instead of sun and beach, packages from the day before yesterday's delivery and loneliness

Hello everyone! I've been working remotely for about 15 years now. It seems that during this time I've seen all its sides – both the bright and the dark. Today I'll try to thicken the colors a little and tell you what remote work can turn into in the long run in the wrong hands. By the way, for me it almost slipped into this, but I was lucky enough to catch myself in time…

Consider this a set of negative myths about remote work. They creep up unnoticed, after a year or two, when you already think that you have settled into a new routine and everything is fine with you. And I don’t want to debunk these myths here. All of them are quite real if you let the situation get out of your hands and do not monitor what is happening (i.e. do not make an effort to prevent them from coming true). Ultimately, they all lead to a drop in productivity and subsequent burnout, when you have to share your good IT income with a psychologist.

Nobody likes to admit “I didn’t keep track”, so the format is blamed for the drop in productivity and that very burnout. But if you think about it, the issue is more about internal discipline and self-reflection – at an early stage you need to notice that something is wrong and adjust your lifestyle a little. But I’m getting ahead of myself.

Let's start with the myths.

A set of classic myths from opponents of remote work

The general background around remote work changed a lot after the end of the Covid isolation. When everyone was just sent home, there were a lot of positive reviews from companies – “we were able to transfer processes to remote work and everything is fine, productivity even increased.” Six months later, enthusiasm gave way to skepticism, and after some time, to negativity – they say that employee productivity has dropped, there is not enough communication, etc. And who is to blame? Of course, the format. Let's get everyone back to the office. And here's why…

Myth 1. Instead of teamwork, you are alone and stewing in your own juices

Even if you are working on a task with colleagues, you won't be able to quickly talk in the elevator about how the last solution you applied wasn't great. You give each other feedback in small portions and after you've cleaned up all the unnecessary stuff (you can't be toxic in work chats, and no one will read long messages). As a result, there is no sense of involvement in the task. And the further you go, the more the situation gets worse.

In addition, there is general anxiety about the situation in the company. You simply do not feel the atmosphere of the team. Some people have already changed there – you have never seen them in person, you do not understand the manner of communication. The fact that you were told “ok” for the last task – is it good or bad? Will they give you a bonus or fire you?

Myth 2. You sit on a stool at the kitchen table from morning to evening – everything goes numb, your back hurts, your eyesight deteriorates

After about a year or two, the first problems surface from the fact that most of the working day has to be spent on an uncomfortable chair. You start looking at how to screw your laptop to a treadmill, or where to find an anti-hemorrhoid pillow cheaper. Your neck no longer gets a rest at night. The motivation to work (to return to this uncomfortable workplace) falls.

You experiment with working lying down, standing, upside down… It's no use.

Myth 3. Work spreads beyond the time allotted for it. You are sawing tasks all the time that you are not sleeping

The work schedule goes away unnoticed. At first, you work from 9 to 18. Then one evening you decide to stay late (there's only half an hour left in this task… sit for half an hour) – there's no need to rush anywhere, you're already at home. And a week later, the situation repeats itself. And so evening work becomes the norm.

The longer you sit in the evening, the harder it is to concentrate in the morning. When you sit down at your desk with your first cup of coffee, it seems like you have the whole day ahead of you. You go check social networks, then read the news… about half a day passes like that. Only then do you move on to tasks, and of course, you stay late again in the evening to compensate for this morning “weakness”.

As a result, you sit at the computer for 12-14 hours, but you don’t do any more work. You just get tired. At some point, you realize that when you’re tired, you’ll do it poorly and you agree with yourself that it’s better to finish this task on Saturday… And so work takes over your whole life.

Myth 4. You don't see the light of day. If you don't have to go to the office and food is delivered to your home, there's no need to go out every day.

At first, the opportunity not to leave the house on a certain day is perceived as an unprecedented freedom, especially if the weather is bad. Working from home, you don’t have to strain yourself and fight the discomfort of a snowstorm or rain in your face on the way to the office. You order food, work tasks come to you. It would seem, what else do you need?

And now you haven't left the house for weeks – what haven't I seen in my neighborhood?

The longer you sit like this, the more you have to strain yourself to crawl out of your den. And why? Maybe to take out the trash… But the solemn path to the garbage dump is not so attractive that you make this promenade every day.

This picture is in stark contrast to how remote work was previously advertised – “you can work from anywhere in the world, even from a sunny beach.” Yeah, yeah.

Myth 5. If you don’t need to go anywhere, you don’t have to wash or worry about your appearance.

