Considering where to work

Many of us now have more choice where we work, at home at the office or anywhere else, at least some days.

Neuroscience research makes it clear when some spaces can work out better than others:
• Is there a place at your home (or elsewhere) where you can (and be honest with yourself) do your job well? Is it biophilically designed (for more info, read this LINK), flooded with natural light? A corner of the dining room table with the always at home (somehow) and always arguing neighbours in earshot is a challenging location in which to think great thoughts. Part of having the right place at home to work is having the right scene behind you during Zoom calls, but that’s gotten easier now that some many video conferencing systems allow you to change the background behind you—but you can’t make that sort of switch if your company culture frowns upon it. If you need to create a background, take a look at this article
• If you’ll be doing something creative with others, being all together in the same place at the same time is a very good idea. People also focus most intensely on in-real-life events than ones from which they are separated by a video camera. If you need your team to be putting all its brainpower to work, you need your team all in one place.
• When you’ll be remote and others are onsite during a meeting, what will you look like to them? Will your head be small and lower than theirs? That sort of configuration doesn’t generate much respect for what you have to say.
• Will you be on so many Zoom calls each day that you’ll get Zoom fatigue—because you can’t ever break eye contact or move around, because you are looking at people onscreen whose heads seem too close, because you spend a disconcerting amount of time staring at yourself in your small video square?