Why I Don’t Like Remote Work

everyday life 1 Minute

I like flexibility; I always liked the option of being able to work remotely, but not the idea of working remotely full-time. This WBEZ podcast mentions some of the issues which are important to me regarding working from home. If I would be honest with myself, I have to admit that the most important factor for me is a relatively small and seemingly unimportant thing – the lack of physical movement when you work from home.

A funny story is that twenty years ago, it was just the opposite: when I worked from home, I had the option of going biking during the lunch break, and I didn’t have to time my morning workout to make sure I was not late for the train. Back then, working from home meant more physical activity, and now it’s the opposite.

When it comes strictly to work, I know that 1) you can be very efficient while being remote;2) I had exceptionally successful emote projects; 3) you can have social interactions working remotely. But you can’t seamlessly incorporate move moving into your everyday life.

… and yes, there is nothing better than whiteboarding!

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Published by Hettie D.

My name is Henrietta (Hettie) Dombrovskaya. I was born in Saint-Petersburg, Russian (actually, back then – Leningrad, USSR) in 1963, and immigrated to the United States in 1996. I love Saint Petersburg, the city I was born and raised in, and I think it’s one of the most beautiful places in the world. Similarly (but differently) I love Chicago, and can’t imagine myself moving somewhere else in the observable future. I have three children, Igor, Vlad and Anna, all adults living on their own, and one (so far) granddaughter Nadia. I also believe that my children are the best thing that happened in my life. As for my professional life, I am working in the field of Information Technologies. When I was twenty, I’ve declared that the databases are the coolest thing invented and that I want to do them for the rest of my life. Thirty plus years later, I still believe it’s true, and still, believe that the databases are the best. These two statements together imply that I think a person can have it all, and indeed, I think so! Keep reading my journals to find out how I did it.

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2 thoughts on “Why I Don’t Like Remote Work”

  1. Yeah, a lot of success in remote work comes from consciously identifying areas that are impacted and being intentional about addressing them. When I worked from office I did 3000 steps per day between parking and cafeteria, and had to supplement the activity at the gym. When I started working remotely, my steps fell below 1500 and the gyms were closed 🙂 My husband build himself a gym in the garage, and I started adding my “walking routine” to the calendar. And once I realized that one big chunk didn’t really work, I started breaking it down into multiple, sometimes scheduling “walking 1:1s” with coworkers where we didn’t need to work together, just shared where each other is at, mentoring advice etc. With some of them I realized not seeing their face during the virtual walk didn’t work for me, so I had to switch those back to video. Lots of fine-tuning to figure out what actually works.
    It reminded me the mental load I had at the grocery store after moving to the US. I didn’t realize how many decisions I made on auto pilot. I knew brands I trusted, colors of the boxes to pick up and go. And here I had to review each product’s ingredients to understand is it butter or not 🙂 My head hurt until I was able to establish new patterns and switch back to auto pilot.

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  2. Grocery shopping in another country is a traumatic experience! I remember how scary it was to go grocery shopping in Helsinki for the first time on my own. And how proud I was in Budapest when I traveled with my co-workers, and I knew how to shop there because it was very similar to Finland 🙂

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