Busting 7 Myths About Working From Home

Busting 6 Myths About Working From Home

As a long-time, pre-pandemic evangelist for corporate working from home, one benefit of the global quarantine is the fact that I no longer need to defend the concept.

Ten or twelve years ago, as I started dabbling in remote work, most of my colleagues thought that when I was “working from home” it really meant I was taking a day off, or at least a half-day. I’d endure sneers, winks, and snide comments.

But the reality is that I learned how to become my most productive self while enjoying a large degree of personal flexibility when working remotely.

Today, the corporate world finally believes it’s a real thing and a potentially viable permanent alternative to geographically anchored and financially draining office space. Corporations across the globe barely skipped a beat as they sent their entire workforces home en masse in 2020.

Maybe the jury is still out for you, and that’s OK. Hopefully, this article will help clear up some of your misgivings.

Whether you have recently started working from home, are curious about it, or are wondering whether your team can effectively work remotely forever, here I bust several myths about working from home.

Myth: I Can Work In Pajamas From My Bed (Or Couch)

OK, that was fun for the first couple of days, but now…

Working from home full time, or even for a full day is not the same as sending a couple of emails after dinner.

Not getting out of bed or off the couch and lazing around in your pajamas all day will set you up for failure. Both short-term and long-term.

To be productive, happy, and successful you must employ the same mindset commitment to the workday as you did when you commuted to an office.

Your commute and the physical office space created a routine and a natural transition into and out of your work persona and mindset. Now that these are gone, you must purposefully create those transitions.

And it’s simple to do, with a little experimentation.

Creating a permanent space in your home and sticking to a routine (possibly, but not necessarily including how you dress) help you to make those transitions.

That’s not to say you shouldn’t be comfortable (you should), or you shouldn’t take advantage of some time on the porch (you should). Just know that your productivity will follow your mental state, so set your mind up for success.

Myth: I Can Work Whenever I Want

One of the amazing benefits of working from home is the schedule flexibility that it should afford.

You should be able to attend the 2nd grade’s 10 am Halloween parade. You should be able to grab that 2 pm hair appointment slot. You should be able to keep your IronMan triathlon training sessions basically on schedule (even in week 9).

And most importantly, you should be able to build a routine around the rhythm of your day that works with your family (or roommates) and your own biorhythm.

But that’s not the same as “work whenever I want.”

It’s closer to “work whenever I need.” Which presumably is a fairly regular, if possibly disjointed schedule.

You have colleagues and customers that are depending on you and your work. Your schedule still has meetings and deadlines and you must produce.

The ideal work-from-home schedule doesn’t look like an office schedule of arriving at 9 and leaving at 5. It can be disjointed, and make use of almost the entire 24 hours, but it has to include enough contiguous blocks of time for both work and life.

Just like when you were working at an office, you will need to discover a daily routine that helps you stay on track. The great news is that daily routine doesn’t include an oppressive commute, high gas prices, or getting stuck at the office till way past bedtime.

Myth: I Can't Be Productive

This myth and the next one are both popular concerns, and polar opposites.

"I just can't get anything done at home. Too many distractions!"

Let's face it, we all have plenty of real distractions to manage -- the kids need help, the dirty dishes, the lawn needs mowing, the Amazon delivery guy, and the giant TV is right there.

But what is real productivity versus feeling productive?

Productivity should be measured by the activities and output that contribute to your mission. Basically, work that matters. It’s not, “did I work 8 hours today?” In the knowledge-work industry, productivity is never about how many hours you work.

Sometimes the office can feel productive, especially if you've put your hours in, but is feeling productive the same as being productive? The office environment contains its share of distractions as well. Between spontaneous BS sessions about Tom Brady's retirement and then unretirement; getting yanked into meetings because your coworker was walking by and thought you might be interested; and what is that smell?! the office isn't always the panacea of productivity.

The remote work environment poses a natural deterrent to spontaneous meetings and unwelcome guests at your desk and creates a more thoughtful approach to communication. With some simple strategies and tactics to manage the real distractions at home, and with some experimentation, you’ll start to become a productivity machine. I also bet that you’ll be more productive in fewer hours per day.

Myth: I Can't Have Work-Life Balance

The exact antithesis to the myth above, and another popular concern. Also very real.

Studies and anecdotal evidence show that many workers who have started working remotely over the last few years are now finding work-life balance to be the most challenging aspect. It seems like the job has become 24x7x365, or at least that is the expectation from those above.

The thing that helped me overcome this was to eliminate the term "work-life balance" in favor of "work-life integration."

