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Last week it was Goldman Sachs. The week before it was JPMorgan Chase. It won’t be a shock if next week another Wall Street bank tells workers they should be ready to return to the office regularly in June or July.
In places where the pandemic shows signs of relief, it is quickly possible to imagine the resumption of some appearance of normal working life. Or is it?
I hadn’t realized how much Covid had changed my view of normalcy until the other day an unsolicited email went through my spam filter to announce the best time management trick.
“Start waking up before dawn,” shouted someone who called himself a “growth-minded hacker” from Silicon Valley.
By 2020, I would have calmly pressed the delete button and continue with the day. This has been my overall focus on almost every idea that increases productivity.
People I admire swear bullet magazines, time-boxing, time-piece and other things that promise to transform lazy useless lazy addicts into hard-load efficiency models. I’ve never been able to convince myself that some are worth it, although I make an exception for the principles behind the Pomodoro Technique, in which you set a timer to cause intense work throughout the day.
Either way, the sight of this Silicon Valley email sparked an unexpected wave of exasperation. Who has time to think about time management at a time like this, I found myself splashing mentally.
My workday is usually spent in a zoom out of meetings and interviews, and it’s a lot easier than others. I don’t try to adapt to caring for young children or school-age children, unlike some exhausted friends.
“I don’t know how I’ll find the time to recover from this year,” one said the other day with great work. Given that we’re both happy to continue working, it’s not uncommon to see productivity levels appear to have risen in many companies, including those where Covid sent people home to work.
More than 80% of leaders with a remote workforce suddenly said their businesses were at least as productive as before, to study in Europe found last year. More than 40% said they were somewhat or significantly more productive.
But that was in 2020. As the pandemic has worn off this year, some are starting to worry. “We have begun to see a decline in employee participation. It is simply not possible to maintain such levels of productivity, ”Sunil Prashara, chief executive of the Project Management Institute, a professional group, told a conference last month.
In other words, many workers need more than one diary to help them cope with burnout. That’s why it’s frustrating to be told that now is the time to get up before dawn to get even deeper into our busy days. In fact, the Covid crisis has exposed a fundamental flaw in the whole idea that we can move towards productivity by changing our routine. Now millions have seen for themselves that a broader systemic change is needed (as if they are being asked to work at home at once) to make many efficiency improvements possible.
Compressing daily commutes from a daunting two-hour morning to a second walk to the kitchen table means I’m starting to work earlier and quieter than ever.
Once there, I don’t need to download any apps to help deal with the distractions of an open and busy office, as these diversions no longer exist. As American scholar Cal Newport demonstrated in his recent book, A world without email, the monumental escape time caused by working email is a systemic flagellum this cannot be solved simply by playing with spam filters or writing better subject headers.
Like so many other things in modern working life, the problem requires a much more serious structural overhaul than anything a single person can achieve, no matter how soon he gets out of bed every morning.
pilita.clark@ft.com
Twitter: @pilitaclark
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