https://fortune.com/2023/02/02/remote-work-why-do-i-miss-commuting-psychological-detach-recovery-liminal-space-management-study/
In our recently published conceptual study, we argue that commutes are a source of “liminal space”—a time free of both home and work roles that provides an opportunity to recover from work and mentally switch gears to home.
During the shift to remote work, many people lost this built-in support for these important daily processes. Without the ability to mentally shift gears, people experience role blurring, which can lead to stress. Without mentally disengaging from work, people can experience burnout.
Remote work actually bad, come back to the office.
psych studies have revealed that the optimal commute length is closer to 0 minutes than 2 hours, also conceptual studies are not real, it's eggheadspeak for "we did some googling, lmao"
FUCK OFF!
I feel like I could leave it at that but SERIOUSLY FUCK OFF and quit fucking gaslighting me. My commute WAS part of my fucking work day whether they were willing to pay me for it or not. My gear switching to be off work is when I do my fucking dog walk or pick my kiddo up from school. You'll get me back to the office when you and every one of your competitors literally removes the fucking option.
Do you guys have any fucking clue how amazing it is after the years of hustling and organizing childcare and pickups and whatnot to be able to clock in at my desk two feet from my bed in my pjs to start grinding away and still be able to take a minute to go make my 7 year old pancakes and enjoy cartoons with him before I get back to it (especially now that virtual kinder is over)???? The world going to shit keeps me up at night, sure, but I haven't felt this happy or satisfied in my personal life in fucking decades!!!!!
I haven’t felt this happy or satisfied in my personal life in fucking decades!!!
:porky-scared-flipped: That is unacceptable
If management could get their heads out of their own asses for like five god damned minutes they would quickly see that WFH is much better from a productivity standpoint.
Here are some of my most vivid memories from the office:
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The self-appointed "Office Mom" holding me hostage for the entire duration of my lunch break, talking at me. She sucked literally countless hours from my life and I don't remember a single thing she said. She would do this to everyone. If you would walk into the break room when she had someone else hostage they'd just give you a pathetic "Please help me" look, and you'd just shrug and think "Sorry, pal, it's your turn today. Nothing I can do."
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Buddy asking to go for a smoke break with me every two hours
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The guy who wouldn't stop blasting his fucking reggaeton music when I was trying to focus
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Overhearing everyone else's never-ending phone calls with clients
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The mandatory "lunch and learn" huddles (which the company actually just did because they got tax breaks somehow)
In-office work only exists to make middle managers feel important lol.
I jest, but I unironically think that if a bunch of socialists started a small business like a pub, it would be more well-run than many large scale corporations.
Who wants to join me in building the Brewshevik Party Pub?
Totally.
Actually, a local brewery here is actually transitioning to a worker-owned model!
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I'm sorry for you if you think this is entirely wrong because if you have a good public transport, cycling or walking option that doesn't eat up too much of your day (say 15 mins each way or so) this is absolutely true. It's just that doing it by car always sucks major fucking ass, because driving a car sucks major fucking ass
There's also the option of just going for a walk. After I finish my WFH job I just go for a walk. Does exactly what this article wants without me having to commute; granted you have to be able to walk so goes back to your point.
Same, but my comment is supposed to be much more in the line of "If you have to or want to go to $job, that should be pleasant". WFH isn't an option for everybody, either due to what the job is or due to personal preference, especially among older people. If you're going to go there anyway, it seems like a good idea that it'd fulfill some public good, like letting people relax or do mild exercise.
Fully agreed, yeah. A 5 minute walk to your job as a cashier where you can sit sounds pleasant enough. A two hour drive to do the same thing where you can't even sit is the sign of a demonic society.
Yeah, absolutely. I think the discussion here is understandably, yet regrettably, very much car brained. A commute can be nice, theoretically, allthough I recognize this is basically a far fetched utopia for most people
From a car-brained perspective this article doesn't even make sense. Many moons ago I commuted an hour each way for work by car, and it would take me another hour upon getting home just to decompress from all that driving. I moved and started commuting an hour by train and my god what a difference. Made my life so much better, suddenly I was reading for two hours a day instead of fearing for my own life.
