After working at home, for ourselves, on fixed priced work for over 12 months I’m finding it difficult to work in an office again. It’s not just feeling cut off from the world…it the change in mentality.
In an environment where everything is measured in time and not deliverables your focus quickly changes. Instead of getting something finished by x date, new rules appear:
– don’t work more than 40hrs in a week
– don’t work later than 6pm
– needing to “build up hours” to leave early
So to make sure you’re fitting into these timing rules you become a clock watcher..well a minor one at least..what time did you get to work, how long for lunch, how long till i have to be out of the building, have i done enough or too many hours in the week.
So instead of people concentrating on what they need to get done and working the hours they need when they need to, they falsly structure their day around how many hours they need to do. While I’ve been in this environment previously it’s a much more apparent shift after working when i wanted/needed to achieve a goal and not having to justify that to anyone bar myself (if i get the work done in time). Having said that, doing a 40 hour week is pretty novel atm.