From Diligent to Dormant: How Remote Work Is Changing Our Personality

Is remote work turning us into more despicable people?

Han Cao
ILLUMINATION

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It’s been 4 years since the pandemic, the year is 2023. Remote working is still part of the norm, and it looks here to stay. Potentially.

Remote working was originally sold as a phenomenon, a ‘breakthrough’ for work. Suddenly, doing work in your PJs without stepping foot outside the house seemed a revelation.

Multiple articles were published about remote working yielding a spike of productivity and job satisfaction. Big tech companies like Microsoft and X (formerly known as Twitter) hailed working from home as the future of work.

Fast forward a few years and these same companies are hauling employees back into the office and threatening dismissals. These same articles have now backtracked and claiming that productivity from home reaches a lull and employees are loafing around.

My take on remote working productivity is this: remote working makes us more productive in the sense we focus and work harder to finish set tasks for the day because this means more time in the day to do whatever we want (i.e. doing chores, browsing the internet, making meal plans). So in that sense, it leads to a decline in productivity.

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Han Cao
ILLUMINATION

Storyteller, Pharmacist, Violinist. Just your regular guy fumbling through life.