Requiem for an Office
Requiem for an Office
What I miss about the office, and what I’m doing about it.
Happy Tuesday, Friends!
It’s Kevin K., and this is Path Nine—a newsletter featuring modern meditations and takes on work, productivity, and entrepreneurship.
This week, I’m reflecting on a hotly-debated topic: the importance of the office (and lack thereof). I won’t spoil it, but I’m rethinking a few key aspects of remote work, and maybe you should too.
Alright, let’s dive in.
Read time: 6 mins
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Acquisitions are weird.
One day, you’re doing your job and things are going well.
The next, you’re working for someone else and hearing that nothing will change.
It's akin to waking up from unconsciousness: the room spins, disorientation sets in, and you’re unsure where you are or how you got there.
In the blink of an eye, the familiar rhythms of my job were upended, ushering me into a new reality where, unbeknownst to me at the time, the seeds of my journey into the future of work were planted. That wild journey led me to a lot of interesting things; last minute international travel, 11pm conference calls, and my introduction to the always-on work culture I’d come to accept as normal.
But most interestingly, it led me to a core feature of what I’d come to see as a key component of the future of work: remote work.
I started working remotely in early 2013. It wasn’t really on purpose, nor was it in vogue. Prior to 2013, remote work wasn’t something people thought a lot about. Outside of support and call centers, or the occasional ‘telecommuter,’ it just wasn’t part of the work vernacular.
And it certainly didn’t feel natural in 2013.
If you look at this chart from We Work Remotely, you can see that the number of jobs listing for remote workers has grown by nearly 1200% in that time.
But honestly, it really didn’t feel like it.
There was no grand “welcome to the remote work party” banner. No strong cultural pulse that brought remote work to the forefront. If anything, remote work was considered a backup option, for specific circumstances like disabilities, outsourced roles, or consultants. It wasn’t mainstream or understood.
I stumbled into a world without borders by accident. At the time, I was working for Deloitte consulting. My job, at the ripe age of 25, was to lead the global expansion efforts for the new consulting line that had formed after the acquisition of my previous company, Übermind.
During this acquisition, I was lucky enough to be given the opportunity to avoid the traditional consultant paths offered by Deloitte, which may have been interesting, but likely would’ve sent me down a completely different career trajectory—a career with more suits, planes, and hotels next to the airport. Instead, I was lucky to be offered a global expansion role, which kept me out of client-specific consulting, and made me an internal operator, tasked with launching and growing the newly-formed Deloitte Digital Studio Model. My role in global expansion had some interesting requirements, which ultimately led me to my first remote work experience. These included:
Time zone management. As you might imagine with the word ‘global’ in the title, my job entailed working with teams and people in different countries. This meant having to manage time zones outside of my usual +/- 3 hour calculations.
Video and conference calls. For years, most of my meetings were in person. Whether it was in the office with my studio coworkers or meeting a client to present, my time was spent literally face-to-face. And then one day, that all changed. I went from mostly in-person, to mostly virtual. I didn’t feel it immediately, but over time, it felt like my personality shifted from being a real person to a virtual person.
Isolation. In the shift to virtual work, it meant a disconnect from my local colleagues. Even if we worked in the same office, we didn’t have the same schedule, the same work, or the same experiences anymore. I found it more and more difficult to talk with them about work, since our worlds were so far apart. Eventually, I stopped coming into the office except to socialize or for the occasional office-sponsored happy hour.
After a decade of working remotely, I’ve realized that there are things I deeply miss about working in an office. I don’t think I’m completely alone here. In fact, just the other day, a past colleague of mine told me they’ve accepted a hybrid role. They’ve been working and advocating for remote work for years, and yet, they decided to take a little break from the fully-remote world.
As someone who has spent a lot of time thinking not just about how we work, but how we are productive, how we cultivate a relationship with work, and how we set boundaries, I think there are gaps that have yet to be filled in remote work. A growing body of research underscores the profound impact of social interactions and environmental context on our work and well-being.
I want to be abundantly clear: I do not want to return to the office, not now, not ever. Further, I don’t believe in-person work is a better way to work, at least not in most cases. But more importantly, I think the remote/in-office debate leaves little room for nuance, and therefore misses the mark altogether.
I’ve realized that there are some important things I am missing when working remotely, and I plan to fix them in 2024. And no, it’s not the ‘random coffee chats’ or ‘in-person’ meetings.
Scheduled social interactions - again, not the random chat kind. What I miss is the scheduled social interactions of office timelines. I miss the ‘let’s grab lunch/coffee’ times of the day. When we have scheduled social time, we naturally increase our productivity in order to ensure it doesn’t interfere with our social mores the scheduled social time. When our schedule becomes flexible, we lack the urgency of fixed deadlines, even if they’re for social interaction.
