The Office Illusion

Ezra Klein lauds the productivity benefits of working from home. I myself have rarely been in the office (either first the Prospect office and then the Atlantic office) for about a year now, and I agree that the productivity benefits of not going to work are quite large. One factor is shorter commutes, which Ezra points to.

To me, though, the biggest issue is what I think of as the office illusion. When I'm in an office, I feel as if by being in the office I am, as such, working. Thus, minor questions like am I getting any work done? can tend to slip away. Similarly, when I came into an office every day, I felt like I couldn't just leave the office just because I didn't want to do anymore work, so I would kind of foot-drag on things to make sure whatever task I had stretched out to fill the entire working day. If I'm not in an office, by contrast, I'm acutely aware that I have a budget of tasks that need to be accomplished, that "working" means finishing some of those tasks, and that when the tasks are done, I can go to the gym or go see a movie or watch TV. Thus, I tend to work in a relatively focused, disciplined manner and then go do something other than work rather than slack off.

Comments

Interesting... I'd say I'm the complete opposite. Commute aside, there's just far too many distractions at home (television, video games, books, my bed) for me to make any progress on anything I'm the least bit inclined to procrastinate on.

Posted by right | September 1, 2007 9:33 AM

I made the transition to home this year, and I think another thing to account for is the loss of social interaction. I thought it would be great, and yes, I do feel more efficient and productive while working from home.

But I have also found myself drifting from certain relationships, doing less of the typical "DC happy hour" scene and meeting less "new" people.

Now, one could argue this isn't a big deal. "Work" friends are often rather untenable relationships anyway, because once one person leaves you run out of things to talk about (as I learned).

So I suppose you need to make sure not to become a hermit.

Posted by Kevin Sullivan | September 1, 2007 10:03 AM

I've made my living working from home for 30 years (freelance). I think the ability to procrastinate when I feel the need increases my productivity, because then I don't feel resentful when I'm working about having to keep my nose to the grindstone. If I'm working, in other words, it's because I wouldn't rather be doing something else.

Posted by Swift Loris | September 1, 2007 10:08 AM

These are all good points, but I think most people would not charaterized whatever it is you do as "working".

Posted by Ed | September 1, 2007 10:26 AM

My biggest problem about working from home is that the damn refrigerator is always right there, filled with my own food, calling to me all day long.

Posted by vallux halgus | September 1, 2007 11:05 AM

I've been freelancing for a little over a dozen years now and from what I've seen of myself and friends and associates who work from home is it's highly dependent on the job itself. The ability to work at home allows me to work when I'm at a creative peak in the day rather than be forced to be creative during 9-5. There is certainly an amount of discipline involved in balancing deadlines with "at home" interruptions but ultimately, if you're not getting the work done to the degree expected it's quite obvious and you'll lose that client.

Posted by tom.a | September 1, 2007 12:24 PM

These are all good points, but I think most people would not charaterized whatever it is you do as "working".

That, of course, is one of the biggest barriers to allowing more people top work at home: what other people define as "work," i.e., time spent in the office.

I've worked at home since my son was born 15 years ago and for nearly all that time, I've been the "go-to" guy at work: I do my work, help other people with theirs and am available for last second crises, etc.

Part of the reason is that I don't have office hours. Not because I don't separate my work and home life but because I'm grateful for the flexibility (my son is autistic) so I return the favor. Stated differently, work versus life isn't a zero-sum game for me.

I suspect that for people like Sr. Yglesias and Ezra Klein, collaboration and "teamwork" not only aren't necessary, they're impediments to getting things done.

Posted by Roberto | September 1, 2007 12:32 PM

These are all good points, but I think most people would not charaterized whatever it is you do as "working".

That, of course, is one of the biggest barriers to allowing more people top work at home: what other people define as "work," i.e., time spent in the office.

I've worked at home since my son was born 15 years ago and for nearly all that time, I've been the "go-to" guy at work: I do my work, help other people with theirs and am available for last second crises, etc.

Part of the reason is that I don't have office hours. Not because I don't separate my work and home life but because I'm grateful for the flexibility (my son is autistic) so I return the favor. Stated differently, work versus life isn't a zero-sum game for me.

I suspect that for people like Sr. Yglesias and Ezra Klein, collaboration and "teamwork" not only aren't necessary, they're impediments to getting things done.

Posted by Roberto | September 1, 2007 12:33 PM

Sorry for the double post.

Posted by Roberto | September 1, 2007 12:34 PM

One of the most important reasons for office is "face" time. The telephone, instant messaging and email just don't cut it. One of the big problems with RDCs "Remote Development Centers" created by offshoring is the lack of face time.

There is less of a team than there was before. Problems which are easily thought through over a coffee meeting take longer to resolve. Formal rather than effective communications come to rule.

People outside office understandably don't want to talk about work. At office, it is possible to find out what people you know but aren't working with currently are working on, and I get a wider picture and new ideas because of that. Working from home I'd be only talking to the people I work with currently.

To be sure, working from home has benefits, the main one being not having to commute, and more adjustable hours. If one is working with an RDC, might as well be at home, it makes little difference, it is electronics communications only.

Posted by Arun | September 1, 2007 12:53 PM

These are all good points, but I think most people would not charaterized whatever it is you do as "working".

