I Have Overinvested in Being at Home

I do not like working on my own. I have always worked in a team, built a team, recruited the smartest people I could into my businesses and created something that serves a greater purpose with the smartest people around.

You cannot replace physical human energy with video and voice calls exclusively. Fight me on it.

There is something magical about sitting in a room of brilliant people and listening to them debate a complex topic face to face. I thrive when I have other people to challenge my thinking and push me to places I wouldn’t otherwise have gone.

So when COVID overwhelmed the world and people were forced to work from home I leaned in. I embraced the idea that working from home was amazing and my home office was missing from my work life up until 2020. I obviously didn’t choose to work from home, I was forced to. So, I then started to create work that played into this and buy into the global narrative that work from home (WFH) was the best thing since the Internet. I became more alone, isolated and insular while, incredibly, still consuming and connecting more and more every day.

I purchased indoor plants and kitted out my “zoom background” to look crafted and amazing. My dogs are now insecurely attached to me and I am kind of insecurely attached to my home. I moved country and made sure that the house had enough rooms for my partner and me to both work from home.

Speaking of my partner, we settled into an “always together” life; we sleep in the same bed, we wake up and walk the dogs together, we eat breakfast in the same house, drink our coffee and tea in the same house, we work 3 feet apart every single day, we eat lunch in the same house, we finish work and clean together, we cook together, we eat dinner together, we read together, we watch TV together and occasionally we leave the house… together.

I have invested deeply in being at home.

I woke up extremely frustrated two weeks ago and I couldn’t really figure out why.

I meditated on this feeling for a few days and rolled it over in my mind, at the back and the front of my thoughts for hours on end.

And then it hit me like a crypto bro fighting for his life savings;

I have overinvested in being at home… and I think I hate it.

I miss human contact.

I miss the physical energy that humans create.

I miss going into an office and the serendipity of random conversations that lead to exciting ideas.

I miss the commute (I know, I know, insanity).

I miss the afternoon socialising.

I miss working in shoes (I exclusively wear slippers these days).

I miss wandering into a colleague’s office to solve a problem.

I miss leaving my house.

As the world goes absolutely nuts for WFH I want to balance out this narrative with an alternative: work where you work best.

If you work best at a coffee shop, work there. If you work best in an office, find one. If you work best at home, that’s great too.

I didn’t choose to work from home, the pandemic chose for me.

I believe that the future of work is all about choice. Smart businesses will give people the option to work from home or work from an office or work in a hybrid environment.

The dramatic realisation for me is that I was thrust into a situation that I thought was my choice but wasn’t. I want to go back and that’s OK.

I want to divest from my all-encompassing home orientated life. For me, that might mean some days at home, some days in a library, some days at a friend’s office and some days away from my partner and dogs.

Working from home, living at home and never leaving home is not healthy for me and I’m working on ways to strike a better home-not-home balance.