Time offline - I miss the forgiveness and empathy of needing time outside of work. The ability to say, ‘hey, I’m on my way to the office, I’ll look at that when I get in.’ I miss the option to say, ‘I have to leave early to run an errand, so I won’t be able to make a 4pm meeting today.’ I find that, as a remote worker, it is incredibly difficult to share the reasons that we can’t—or won’t do things. Worse still, remote workers are often given very few options to not work. The assumption is that by giving up the commute, you have infinite time to work, and therefore should always be online.
Thinking time - the commute is shit, but it can have benefits. First and foremost for me: time to think. One of the first things that I realized I was missing about the office was time to be alone, gather my thoughts, and think about things that were on my mind. By removing this time, I’ve found that I default to action. Instead of sitting and thinking about an idea on my commute, I choose to work. Instead of taking time to breathe, I work. Everything gets flattened to work.
A sense of place - how we feel about what we do is incredibly important, as it shapes our self-worth and helps us orient ourselves to the world. Where we do what we do can be just as important. One of the biggest challenges of working remotely is being able to place ourselves in work mode. When you can work anywhere, we see work everywhere. But the office gives us a place to place work. It lives there. It stays there when we leave. It has a home, and it’s not our actual home.
All of these are specific to me. It doesn’t mean that they are insurmountable, or something that changes the calculation of my interest in working remotely. In fact, they further cement my position on the subject, as they reinforce the idea that remote work isn’t just about where you do your best work, but how you do your best work. If we want better ways to work, we have to think outside the box and explore all ways of working and living in harmony. I want reinforce this in my own work and in the narrative at large.
Rethinking My Office
In 2024, I’m taking a different approach to working remotely. I’m keeping the core components; working asynchronously, documentation-first, (mostly) virtual meetings, etc. But I’m also making some pivotal adjustments that I think will have a major benefit for me, my work, and my family.
Be a 9-5er - I’m a huge fan of work-life harmony, no matter how you come by it. Historically, I’ve leaned into my natural rhythms of being a cycler, but over time, I find it wears on me. Instead of working when inspiration strikes or I feel ready to tackle something, I just end up grinding through work, all day, with micro-breaks. For 2024, I’m taking a stronger stance on remote work boundaries, and trying a 9-5 schedule—or as close to that as reasonable.
Co-work - with our recent move back to Seattle, I’ve decided to pick up an office at a co-working space. Luckily, it’s right next to our home, so the commute is the time it takes to ride the elevator down, walk 50 yards through our garage, and ride a second elevator back up two floors. This setup allows my wife to have her own space at home, and helps me enforce my goal of being a 9-5er.
Go analog - one of my challenges with remote work is the fact that everything goes through my screens—from my phone to my laptop to my desktop, it’s all screens. Passing thoughts, ideas, and chats through this glass box filled with pixels isn’t the way I want to exist, and it’s not how I’ll do my best work. To combat this, I’m integrating analog tools into my workflow, including a whiteboard, notebook(s), and a separate, analog desk.
Walk it off - I need to walk more. When I was in the office, I’d walk a lot more. I’d go to lunch, get coffee, or just do a walking meeting with people from the office. While most of the time those walks happened with close colleagues and friends, that wasn’t always the case. Sometimes I’d join a random group of designers or engineers, just to get out. It’s hard to do that on your own, but I want walking to be a part of my life. So every day, I take my dog across the street for a walk. Some days, I walk my wife to work. Others, I walk to meet someone for coffee, lunch, or drinks. My goal is to walk as much as possible.
Zooming Out
Depending on your stance, these changes may sound mundane or revolutionary. Remote purists may even take issue with some of these. But that misses the point. The point of remote work has never actually been about working at home, on your couch, or on a beach in Fiji. Remote work is about flexibility. It’s about a way of working that not only helps us do our best work, but bring work and life into harmony. And the harmony of work and life can only be heard when we listen and adjust our tone.
It’s easy to look at what we don’t have and assume it’s better.
We have the Honda, but we want the Tesla.
We have the big house, but we want the boat.
The grass, perpetually seems greener, no matter the context.
In reality, the grass isn’t always greener. Sometimes, the grass is greener in a few spots, and dead everywhere else. We might only see the small patch, and assume the rest looks the same. The map is, in fact, not the territory.
Our workspace choice shouldn’t be binary.
We shouldn’t have to choose between a sub-par home office (aka kitchen table) or a high-rise office.
We shouldn’t have to choose between working a job we like, and spending necessary time with our family.
We shouldn’t have to be forced into these polarities—there exists space for convergence.
When it comes to remote work, it’s easy to feel like we need to pick sides; you’re either with us, or you’re against us. Like anything else in life, we should admit and embrace the need for better options, both in work and at home.
The Delphic oracle might have been speaking to workers when she famously said, "know thyself.” I, for one, plan to do so.
Until Next Time!
That’s it for this week. As always, if you like the content, please do me a favor and like, share, subscribe — this newsletter runs on overpriced whiskey and reader engagement.
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Thanks for reading, and see you soon,
— Kevin K. (@kkirkpatrick)