I’m a behavioral scientist, though, so color me skeptical.
Tuesday, April 14, 2020
Why remote work is less productive
I’m a behavioral scientist, though, so color me skeptical.
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I’m a behavioral scientist, though, so color me skeptical.
14 comments:
School has always been the biggest influence in my life having a schedule. I get up, get dressed, and do all my work because I know I have to be somewhere and see people in person. I have to hold myself accountable because I have to be present whenever I show up for class or do an assignment. Now with remote learning, I could just miss all my classes because there is no in-person guilt or accountability happening. I feel like even though I have all this free time I am far less productive. I have at least three books sitting next to my bed, and trust me, I have ample time to read them but now because I have no schedule and nothing to force me to be anywhere on time I just sit in different spots around my room. One way that I’ve been trying to keep some sort of schedule is setting an alarm like I normally would for class, and keeping up with my planner. Also, despite my deepest wishes I do try to change clothes every day, because once my body is pretending I have a schedule I am more likely to be productive in this remote society.
To be entirely honest, when we transitioned to remote learning, I was anticipating the schooling process to be significantly easier, but that was the entire opposite for the past four weeks. Old habits of staying on routine have died hard, and any new habits that I have tried to start have not started. The idea that “work works” is one that I totally agree with and understand, because when I am working and actively doing things at CMU even the most boring and remedial of tasks still get done and still feel productive, but when I am in this work from home life, the big projects feel even larger and even bigger, and I lose motivation to do them. So with that all being said, I liked the ideas of ways to stay on track at the end and I hope to implement them into the next two weeks so I can finish off the semester strong (or as strong as it can be given the extenuating circumstances. Granted, I can’t really keep my video on all the time because of wifi issues, and I don’t think my Instagram followers would appreciate a daily report of my to-do list- I do think these ideas will be helpful in the long run.
Having done online schooling before I was really apprehensive about going digital because in past I had a nasty habit of putting off all of my work till the last second and stressing about it later because there was absolutely no way I could finish in the time left. With remote work the stress and pressure to finish things on time disappears and makes it harder to stay on track, or at least that's how it is for me. But so far it's been very productive. I've been finishing most of my work far in advance and while I'm initially glad that everything I meant to get done is done there's also nothing to do now. I could get started on work that's due a long time from now, read, which I want to do but also don't want to do, watch TV, or find another way of wasting time because what I really want to do I can't. Remote work can work well for me but it also feels very unrewarding compared to doing things in the atmosphere of school.
I completely agree with what this article says and appreciate that someone wrote an article about this. Online work is incredibly hard and I think everyone knows that now. I have gone through weird fluxes of either being really productive or getting absolutely nothing done, which is not the way back at school. It is really frustrating to basically see yourself become a different person with a brand new work ethic. The hardest part of this is that there is no in-person accountability. I haven’t skipped an online class yet but wow I think about it every single day how easy it would be. But yesterday one of my professors thanked me for always being in class and that is just what I needed to hear because that was the accountability I was lacking. If I skipped her class today I would have felt like I was letting her down. One thing this article said that I really wish more people would do is to schedule meetings and things back to back. My least productive time is the awkward time between two things where I tell myself it is not enough time to get something done when in reality it probably is.
I have been avoiding all covid-19 related articles since we got back from break, but I really feel like I want to put my two cents in here. We all know this to be true: online learning is harder, and we are way less productive and capable to retaining information during it. Even though we know this, I have only one professor who has put ANY effort into accounting for that. I know that it is not easy and something none of us necessarily anticipated, but it is something we definitely know now. All of my housemates have professors who recognized this early and altered their curriculum to be concept oriented rather than content oriented. I don’t blame CFA professors because this is unprecedented, but I hope they learned from this and will in the future find ways for us to get the same value out of our education without a refusal to alter the education. Just because we have the capability to “continue as normal” online, does not mean it was the right move. I hope in the future, professors will at the very least consider healthy ways to weave accountability into their online classes by forming better relationships with students and giving us the agency to shape the curriculum as a team during a time where so many of us are going through difficult times.
