It ain’t WFH causing it given that I’ve been remote 100% for a few years and noticed a significant productivity dip in the pandemic. It’s that the little things that made life interesting are missing (occasional dinner at a restaurant, concerts, sports, going to my gym). So life has turned super monotonous and dull, so work and everything else suffers. It also doesn’t help that there’s just a level of constant ambient misery and sadness if you interact with anyone since everyone’s in a similar place.
Honestly, it’s annoying but I don’t worry too much. Everyone is in the weird place now, and it’s not forever, so I don’t beat myself up if my productivity is slightly down or if I don’t feel super perky.
I agree with all this. I've been WFH remote for a little over 3 years now. My productivity went down a little the first couple years, but it's dipped a lot more in the past year, even though I was already "used to" WFH.
There was one particular instance that really stood out to me last weekend. I ran into a friend of mine for the first time in a while who asked "How have you been?" to which I replied "Well, it's hard to say -- the days kinda just blend together". He responded, "Yeah, same". And we sorta just left it at that. Sure we could've talked about specific work troubles or the media we've consumed lately or whatever, but it felt like we already had this understanding of what each others' lives have been like in isolation since they're largely identical, so why try to fake the "normal" conversation in abnormal times?
I should add I do have other friends I'm closer to with whom I have regular conversations about the minutia of quarantine life, but with this particular friend it was like "Well...we got nothing right now, let's agree to talk once life becomes interesting again".
It's definitely not WFH. I've been WFH for 5+ yeas and my WFH accommodations are better than ever - a 100% remote company with a lot of empathy about how the pandemic is hitting people.
It's just different right now. I'm worn out. I feel dull. It doesn't matter if I crank for 8 hours or drag a day out to 16. It all feels the same right now.
I think another (largely unspoken) facet of WFH is that the monotony should lead to a normalization of working less: shorter hours, lowered expectations. People home with children, spouses, having to cook and clean more dishes... you can't expect workers to maintain the same level of productivity as they achieved pre-WFH life. The 40-hour work week was already an antiquated concept pre-WFH; in these difficult times the expectations must be tampered, and openly so.
Honestly, it’s annoying but I don’t worry too much. Everyone is in the weird place now, and it’s not forever, so I don’t beat myself up if my productivity is slightly down or if I don’t feel super perky.