If you ask people where they go when they really need to get work done, very few will respond “the office.” If they do say the office, they’ll include a qualifier such as “super early in the morning before anyone gets in” or “I stay late at night after everyone’s left” or “I sneak in on the weekend.”
A busy office is like a food processor—it chops your day into tiny bits. Fifteen minutes here, ten minutes there, twenty here, five there.
The big transition with a distributed workforce is going from synchronous to asynchronous collaboration. Not only do we not have to be in the same spot to work together, we also don’t have to work at the same time to work together.
At first, giving up seeing your coworkers in person every day might come as a relief (if you’re an introvert), but eventually you’re likely to feel a loss. Even with the substitutes we’ll discuss, there are times when nothing beats talking to your manager in person or sitting in a room with your colleagues, brainstorming the next big thing.
Your