At first, after switching from office to remote work, there is still a supply of “decent” clothes. But over time, they wear out and become home clothes. There is no point in buying new ones – after all, there is no need to portray a conditional dress code anymore.

Five years later, you have a dozen stretched out T-shirts and a pair of sweatpants in your closet. The nearest bar has gotten used to it, but they probably won't let you into any decent place.

Myth 6. A vicious circle of children, dogs, wives, husbands and parents who don’t let you concentrate on the task at hand

It's hard to set boundaries in families, especially if only one person works remotely, and the rest don't even know what it's like. It's hard with children and older people of “Soviet factory training.” And sometimes it's even harder to explain something to the latter than to the former. If you're not at work, it means you're idle. Tension builds up week after week and affects relationships.

Over the years of remote work, I have had to deal with different sides of this conflict. And it would seem that you have already seen all this, you already know how to resolve it. But no, when life circumstances change, you get into it again and again.

Myth 7. Without office small talk, the ease of communication is lost

We have no idea how much we actually communicate with strangers on the way to work. and back Let me through to the exit, please. And weigh me some of that sausage. Which floor should I press? Sorry, you dropped the… If you stop pumping this “social muscle” even for a short while, your tongue stiffens. It’s increasingly difficult to start a conversation with a stranger, as well as to express your thoughts in general.

The sidelong glances of the old ladies on the bench by the entrance are becoming stricter. They are the experts in small talk! But you can no longer give them a normal answer. You sit at home all day, which means you are a slacker and a libertine. And there is no way to rehabilitate yourself with explanations…

Most often, these myths do not come one at a time. If the situation is already neglected, it begins to press from all sides. As a result – hello, burnout. And, as I said above, the format is of course to blame – it is difficult to admit that you did not find the right words in communication with your family, you have become lazy and in general you cannot force yourself to do the right things!

And how it should really be

Remote work does not grow on its own and is not set up instinctively. Working from home is not just replacing the trolleybus ride to the office with a walk from the bed to the desk. It is a complete change in the concept of life, and some of its aspects need to be set up anew so as not to lose socialization, health, goals and guidelines. And there are quite a few of these aspects.

First of all, you need to take care of a normal workplace and atmosphere. We have written a lot about the workplace (https://habr.com/ru/companies/maxilect/articles/782212/). It should not be a stool near the kitchen table, otherwise the body will not be able to exist like that without damage to itself over a long distance.

By atmosphere I mean not only the right temperature and fresh air in the room, but also the understanding of the family members what working hours are. That even though you are physically present at home, you should be doing work tasks, and not throwing out trash or sitting with children. If they don’t understand, the only option is to go to a coworking space or rent your own office.

You need to learn to stick to a schedule. When working remotely, you can’t create boundaries between work and personal life just by leaving the office. You need to maintain them yourself. By the way, this doesn’t mean that the schedule has to be from 9 to 18. Working remotely allows you to choose a convenient one. But “convenient” is not the same as “complete anarchy.”

Within the work process, relationships and communications need to be built.

No matter what they tell you about how you can schedule 500 video meetings with colleagues per day while working remotely and not feel lonely, video calls, even with a great camera, still don’t give the same feeling. You get tired, yes, but you don’t feel saturated with communication with people of your age and interests. Therefore, you need to look for someone to “scratch” your social network with both at work and outside of it.

To compensate for the lack of non-verbal communication with colleagues, you need to learn to communicate on non-work topics. Overcome yourself and ask after discussing the main issues, such as family-children-vacation. It is difficult for introverts to make such contact, but believe me, it pays off. People whom you have never seen in your life acquire some kind of image in your head. It is easier to interact with them. It is even better to meet with the team in person – this way, remote anonymity evaporates much faster.

And outside of work, it's worth finding a hobby. It's better to have one that involves socializing around you, like non-professional sports. It's better for your body, and the problem of communication disappears.

An important point is that all these aspects should be supported by the employer company. And some should even be forced on its part. Suddenly having an epiphany, it will not be possible to do everything well for yourself personally if there is no “air support”. Interaction within the team should be built by its leaders. It is up to them to find a balance between the tendency to isolation of remote workers and the necessary minimum of their communication with each other. Corporate meetings can happen spontaneously if someone went to visit someone. But most likely, they need an external kick – an introduction of employees initiated by the company.

It turns out that it is not the cloud infrastructure that makes a company “adapted to remote work”, but the mass of internal processes and the people who are their drivers.

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