This Focused Performance Weblog is a "business management blog" containing links and commentary related primarily to organizational effectiveness with a "Theory of Constraints" perspective. TOC is noted for its applications in Project Management and Multi-Project Management (Critical Chain) and Operations Management (Drum-Buffer-Rope), as well as in Marketing, Strategic Planning and Change Management (TOC Thinking Processes). If you are on an archive page, current postings are found here.
Friday, May 07, 2004
What I (Didn't Fully Realize I) Miss(ed) About Office Life -- Over at Worthwhile, David Weinbeger (who I often cited here and here from his JOHO blog, has written a piece about working from home versus in an office. There were some points he makes that I suspected as I went into this change. And now that I'm into the transition back after a bit over seven years, he hits the mark for me in most of his piece...
I've been working at home for almost exactly ten years now, and I love it. But every now and then I spend time at a client's office and get wistful...
For me, there was always a little melancholy at the end of an engagement, as I would typically be leaving behind a bunch of new friends. Even when I worked with people for only a few weeks, teaching the TOC Thinking Processes, the intensity of getting into their big problems with them always brought a sense of camaraderie that faded not long after.
I miss bumping into people I like. Getting an email from someone you've never met in person just isn't the same, no matter how delightful the message.
While I've cultivated a great group of cyberspace-based friends who I've never met in meatspace, there's something to be said for the addition of facial and body language added to the thoughts and ideas of those you're working with. Just yesterday, I found myself sharing in the joy of a new co-worker's new car -- a convertible that she picked up on a perfect spring convertible day in NJ. The fun in her face as she was showing off how she was going to have to tuck her hair in her cap is the kind of thing that is missed online.
I miss eating lunch with people.
Now I miss eating lunch with my wife and my father-in-law, but eating lunch with co-workers will do.
In fact, I miss eating lunch. At home, I grab something out of the kitchen and get back to work while the last bite is mid-esophagus. In the office, each lunch time was another little adventure: Who to eat with? Where to eat? How major a lunch?
Actually, now I find that I'm eating more lunch. And after only a month, back up to near my all-time high weight again. However, I'm trying to use the new environment to develop new habits. When I was home, if I ate lunch alone, I'd usually do it in front of the DVR, catching up on The Daily Show and Tough Crowd from the night before. Now that I'm working in a quaint old town in the Morris County hills (Boonton, for you NJ locals), I've been able to get out for a 20-minute walk at lunch. There's one hill behind the office that, once I'm atop it, my shins burn.
I miss the full-bodied project experience. Now the projects I work on feel abstract: There's a piece of work that gets done via collaborative-but-separate efforts. In an office, a project has a body, not just a brain.
I miss watching the dynamic social relationships expressed in nuance because they have to be accomplished outside of the official structure. Org charts simply don't - and couldn't and shouldn't and don't want to - capture the friendships, rivalries and loves that are inevitable when people occupy the same space. But because office relationships - and I don't just mean romantic ones - have repercussions, they are often tentative and accomplished through subtle symbols - a cocking of the head as someone listens attentively, a smile as budget numbers are passed from hand to hand...
Yup. A rich experience I forgot as I got deeper and deeper into theory and into transitory engagements in which I didn't really need to worry about protecting long-term relationships with people I didn't warm up to. Or having to work through the usual barriers of client/consultant relationships.
I miss the giddy joy of taking the second-to-last cup of coffee.
That one doesn't fit me. I don't drink coffee. But in it's place is the chance to listen to Howard Stern during the morning commute on a regular basis -- maybe not giddy, but always good for laughs and, recently, free speech politics. The radio reception in my basement office was just about non-existent, and anyhow, my mornings used to be dominated by emailing and blogging -- better backed by music rather than talk radio. There's something I miss. My iTunes. Some of the designers and developers sit at their screens with headphones or earbuds. I haven't quite gotten to that comfort level yet, and anyhow, in project and process management, the ears are needed a bit more than in coding.
But then I get pulled into some client's weekly 'status meeting' (and believe me, it's all about status), or one of my kids pulls me out to play or help with homework, and I remember why I like working at home.
My downsides include missing the flexibility of spending a weekday with Lois, especially since her weekends are dominated by the retail job she loves so much. And yesterday's homebound commute was an hour and fifteen. And as I'm putting the finishing touches on this dark and early this morning, I'm hearing a torrential spring downpour that would used to have me pitying those who had to go out into the vagaries of weather every day.
But then again, yesterday, we solved a pile of little problems -- not the big kinds of things that I would have been brought in on in a consulting gig, but cumulatively the kinds of things that add up to a good day. Yup. Quite a good day.
How about you? What are the little pleasures of your life in the office?
Yeah. How about you?
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