@Alba – I hope it works out! Keep us posted!

Yes, I live in a commuter village and several new shops have opened in recent months – a zero waste coop, a sushi restaurant, a cafe, and others have expanded. WFH folks want to have a coffee meeting and a nice lunch as well. And perhaps people have more money to spend in their local economies if they aren’t spending as much on fuel, corporate attire, etc. So it is about an economic restructuring.

Thanks Laura.
I really like this advice and since my conmute is acceptable (30 min by underground) i will take Wednesdsys and Thursdays as my days to work from home.

My understanding is that many suburban cafes and shops are busier during normal office hours now – the desire for coffee, a new shirt, a haircut, etc doesn’t go away completely, just some of these desires get fulfilled away from the CBD. Cities have been changing since people started creating them, and seems like they will keep changing. Better in some ways, not in others, presumably.

I am certainly no economist, but I have so many questions about what the world will look like if ‘everyone” works from home full time! Like you mentioned about your brother, I feel like so many people will move out of big cities…which is maybe good on one hand, but I also wonder what will happen to all of those office buildings, all the downtown shops, restaurants, businesses, even other markets like the clothing industry (less business attire being bought), transport services not being used, the housing market, etc. It seems like it would be awfully sad to see our amazing cities in this country all sort of disappear/ crumble or be full of just empty buildings with “for lease” signs in the windows….but I also definitely understand the convenience of people wanting to work remotely! I personally really like it, for sure!

I have reveled in working full-time from home for the past 15 months but whole-heartedly agree that – at least in academic research – the random interactions at work really do lead to some great collaborations and ideas. Zoom does not reproduce this.

That being said, there is no part of me that wants/needs to come back 5 days a week, and my supervisor luckily agrees. I am now slated for ‘hybrid flex,’ which means that I can come in some days a week and flex which days I choose. I’m going to aim for 1-2 days a week in-office unless we are in the midst of a grant or finalizing a manuscript. I totally agree with an earlier comment of not doing those days back-to-back since my commute is long (shorter in pandemic traffic, though!). I have also decided to try to work at home on Mondays as much as possible, as I find that the extra time I get back from not commuting is valuable for getting our house/family re-set after the weekend. My kids are 5 and 2, so presumably can start doing more to help with this as they get older but for now, I like having Monday at home to get everything back in order.

Though the pandemic was (is) long/hard/awful for a lot of people for a lot of reasons, I will always be grateful for the perspective that it gave me on how anxious and overwhelmed I was prior to March 2020. Once I got more time back in my day (no commute) and my boss saw that I could be productive working from home, it became clear that I never want to go back to an office 5 days a week. I honestly feel like I have re-claimed some mental health that I didn’t realize was gone.

@Elisabeth – I try not to worry too much about transitions. If you are accustomed to getting stuff done in limited amounts of time, you probably don’t need a whole lot of throat-clearing at the beginning. As for deep work time, (if I remember correctly) Cal notes in his recent book that many people only get about an hour of uninterrupted time per day (or less) with their inboxes and meetings. So if you can hit that, you’re getting the same amount as many normal office workers — and probably you can arrange more if you try.