Yeah, unless you pull ridiculous hours wearing a suit and tie in an office job you despise, some people just won't take you seriously, lol.

Posted by novakant | September 1, 2007 1:19 PM

There are many tasks you can get done as efficiently (if not more so) away from the office but defining what those tasks should be, or what the tasks of others should be, and when they need to be complete, is vary hard to do without a lot of interaction.

Posted by DJ | September 1, 2007 1:27 PM

"The office" is the most miserable effing work-environment possible. The sterility is overwhelming (why can't we open the bloody windows and get some air that hasn't been around since 1981? The windows don't even open; how crazy is that?), your constantly monitored over your shoulder by passive aggressive middle managers, and the need to make chit-chat with the idiotic Bill O'Reilly fan down the hall about how her "Survivor: Falkland Islands" pool is going -- all of it adds up to an unspeakable brutality. When I worked in an office, I would be forced to stretch 2.5 hours of work into 8. Loving the office is a sign of serious derangement.

Posted by Ben Cronin | September 1, 2007 1:37 PM

Maybe my experience is different because I work on a trading floor, but I really like being constantly monitored because I get way more work done. If I worked at home I would just spend all day doing things like reading this blog.

Posted by Kyle | September 1, 2007 3:03 PM

Matt,

I don't think anybody can criticize your productivity. Still, you ought to get into the office more, even though it will hurt your output, because your bosses, if they are like any other set of bosses, are subconsciously developing emotional attachments to the people they spend time with in person. So, when the next spasm of budget cuts comes along, as they always do, they'll be more merciful toward those they spend time with, and more likely to lay off those they seldom see.

Steve

Posted by Steve Sailer | September 1, 2007 3:07 PM

I thought I would never write these words, but: Steve Sailer has a point. More broadly, I agree with the emphasis on "face time". I'm a software developer, and while I have no difficulty being productive at home, part of my work is inevitably teamwork, and there is no substitute for just hanging around each other's offices (or cubicles as the case may be) and forcing one another to face reality. So in practice I work from home two days a week, which seems to balance out OK.

One of my closest collaborators, though, lives in another country, and I see him once every six weeks or so. It's definitely suboptimal (as we say).

However, all this depends very sensitively on the nature of the work. Complex server software is a team endeavor, witty squibs not so much.

Posted by Vance Maverick | September 1, 2007 4:12 PM

Plus you can step out for bonghits, a little guitar break, whatever, as well as crank righteous tunes at high volume at work all day long.

Posted by The Fool | September 1, 2007 4:47 PM

The Social Life of Information (by John Seely Brown and Paul Duguid, ISBN 1578517087) is pertinent here. Among there topics are the hidden value of spontaneous, unplanned conversations in improving skills and knowledge bases. Being surrounded by coworkers leads to unanticipated collaborations and developments of deeper understandings.

My favorite example from their book concerns Xerox service technicians who were showing repair skills far beyond their training. To figure out what was going on, they followed these technicians through the work day and were unable to understand the source of their expertise. At some point they learned that the work day doesn't start with the first service call, but at the diner for breakfast, where technicians traded war stories over the eggs and sausage.

Some positions could be done well independently - - Samuel Johnson edited his Shakespeare on his own; yet when writing his Dictionary he needed a team of clerks and interacted with them throughout the project. I expect the latter case is more like the requirement of a manager being with his team, but even the handwritten marks the clerks had to work with couldn't easily be dealt with in today's technology.

Posted by Frank | September 1, 2007 5:51 PM

Roberto,

"That, of course, is one of the biggest barriers to allowing more people top work at home"

That's actually not true. The biggest barrier to allowing more people to work from home is the reality that most people aren't as smart, disciplined and motivated as Yglesias is. Part of the motivation problem, in my opinion, is crappy management, but that's another issue.

Posted by Fred | September 1, 2007 8:18 PM

The sweet spot for me has always been the coffee shop. None of the office distractions or home distractions.

Posted by djw | September 2, 2007 1:08 AM

Professional blogging is of course ideally suited for telecommuting. A lot of other jobs require more face time or in-person collaboration.

I think flextime/telecommuting poses risks to managers tracking productivity. How can managers distinguish between a stay-at-home person who is working his butt off and one is merely messing around? At least at work, a manager has a better sense of whether the work is being done (even if the amount of goofing off is still significant).

I try to work from home not because my company has a telecommute policy but because I'm a contract worker seeking more control over my schedule than the 40 hour week allows.

Posted by robert nagle | September 2, 2007 8:51 AM

The biggest problem I have with working at home is that I feel like I'm living in my office. One consequence is that I never have any excuse not to be working. Those who work in offices are better able to compartmentalize--separating work from the other things in their lives. Sometimes I wish I could do that.

Posted by Bruce Bartlett | September 2, 2007 6:43 PM

A problem with this way of working is that work isn't always so easily broken down into chunks. A project may be a huge one that takes weeks of work. How do you decide you are done for the day on a thing like that? It's not a task that only takes a day! You could try to break it down into chunks that you believe are doable in a day, it would require one to get very good as estimating.

In reality most people do as much as 8 hours or whatever worth of work on it every day and call it quits. The exact same thing could be done at home of course but it wouldn't be the way of working described here (task focused).

Posted by js | September 3, 2007 12:18 PM