Last week I went to the office for the first time in more than 2 years. I had to wear shoes. I lived through it though, and coming out the other side I realised something.
I think it was an important realisation but it requires a bit of background.
As many of you know, I am exceedingly intentional with my time. I routinely plan my life in half hour increments several days in advance. Like so many people I know, I plan calls for when I need to drive places, I answer Slack requests when I'm in the grocery store, I sort email when I should be paying attention in meetings. I don't have any complaints about my life or what it takes to keep it going, but I do actively avoid anything that might feel like downtime.
I am also very rarely alone. In a time where so many people have struggled with isolation and loneliness I am keenly aware of how lucky this makes me, but this also means that it is exceedingly rare for me to go more than 8 seconds without someone asking me something. It really is amazing that I get anything done, ever.
Which brings me to my startling realisation about the hidden benefits of going to work. I have been struggling lately with a pervasive feeling of not being productive. I work as much as anyone but I never walk away with that satisfying feeling of accomplishment that I used to. That feeling that I have contributed something of unique value that used to make me want to get out of bed. My job has changed substantially over the past two years in ways that have nothing to do with pandemics or stay at home orders and despite genuinely enjoying my work, I have been struggling with the feeling that I have somehow lost something that makes me both valuable and happy.
Then last Thursday, I found myself in the car, driving home from the office. The call I had planned for the final 30 minutes of my drive had been cancelled, the audio-book I had been listening to was finished, and I was driving so I couldn't slide in something from my ever present backlog; I had 30 minutes with nobody else in the car and nothing to do.
It was uncomfortable at first. At first I struggled to shake the feeling that my failure to plan appropriately had cost me 30 productive minutes that would need to be compensated for later in the day but then something crazy happened. I spent 30 minutes thinking. 30 minutes simply rolling over problems in my head with no projected outcome. In those 30 blank minutes I came up with solutions to two problems that I had been struggling with for weeks.
I know that un-directed thinking time is critical to solving problems and I have tried over the past couple of years to block 30 minute windows in my calendar; I have tried getting up half an hour earlier; I have tried setting aside time in the evening but these efforts always result in urgent tasks squeezing out these moments. That decompression and thinking time that I would occasionally get in the car that had become a part of my pre-pandemic life were valuable and are something that is missing from my new routine. I don't think I would start going to the office just to gain this space, but maybe my work, and my life would be better for it if I did. A moment taken away from the constant (mostly self-imposed) pressure to produce something valuable right now allows me to be creative and strategic. It allows me to be better at everything I do in between.
I haven't had a job where I went to an office every day since early 2004. In 2019 I had a table in a hallway at a customer site that I proudly claimed as my desk when I was there, but that is the closest thing I've had to an actual work area in almost 2 decades. A return to normal for me won't include a cubicle and a daily commute and it really won't look much different from what I am doing now, but no matter what I have to do to make it happen, it will, unconditionally, include time to think.