I came up with this concept honestly -- I stole it from a friend of mine. I live in rural Pennsylvania surrounded by farms. A number of years ago, I was shooting the crap with my neighbor across the street, who along with his family operates a 150-acre dairy farm. I was bitching about the 24x7 lack of balance and he just said, "Welcome to the club. Farmers have no balance between our work lives and our non-work lives. It's all integrated. We make it work by embracing that we're farmers and a special kind of work comes with that life."

Light bulb.

Integrating our work lives with our non-work lives is actually a more natural way to exist. For centuries before the modern work paradigm, nobody had a separation between what they did for work and what they did for non-work. Less this or that and more this and that.

The secret is to stop trying to separate these two lives and start seeking a better integration with focus periods, breaks, and activities that better fit you the person. Your integration needs some boundaries, for sure -- time, location, etc. But find the integration that works best for you and you'll start to have more time in your day than you ever had with the rigid schedule and oppressive commute.

Myth: I Need To Be With My Coworkers

Fair enough.

Of all the myths about working from home, this is the one that rings through with a kernel of truth. We are human, and humans are social creatures. Even introverts (like me) need social interaction.

However, let’s put the cards on the table. “I need” really means “I prefer.”

You (or your boss) may prefer the office because it provides a built-in social outlet, or gets you out of the house, but it’s not required for a team or a company to be productive.

What about the real need to be around others to fight off isolation and malaise?

These issues are real, and if you isolate yourself when working from home then you may fall prey, just as if you isolate yourself in the office. But as with distractions, there are very good strategies and tactics that can be employed to help you overcome those issues.

In a nutshell, you can still work socially in a virtual environment.

Myth: We Need the Office for Team Collaboration

Surely the office provides a better environment for collaboration and teamwork, right?

Again, the data doesn’t support it, especially with conversations.

In fact, the office environment seems to dissuade collaboration. Studies on various office styles and designs point to increased collaboration in office situations that provide more privacy, rather than more openness.

The great news about collaboration when working from home is the modern tools that exist to make private and group-oriented conversations effortless and fruitful. Tools such as Slack, MS Teams, Basecamp, Trello, Jira, Zoom, etc are built specifically to keep collaboration flowing amongst remote teams.

And yes, zoom fatigue is real -- we've all felt it. Physical proximity does provide visceral and meaningful human connection that fosters chemistry and organizational collaboration. Every team does need to strike a balance in how they collaborate. We all know that no remote working tool can take the place of three people in a room on the whiteboard. But we don't need this every day, nor even every week.

The best approach is to gather the team regularly, but infrequently. Once a month, a quarter, or a year might be all that is needed to foster the right kind of collaboration for your team.

Myth: We Need Chance Encounters To Foster Breakthroughs

Ah, the famous “serendipitous run-in on the way to the bathroom that changed the course of history."

Folklore like that is especially juicy in the science and tech worlds. Companies such as Apple, Google, and Samsung have all famously designed office spaces to naturally promote the chance encounter.

Of all the myths about working from home, this one is the easiest to bust.

There are fabulous tales of accidental run-ins that led to breakthroughs. But is that the normal, or even a somewhat regular way innovations and breakthroughs are made?

Of course not, because these tales rely on chance, and chance isn’t a winning strategy. That’s akin to your company buying lottery tickets each week to be profitable.

“Just because some innovations stemmed from chance encounters doesn’t mean that creating more chance encounters results in more innovations. Just like buying two lottery tickets instead of one isn’t really an improved wealth strategy. Clear-eyed thinking helps us realize that trying to innovate by creating more chance encounters is like trying to schedule spontaneity. It’s contradictory.”

-- Marc Bruffett, Principal at Gensler Office Architectural and Design Firm

Teams and companies that continually move the needle forward are doing so through the very boring, yet very effective methods of hiring good people, effective leadership, and putting good systems in place.

All of which can be done with a remote workforce.

Bonus Myth For Managers and Executives: I Won’t Know What My People are Doing

This ain’t a shop floor nor an assembly line. You are not paying knowledge workers for the number of hours they work. Get over it.

Effective knowledge worker management understands that leadership, whether it's in the office or remote, starts and ends with trusting your people and managing work output. Effective leadership of knowledge workers is more partnership than supervisorship.

If your management style requires you to be physically watching over your people to make sure they are working, then you’re doing it wrong, and this article isn’t for you. Some on your team may not even need the standard 40 hours in a week to be just as productive (oh, the horror).

With a base of trust and empowerment, an effective communication strategy, and a quiver of the right tools management of remote teams is easier than ever before.

In Summary

You may still be wondering if working from home will work for you or your team. That’s understandable, especially if this is new for you.

Rest assured that you can do it. If you manage a team, both you and your team can do it.

However, you must employ the proper strategies, tactics, and toolsets that will unlock your potential when working from home. Once you have that, you may start wondering why you ever doubted that this new and wonderful work-life integration was possible.