I have almost no clue what office life is like. And I really mean ‘almost no clue’. Over several decades of professional work, my entire experience of office life consists of four hours working as a receptionist at a shipbroker’s in the City. I was so bad they sacked me by lunchtime: I didn’t even make it through the first day.
Chastened by this trauma, I thereafter vowed I would never do another hour of paid work in an ‘office’, and I have stuck to my principles. I have never been woken by a horrible alarm at 7am; instead, for all my life, I have heroically kept on sleeping until about 10.30. Likewise, I have never knowingly been caught in the ‘rush hour’; instead I sometimes stand at my window around 6pm and look at all the people hurrying for trains and then I remember it is time for a gin-and-tonic.
My lifestyle wouldn’t be to the taste of Sir James Dyson who recently demanded that we ‘must go back to the office’, because working from home is a ‘productivity disaster’. But I also know Dyson is right.
How can this be so, you may ask, as you read this on the 07.49 from Southend to Liverpool Street, even as I lie snoring in my bed? My answer is this, because I have always worked from home (or the beach, or a bustling little cafe) I know that WFH really does have disadvantages, compared to office work. At the core of Dyson’s argument is that people need to get together, physically: to collaborate, to develop, and to be mentally creative. This sounds paradoxical but it is true.
If you work from home all the time you tumble into a kind of psychological silo.
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