When covid turned our office dynamic on its head, we all scrambled to adjust and figure it out, thinking it was temporary. Now, “hybrid work” and “return-to-work” conversations lead to hot debates and office life is back in question. This seems to me like an opportunity to move forward instead of trying to cling to the shape of the past.
While many return-to-work conversations include important aspects like collaboration and connection, which have been challenging in this all-remote era, a big part of these conversations focus on having people back in offices and accessible to each other in the old, traditional ways. And I can’t help but think there is also an undercurrent of distrust about what employees are doing in their makeshift offices that fuels the desire to bring them back to a central space.
Being on my own, I make my office wherever I go. My office has been a hotel room, café table, a beach chair, the edge of a firepit, an outside table at a brewery…you get the picture. There have been times where this feels a little untethered, but more often than not, I find that my traveling office opens my imagination and thoughts in ways that just don’t happen when I’m in my home office, inside the same four walls I’m often looking at while I work.
This week, I took my work outside to a table at my hotel’s perch over the beach to do some writing. When I write, I toggle back and forth between the actual writing and staring out in the distance. In one of those staring-out-in-space moments, before I even realized I was mentally out at sea, my eyes landed on a woman down on the beach who was doing some exercises and had stood up and started spinning around and around. There is nothing particularly interesting about this, but having something to watch allowed my mind to wander productively (much like doodling or fiddling can also do) and spurred what I was creating.
This just doesn’t happen when I’m in my home office and I’m always thankful to myself when I force myself to get out to a new “office” because I end up with a burst of creativity and creation that rarely happens at home.
It seems to me that we are at a pivot point where we can scurry back to the comfort of the past or we can lean into the uncharted territory of asking ourselves WHY we are pushing ourselves back to the office, WHAT we really want to get from our work, and WHERE we might be able to do that. And be open to the possibility that it might NOT be the traditional answer.
This cycle class took its “office” out to the beach! If they can figure out those logistics, so can you!!