It's not contributing much to the discussion but I once lived within a 2 minute walk from my workplace and that was genuinely too little. Zero time to do the mental shift and if I wanted to do anything other than go home the option of "go home first, rest for a bit, then do thing" was way to captivating and always lead to doing nothing, as I was already home. I genuinely gained something from having a bit of a cycleable commute.
Again though, disclaimer, that's a privileged as fuck position and I understand the ire against the notion. I just want to say that a bit of an active travel commute can be a good thing occasionally in the utopian sense and we're very, very far away from this in most of the world.
At one point back in the day my car broke down and I didn't have the savings to fix/replace it. Had to replace my 20 minute drive with a 2 hour bus trip until I saved up enough (love my underfunded public transit). It sucked, but I will say I enjoyed being able to read on the bus.
You know you can just go for a walk, right? There's no need to involve an office in this.
Also, my city has decent public transit, but living under an hour commute would have rent costs of approximately half my aftertax income. And my income is a bit higher than the median HH income for the city. It goes beyond just public transit infrastructure. Living 15 minutes from the office isn't feasible for most people.
I think the average commuting time here was an hour each way pre-covid.
From fortune magazine? This is part of an ongoing back to office propaganda campaign they've been doing for 18 months. They're trying to make sure business leaders are on the same page because the push might fail if workers have the option.
subtext: there's money out there for anyone willing to write an article that might resuscitate commercial real estate
WfH but maybe go for a walk or bike ride?
Riding a train or bus can be nice sometimes, but not during rush hours (especially in underserved :amerikkka: ).
No, you might enjoy that and then associate it with the good part of life that doesn't involve wage slavery.
So I followed up on a couple of the original studies citations for claims about the importance of the 'transition time'.
One study is literally just about the infringement of work onto home life, and how it makes people unhappy. They have a claim that a 30 minute commute time is a ideal, they do not explain how this value was determined.
The other citation was around the claim that commuters typically desire at least SOME commute time. Their supporting citation was a study that posed the preference question to people of whether they would prefer to maintain their current commute or teleport home.
Turns out the only groups that on average enjoy their commutes are the people who walk/cycle, around 65-75%. Car and transit users opt to teleport 75% of the time.
For 'commuters' in answer to why they prefer their commute, (they failed to properly group the responses by commuting category of course), desire for a liminal/transition space/time has so few responses it's lumped into the 'other' category. So out of an N of like 650 people, there's like 15 tops who support this fucking idea that people find commuting desirable for reasons of avoiding 'role blurring'. Which if you interrogate, is ACTUALLY people complaining about bosses infringing on their time off during the pandemic. Because when you're always reachable, you're always working.
None of this is supported, all of it is stupid stupid stupid stupid. Fuck the authors of this stupid fucking study, fuck fortune magazine. Fuck you, fuck me.
tldr: if you enjoy commuting it's actually because you're exercising. The desire for a 'liminal space' is actually people wishing their boss didn't expect them to reply to email off of work hours.
if i could start my day with a 30 minute bike ride i would be so happy. instead i have a 25 mile commute by car that takes 40 minutes one way :(
I kind of get where they're coming from, but I just take my dog for a long walk after work to a similar effect. Which also, unlike a commute, makes me feel good. Like I'm just a vegetable after an in-office day, after a wfh day I usually can get stuff done and enjoy my spare time.
Fortune Magazine understands its demographics
Middle Managers who think they're big time CEO's
This is what those fuckheads want to hear
I'd say that hour drive is at least as much something you need to wind down from as work
No, it refers to spaces of transition, or that straddle a threshold or boundary.
picture of a person in a subway
You know, if my primary association of "commuting" was listening to music or browsing my phone idly for 15-30 minutes, I might agree with the premise. But in America "commuting" is exposing yourself to road rage for 30 minutes to an hour, which can't be good for everyone's mental health.
Shut up about liminal spaces SHUT UP ABOUT LIMINAL SPACES
Going to journalists homes and forcing them to log off and touch grass at gunpoint
Oh my god dude
It is literally impossible to decompress while driving a car. Any stress that happens right before or during the drive necessarily builds up and cannot go away until you park
Absolute clown shit
