2spicy4me

I’m the person you’re taking about. I want an environment where I can more easily manage myself. A coworking space would even be an improvement.

I might have misread your emphasis on being managed by others, but it’s not what I meant.

It’s tough to introspect on exactly why, but I was certainly more productive and less fucked in the head when I was going into the office every day.

Maybe it was general mental health, partly. I live alone, so getting out of the house daily and seeing other people is good for me. I had office friends who it’s hard to keep in touch with.

Structure was another part. I had to get dressed and leave the house at a certain hour, then I had to get my stuff done by 5, when I came back home.

And general peer pressure. I had an open office desk, and I hated that, but in hindsight, it did help me stay on task. Which is kind of hilarious, because the open office floor plan was so distracting that I was terribly inefficient at my desk, so I hid away in corners most of the time to get real work done.

There were tons of negatives to being in the office (god I hate the open office floor plans), but for whatever reasons, I was more productive before the pandemic than I have been during.

Speaking for myself, I need the structure and am currently getting very little done. A lot of us aren’t trying to scam the remote work system, we’re just hanging on by our fingernails until the office opens back up.