When the idea for this article came to me, I immediately had in mind the few points I’m going to talk about below — because I’ve experienced them myself.
Then I decided to read similar articles, and I was a bit disappointed to see that most of them highlighted things that — I imagine — the average person would have figured out on their own.
No, working from home with the TV playing in the background isn’t exactly efficient.
But that, I think you’ll realise in about three minutes 🙃
I also came across gems like “I can work whenever I want during the day” or “I’ll be able to make calls whenever I want.”
These statements really sound like they were written by people who do not live remote work: because they’re nothing but plain, obvious facts.
In this article, I don’t want to talk about the obvious things, but rather about those small details that quietly slip into your daily life as a remote worker, and that you — or at least I, for sure — didn’t see coming.
| Working through it, no matter what
If you’ve read this article about the birth of this platform, you already know that the arrival of remote work in my life — and in many people’s lives — was heavily influenced by the COVID crisis (oh, here it is — damned — I said the-word-I-never-wanted-to-say).
And so I quickly fell into the first trap of remote work: having COVID, but still working anyway 🤡
It’s a behaviour I saw in other remote-working colleagues too: not having to commute (which is less exhausting when you have a 39° fever), and being able to work without risking infecting anyone. These advantages make you think “Well, is it really worth taking a sick day for something so minor?” (Not to mention waiting days in some companies.)
I even discovered that a survey conducted by the Observatoire du télétravail showed that 76% of respondents had already worked remotely while being sick.
Amendments voted as part of the Social Security funding bill would even allow doctors to prescribe remote work to reduce sick leave (pretty wild, right?).
When you’re sick, your body needs rest. But with remote work, the line you shouldn’t cross to avoid “working until exhaustion” becomes a lot blurrier.
| I used to drink more coffee
… Mainly because twice a day, four colleagues would show up at my desk to take me for a break.
Overnight, that ritual vanished from my workday and I didn’t even notice.
Even now — after more than 4 years of remote work — I still struggle to give myself time to take breaks.
Not because I’m overwhelmed, but because hours go by and there’s no outside element (“disturbance,” as the pessimists would say 😄) to pull me out of my tunnel.
My job — which, in very, very broad strokes, consists of sitting behind a screen for 7 hours a day — even allows me to consider “watching a YouTube video” as a break.
Still sitting. Still in front of my screen.
And yet, I keep reading about the benefits of taking breaks.
And I mean real breaks: standing up, walking, grabbing a coffee (or a matcha for city folks). It’s good for your body, wakes up your attention, relaxes your muscles (helps avoid back pain at 32).
And it’s good for your mind too: taking a break helps you regain motivation after stepping away from work for 15 minutes.
| Proving you deserve your spot
I haven’t personally experienced this — probably because my whole team works 100% remotely, which puts us all on equal footing where trust is naturally present. But I’ve read a lot about the sense of illegitimacy many employees feel when working remotely.
This often leads to working more to “prove” their productivity. This article even mentions an increase of up to 2.5 hours of work per week just to convince their professional environment that remote work is the right choice.
These tendencies are, of course, amplified in companies where management has little to no trust in remote work.
I remember a client who was anti-remote-work and who, during the lockdown, required a video call every morning (9 a.m.) and evening (5:45 p.m.) where everyone had to explain what they planned to do during the day (and what they had accomplished during the day). A discreet (or not so discreet 🙃 ) way to keep an eye on our presence and productivity from start to finish.
In the articles I mentioned at the beginning, I told you that most of them highlighted “obvious” traps — and many share the same flaw: most “traps” said to be caused by remote work are just as possible in the office.
At your employer’s office, you can absolutely spend 2 hours on Facebook without anyone noticing.
At your boss’s place, you can take a 1-hour break and no one will be penalised — except you and your workload.
Remote work doesn’t invent much. It mostly reveals behaviours that already existed, just hidden a bit better before.
And maybe understanding them is already a way of learning to live this new way of working a little better.
