Nowadays the majority of my working hours are in discussions, either passively listening or taking notes or explaining or negotiating things.
With the remote working nature, even the simplest discussions and interactions need to go through elaborate chaos of noise, dropped calls, and overlapping voices. Oh I almost forgot the great villians: Echo and Delay.
Also, it seems like everyone is almost always in discussions/meetings, so its hard to have quick drawing-on-the-board discussions or idea generations over a cup of tea.
I find the impacts to be mainly on topics which require convincing people, sending subtle reassuring messages using body language, and generally to capture everyone's attention. The people you want to convince are either busy doing something else when you are carefully articulated sentences are pronounced, or they have connection problems or worse they misunderstood your voice modulations.
Also working from home, with a small kid and spouse also employed, meetings sometimes become a nuisance as it disrupts the family ceremonies like lunch,dinner and conversations. This is also partly due to the lack of any fixed start or end timelines for a working day. At least when we used to commute to office, one could just be away from the seat ( be it sipping tea, or at restroom, taking a call, puff or even gone home for the day ), and others would let you be unless its urgent. Now, all this happens through meetings, especially with colleagues of different geographic regions competing to fit the schedules into those of others.
My son who has just started speaking already has words like Appa Amma Meeting, Aptop ( laptop ) in his vocabulary and imitates me typing with headphones on, sipping green tea.
With no boundaries between office life and personal life, there is no space for social life either. And there is nothing to blame the office life for that since the virus takes the primary blame for it anyway.
Now with all this chaos around us, when work requires one to think deeply and extract its gems, there is an interesting condition. When one is able to sink oneself into the deep workings of the mind, making connections, all the din outside fades away, replaced by quiet neurons at work. But as always the deep work sessions last but for a few minutes. Many a times the deep sessions happen by themselves like at loo or while doing something else which require mechanical repetitive actions. Also the time just before sleep invades at night and just before sleep retreats in the morning brings along with it various insights which enhance or correct the previous day's deep thoughts.
The meditative state of the mind is so satisfying and enriching that one yearns to keep going back there and it requires significant investment in isolation and time. So naturally, it keeps many shallow tasks aside, which requires others around you to pick them up or if it suits, they'll just wait for you to get back to it.
With the remote working nature, even the simplest discussions and interactions need to go through elaborate chaos of noise, dropped calls, and overlapping voices. Oh I almost forgot the great villians: Echo and Delay.
Also, it seems like everyone is almost always in discussions/meetings, so its hard to have quick drawing-on-the-board discussions or idea generations over a cup of tea.
I find the impacts to be mainly on topics which require convincing people, sending subtle reassuring messages using body language, and generally to capture everyone's attention. The people you want to convince are either busy doing something else when you are carefully articulated sentences are pronounced, or they have connection problems or worse they misunderstood your voice modulations.
Also working from home, with a small kid and spouse also employed, meetings sometimes become a nuisance as it disrupts the family ceremonies like lunch,dinner and conversations. This is also partly due to the lack of any fixed start or end timelines for a working day. At least when we used to commute to office, one could just be away from the seat ( be it sipping tea, or at restroom, taking a call, puff or even gone home for the day ), and others would let you be unless its urgent. Now, all this happens through meetings, especially with colleagues of different geographic regions competing to fit the schedules into those of others.
My son who has just started speaking already has words like Appa Amma Meeting, Aptop ( laptop ) in his vocabulary and imitates me typing with headphones on, sipping green tea.
With no boundaries between office life and personal life, there is no space for social life either. And there is nothing to blame the office life for that since the virus takes the primary blame for it anyway.
Now with all this chaos around us, when work requires one to think deeply and extract its gems, there is an interesting condition. When one is able to sink oneself into the deep workings of the mind, making connections, all the din outside fades away, replaced by quiet neurons at work. But as always the deep work sessions last but for a few minutes. Many a times the deep sessions happen by themselves like at loo or while doing something else which require mechanical repetitive actions. Also the time just before sleep invades at night and just before sleep retreats in the morning brings along with it various insights which enhance or correct the previous day's deep thoughts.
The meditative state of the mind is so satisfying and enriching that one yearns to keep going back there and it requires significant investment in isolation and time. So naturally, it keeps many shallow tasks aside, which requires others around you to pick them up or if it suits, they'll just wait for you to get back to it.
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