Out of Office: The Big Problem and Bigger Promise of Working from Home
Charlie Warzel
Top 10 Best Quotes
“Working from home can be a meaningful act of control and resistance.”
“Many employers will attempt to ignore these best practices. The most shortsighted will resist change completely, forcing employees back into the office full-time. But many others, perhaps feeling the competitive pressure, will begrudgingly allow for some remote or hybrid work. They will likely frame flexibility much as they have before: as a benevolent corporate perk or, worse yet, as an opportunity only available to those who’ve earned the privilege, suggesting that it could be revoked at any time.”
“Every year, Gallup releases a wide-ranging study of the effects of “lack of engagement,” which it measures through a twelve-question survey asking employees to gauge their agreement with various statements, from “I know what is expected of me at work” to “At work, my opinions seem to count.” Within Gallup’s conception, “engagement” is a measurement of how much employees themselves are invested in the work but also of how much their managers and leaders are investing in them.”
“better work is, in fact, oftentimes less work, over fewer hours, which makes people happier, more creative, more invested in the work they do and the people they do it for.”
“as we discussed in the previous chapters, this sort of “flex” has a dark side: the ability to take your work anywhere means the ability for work to infiltrate all corners of your life,”
“You’ve heard these statistics, or something approximating them, before. No matter how many diversity, equity, and inclusion workshops your organization requires, if your leaders and managers aren’t truly diverse, then the monoculture will prevail.”
“Work expands to fill the time available to it, and digital technologies gradually and efficiently carved more and more time out of our nonwork lives.”
“When we work all the time, we volunteer less, we spend less time hanging out with people who are and aren't like us. We might love the place that we live, but we don't manifest that affection through actual involvement. Flexible work, done right, means working less and directing far more time, investment, and intention into the greater community.”
“When the haze of burnout begins to clear, fight the urge to feel *productive* and channel that into beginning to explore your own pleasures...Whatever your *thing* might be --and maybe there are many little things --the most important component should be aiming to make it as little like *work* as possible. This means resisting the very contemporary capitalist urge to commodify it in some way, even when people say to you, "Oh, you're so good at [this thing], you should sell it!" But it also means resisting the urge to master it, or display it in a way that transforms it into some mode of performance. You can want to *improve*, or to make something for others, but that's different from trying to be the best, and beating yourself up (or giving up entirely) because of you inadequacies.”
“Treating your organization as a family, no matter how altruistic its goals, is a means of breaking down boundaries between work and life, between paid labor and the personal. When you’re assaulted by powerful feelings of familial obligations from all sides—your actual family, but also your manager and your colleagues—it’s all the more difficult to prioritize. And in these situations, your actual family, which is often more forgiving, more malleable, and more attuned to your needs, will always suffer. The”
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Book Keywords:
work-life-balance, flexible-work-hours
