Productivity

As I near the end of my maternity leave, I'm struck again by the staggering dependence we Americans have on our automobiles. A staggering number of the vehicles on the road only have a single occupant. And we're driving farther and farther to get to work. Now, granted, some of us just can't get to work using public transportation. Some of us don't live anywhere near our coworkers making carpooling less of an option. And some of us just can't juggle all of that, plus the demands of family, kids, errands or whatnot with sharing rides. To be honest, how many really try? But there are options that can reduce the number of cars on the road at least one day a week. I'm one of the lucky few whose car is parked for more than 90% of the time in front of the house. Why is that? I telecommute. I'm very fortunate to be able to work from home with a combination of the internet and telephone. Every few weeks, I get on an airplane and head into the office for a week. Come on people, this is the age of Information. Why can't more employees work from home, even for just one day a week?

I understand the risks: people will goof off all day and not get anything done costing employers valuable time and resources, workers could become more detached than ever as they hole up at home and have no social interaction at all, or the work cannot be done remotely. With some jobs where there is direct work done that is true. With more and more jobs, most of the information, work or output is done on a computer. If this is the case, there are options to get things done in a less traditional setting. Now obviously this isn't going to work for some jobs: pilots, waiters, mechanics, etc. where the work being done is directly needed. But all those office drones: computer programmers, insurance adjusters, industry analysts, or hundreds of other jobs where people are sitting in front of a computer everyday could benefit from the idea that productivity does not necessarily mean driving into the office for a day.

People ask me how I do it all the time. It's staggeringly easy once you get used to the concept. I spent 10 years driving into the office of the company I work for still, only now I work remotely. How did it happen? Well, my husband got an opportunity too good to pass up in another region. I went in to work and told them I was leaving, they told me I wasn't quitting. I told them I was moving, they worked it out for me. I'm not an executive; I'm not the most valuable employee in the company with industry knowledge greater than the next guy; I'm not irreplaceable. I'm a hard worker who loves what she does. Since the move I've worked from home. You know what I discovered? 70% or more of my time in the office was unproductive time. Unproductive does not mean wasted. I was building rapport and team skills with my coworkers for some of that time. A surprising amount of interaction happens spontaneously in an office setting. Between trips to the restroom, getting refreshments or traveling hither and fro to meetings or appointments a fair amount of an employee's day is spent in the hallways or common rooms. Now some are more efficient at staying focused than others, granted. That's true in any situation. Home workers don't have that distraction and can be more productive than they are in an office setting.

When you're a project manager, like I am, you spend time analyzing resource productivity. For example, a full time programmer only spends 2-4 hours per day actually writing or designing code to attribute to a project. Why the discrepancy in how much work gets done? I mean after all, aren't we "working" for 8 hours a day on average? (We'll stick with that number, though anyone who's been in the industry knows that actually working 8 hours a day is NOT anything close to the reality.) The rest of the time a developer spends at work involves meetings, reviews, planning and all the other nonsense that goes into software development. This doesn't even take into account the re-work that happens when issues are found with the code written, called bugs. Yep, people make mistakes. Happens all the time. No one is perfect. If we could all get that through our heads we'd probably be a lot happier as a society, but that is a topic for another time. If you're more easily distracted, the less valuable work you actually get done. Imagine that. People have a short attention span. They get distracted by new, different or interesting bits that come their way. I've heard it described as shiny object syndrome. Something new and shiny comes along and people just have to get involved, investigate or obtain said shiny object. Think about how many times during the day that someone just pops in to say hi. If you only talk for 10 minutes, 6 people stopping by have used an hour of your day. You say that it isn't that bad, you only talk for moments. Track yourself for a day or two. You might be surprised at how much time you've actually not been working. And we're interrupt-driven as a society: phones, email, instant messages. They all distract from the end goal: productivity.

Working at home can be more productive than working at the office, even for just one day a week. Just think, if you turn off email for an hour or two a day and focus on the document, project, code, plan or whatever it is you're working on . . . you might actually get some valuable work done. When you launch email again in an hour, you've not been out of touch that long and can respond to all those important messages. At the end of the day I can see visible progress on the projects I have. It doesn't take very much discipline at all. How do I work from home? Very easily, thank you very much.