When you work from home, should you keep a clear boundary between work and non-work?
When people are working from home, some bosses fear that they aren’t working all the time.
But all of this becomes irrelevant when you actually stop and think about what “work” really is….
.
If I have lunch with a friend, and we compare notes on our jobs for some of the time, does that count as work? Maybe the whole thing is “time spent working”, …even the social chat could count as “small talk as part of a work meeting” if you wanted it to.
Or what about socialising with a customer or supplier who I really like, and we don’t talk about work at all – does that count as work? Am I “Building a relationship?”.
What about if I have a work-related idea during the evening, at home – was I working? Have I suddenly started working? And what if I think a bit about work while I’m on holiday? Or if I think about non-work things while I’m in the office?
Of course, these things can’t be measured, and yet Flexi-time and Working From Home are both attempting to measure them. Also the counting of how many days of holiday leave we’ve taken, that also implies that a day off is a whole day off, and that there are clear borderlines between work and non-work.
.
Here are a few more examples, with (to make my point) some percentage estimates of how “worky” they are…..
- Work that you don’t enjoy – 100%
- Working on the train when you commute (often not counted by employers as time worked) – 100%
- Meal out with a work contact who you don’t like, because it has to be done – 100%
- Work that you enjoy – 90%
- Networking lunch with boring people but great food – 85%
- Reading or listening to a novel while commuting (you have no choice about the time spent on the train or in traffic) – 80%
- Training / Learning about your job (partly for you and partly for the company) – 80%
- Formally on call, but not called (you do SOME other things) – 75%
- Three day conference in The Bahamas with gaps of time off from the speaker sessions – 70%
- Expected to be available for phone calls and to check emails and messages out of working hours – 60%
- Thinking about work in a bad way – worrying, planning, angrily re-living – when you’re at home – 60%
- Thinking about work because you find it interesting or you enjoy it – 50%
- Having the occasional idea – just pops into your head when you’re doing something else – 50%
- Reading an interesting book that’s partly work related, e.g. on negotiating – 40%
- Meal out or drink with a work contact who you like, because you like seeing them – 30%
- Physically at work in the office, but thinking about something else – 20%
- Internet shopping while you’re in the office – 0%
.
You can see the futility of counting hours and trying to draw lines.
The more we deal with the timezones of USA, India, China etc, the more we have work and home on the same phones and other devices, the more that our work becomes mental rather than physical so it’s in our head and becomes PART of us, the harder it is to separate out.
And why should we even want to?
Isn’t it better to be measured by output and achievement rather than hours worked? Isn’t it better to have flexibility, so you can bid on an eBay auction that finishes at 11am, and write a blog at 11pm because that’s when you feel like it? Or maybe head for the beach on a sunny afternoon when the surf’s up, and work on a rainy Saturday? Or have a 6 week trip to Australia but check your email and have the occasional zoom meeting while you’re there?
The only reason for separating work completely, and having two diaries and two phones and switching your work phone off when you leave the office, would be if you HATED your job and even thinking about it at home made you unhappy; if you had a job that required no ownership and no engagement outside of working hours. And if your work is that bad, it’s time to find something better!!
