Time to throw away the office?
In the past few years I have read much which argues for the end of the office. The Seth Godin’s and Leo Babauta’s and Tim Ferriss’ of the world are all the kind of smart and successful and free people I thought I wanted to be like as I dipped my toes into the world of freelancing from home (and cafes in exotic places like Paris).
After all, who doesn’t love the idea of being able to take their laptop with them and earn an income from anywhere around the world? As a poor backpacker just under two years ago, this sounded like The Dream to me, so I gave it a go.
There I was with my trusty Mac in Delhi, India, in Paris, and Marseille, France, in Turkey’s gorgeous capital Istanbul working on various freelance projects I’d managed to nab, which allowed me to spend an extra couple of months on the road.
When I got home to no ‘fixed job’, it made sense to keep the freelance caper up. It had served me well up to this point, and quite frankly, the idea of going back to a 9-5ish office job filled me with dread.
And so it was that I found myself funding quite a comfortable lifestyle from my laptop. At first, I loved it. I loved the freedom to work when I felt inspired and awake and eager, or take the dog for a walk when I needed a break, or hit the gym in the middle of the day when things were quiet there, and work in my pyjamas.
Soon, though, I started noticing that even when I was walking the dog at 11am, I was thinking about work. And I was thinking about the work I should be doing too when I was cooking dinner. Or watching a movie. Or reading. Or going to sleep. Or waking up. Or waking up at 3am in the middle of the night.
For me, freelancing soon felt like The Biggest Longest Never Ending University Assignment Ever. I couldn’t shake the feeling that I should always be working because I never knew when the next paying gig might come up.
The other thing I noticed was how much I missed being able to brainstorm and toss around ideas and test theories and even do much simpler things like check my grammar or spelling with someone else. I sorely missed interacting with other people, both for their company and for the positive energy other people bring.
Soon enough I found myself having little daydreams about working in an office, and I was slightly horrified by this. I thought I would love working independently and escaping the dreaded office environment which turned us into robotic clones, taking away the very best hours of our days and years from our lives.
These negatives about the office were only reinforced to me by the authors mentioned above who ALL argue the end of the office is nigh, and that the most talented people in the workforce will demand more flexible working arrangements which don’t have them tied to their desks for the same eight hours a day on the same five days a week. Office culture stifles creativity, they argue. Encourages your ‘lizard brain and goes against the very way humans are hard wired to work and work well.
To me that argument made huge amounts of sense until I worked in a different kind of office.
A year and a half after the end of my freelancing from home experiment, I am working in an office and couldn’t be happier, but here are the reasons why it works:
- Flexibility: If I need to work from home, I can. If I want to start earlier and finish later, I can. If I want to go work in a cafe or outside on a bench for a while, I can. If I need to go to an appointment somewhere, I can.
- Stimulation: I really feed off bouncing ideas around with other people. This energises me. Helps me to pick up flaws, think in new directions, and fine tune wilder ideas. It helps that my colleagues and I are all dedicated to our roles and genuinely enthusiastic, but there is no doubt this kind of interaction improves the quality of the work I do.
- Passion: I, and everyone in the team I work in, are passionate about what we do. Seriously passionate.
These three things more than make up for the benefits I enjoyed while working for myself.
So while I love the idea of ditching the office and letting us all send our creativity and passion wild, working when we want, in the way that we want, to the timetable that works for us, I reluctantly have to admit that for me, the right kind of office environment is an ideal way for me to work.
I like having a physical place where I can ‘leave’ work at work, and know there is a place I can go to get energy and ideas when I’m not feeling it. Which means that rather than waving the “All Office Are Bad And Must Die,” flag, I’m the one in the second row holding up the banner for the “Flexible Office.”
For me, it’s not quite time to throw away the office just yet, sorry Seth.
[image: A billboard I photographed while freelancing from Kota Kinabalu, Borneo, 2010]
