
Working from home has taken away most of the pressure of an 8 hour schedule. What's actually important is just getting things done by a due date and being available for meetings. I very strongly prefer it this way.
Results and hours are very loosely correlated. There are times where my mind is so fresh I can do more than a day of work in just a few hours. There are other times where I am so mentally foggy I must work 10 hours straight only to still be behind. In both cases I am just as engaged with my work. Neither should be the expectation. It all evens out by the deadline, as it should.
[+] [-] keiferski|3 years ago|reply
It was small enough that one person could prepare the ingredients and run the place on their own. We opened at 10:00, which meant that I needed to arrive around 6:00 or 6:30 to get the dough prepared, chop the fruit, make toppings, etc. The messiness of the work prevented you from using your phone too much, and as it was super early, no one wanted to text with you either. Even the early morning walk there (I lived nearby) was pretty peaceful.
So, from about 6:30 to 10:00 everyday, I was disconnected from society and the Internet and working with my hands. While remote work has paid 10x the salary and provided infinitely more flexibility, I still miss that experience of waking up early and working physically on real objects instead of popping open my laptop at the last minute. In the future, I hope that we rethink computer work and make it less cut off from our nature as physical beings.
[+] [-] mutatio|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pelasaco|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mustafabisic1|3 years ago|reply
Something todoist's CEO has been pushing for a long time (no affiliation other than I like his work) - https://twitter.com/amix3k
It does have a potential to be a night-mare for the middle managers tho. But I'm betting on human ingenuity to solve that as well.
P.S. If you’re a remote-working parent check out my weekly newsletter for remote-working parents https://thursdaydigest.com/
I know it’s a weird place to find a newsletter exactly for you. The transition is off, but I'm working on putting myself out there more ruthlessly. I guess it’s true what Seinfeld said, like when we can make our own people we just care less lol
[+] [-] sooyoo|3 years ago|reply
Here is a radical thought: Value the first minutes of your night sleep just as much as the last ones and just go to bed a little earlier.
All this "but it's in my genes" may not be entirely false but its significance is dramatically overemphasized and mostly serves as a covenient excuse for people to not get their act together.
[+] [-] stemlord|3 years ago|reply
Jury's still out on that for the rest of us but glad you have the comfort of such certainty on the matter
[+] [-] seba_dos1|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] HWR_14|3 years ago|reply
What a weird suggestion. That person clearly prefers nighttime to morning time. Why would they trade being awake in the night for being awake at morning?
[+] [-] sublinear|3 years ago|reply
If something is due tuesday I'm guaranteed to spend most of monday angry about all the meetings "in my way" knowing damn well even if I didn't have the meetings I'd just be ruminating about the remaining work instead of actually doing it.
As a result, monday night is when everything gets done. This warm up dramatically increases the quality of the work delivered.
[+] [-] senectus1|3 years ago|reply
Now that I'm back in the office.. I'm still down 4kg but its going back on.
[+] [-] lgleason|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Simon_O_Rourke|3 years ago|reply
However, without remote work I'm not sure I could function, a commute and physically being in an office from 9 to 5 would mean all the family schedules would be seriously re-worked. Plus, I'd see the kids only at the weekends since they'd be in bed by the time I got home.
[+] [-] pelasaco|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] INTPenis|3 years ago|reply
But I've already worked remotely for 6 years and I find that with our nordic winter darkness I can be outdoors and enjoy the sun during the day and put in my hours when the sun sets. This I feel should be the norm up here in the nordic lats, when the sun starts setting at 3pm.
Be outdoors during the day, work later during the afternoon.
[+] [-] anm89|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] seba_dos1|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Semaphor|3 years ago|reply
Now? I wake up between 4 and 5 (30-60 seconds after I wake up I’m fully dressed) and spend the time until 6 to read the news, play games etc. Then I start working at 6 and stop working around 14:00 when I start preparing dinner.
I have some time for myself in the very early morning, later the afternoon and evening are work-free.
[+] [-] fshbbdssbbgdd|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pimpampum|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] BlargMcLarg|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] therusskiy|3 years ago|reply
Today, If I stay until 6am the next day I am almost guaranteed to have a headache and be worthless, but working in the evenings is still my prime time. My colleagues often tell me "dude, it's 11pm where you are at, go to sleep", but at this point that's my 2nd nature.
Still, many people in the same company manage to work the "normal" 8am-6pm days, so I guess to each their own.