Online learning would be so different if I could still pop on over to the public library whenever I wanted, or borrow a desk at a friend's house, plop down, and hit the books. I can't, though, and that's the big problem for me. It's not that I can't collaborate or bounce ideas off my peers, though that definitely has a hand, but because I have no work-home separation anymore. I can't be doing work in a place I am meant to relax and live in. Just moving from the bedroom to the kitchen table is nowhere near enough distinction for me. Some professors have been quite lenient after moving online, and it is much appreciated, but some professors have maintained or even increased difficulty and work load, whether consciously or not, and I know almost all of my classmates are taking a major hit to their mental health and productivity.
I think we can all relate to this article incredibly well. It has been so hard to be productive while working from home. I have found that I just do not have the same motivation that I had before. I think one of the main reasons I have not felt very productive lately is that I was so used to having our freshman studio to do my work and get help and motivation from my peers. I feel so lucky that I have such a supportive and wonderful class. It was so great to be able to go to the studio to work and see other people doing their projects which in turn made me inspired to work hard on my own projects as well. I think also because we don’t have such a strict schedule anymore I find myself putting off work until the last second more and more.
How ironic, that this is my last comment for the week and it’s taken me the most effort to muster the strength to get out of bed and write this one. I am notoriously bad at starting and/or maintaining routine in my life, yes, but I am always able to get things done at school (paralleling this article, school takes the place of a normal workplace job). Before online school was a thing in my life, I had never really credited my productivity at school to accountability from the people I surrounded myself with. But. in hindsight, it was definitely the energy and mindset of Purnell and studio that helped me get everything done. It’s true that turning off the zoom camera reduces accountability, but sometimes you just have to do it because you’re not able to be alone in a room. The overall situation is just so unfortunate. The article offers advice to add more deadlines and things, but even that is hard to maintain in a time like this, when all I can seemingly manage to do is get out of bed like once a day. Being a student whose main body of work at the moment revolves around collaboration, the workday is mentally draining. Days feel longer, and there is no motivation left. However, having some remnant of a schedule to follow has been beneficial in getting me up and moving. I worry what's going to get done once summer hits and there is truly nothing holding me accountable.
Being less productive is something I know I am seriously struggling with and my guess is, many other people feel this as well. I couldn’t help but notice the similarities between mounting a show and having deadlines at work. Many deadlines are arbitrary, but the big decider of when something needs to get done is when the show opens. People will leap through all sorts of hurdles to make sure that the curtain goes up on opening night without a hitch. This definitely feels like more of a real deadline that one randomly set by your boss (or teacher.) Homework is interesting in that way because usually there is no reason it has to be done on a particular day, but there needs to be some sort of due date. Thinking about my parents' work for NASA, launch dates seem like they are constantly being pushed back. I believe the James Webb Space Telescope was originally slated to launch in 2009, but it is continually pushed back. However this is understandable, we don’t want NASA to just “make it work” and end up throwing millions of dollars in the toilet because something didn’t go exactly as planned.
This is too true. I have been much less productive since I have been home. Between my family pressuring me to participate in their normal family routines (dinner at 9pm daily, family time, home improvement, etc), my lack of motivation, and my INTENSE anxiety about all this, I have been struggling to get the work done. A lot of this stems from not being around the right people to encourage my own accountability. Elizabeth said something about “in-person guilt” and I relate to that heavily. While I have still been DOING all my work, I no longer really want to, whereas if I were at school, doing this work with my friends and having professors around to encourage accountability would make me feel more encouraged overall. I’m going to try to start doing some of the things this article mentions to see if they help me out at all. I am already doing some of them and they seem to be helping, so I guess we will see!
I’ve always been more productive with my work whenever I’m away from my home and in a different setting. I’ve taken a handful of online classes before in High School and it was always so easy to fall behind or not care about the work in them because I didn’t need to get up and physically go anywhere for them. There were no people who could look me in the eye and ask why I’m slacking or why the work isn’t done. And as introverted as I am, I do tend to get a lot more of my productive energy when there are other people around, and when I get to see my friends almost daily. Now that I’m home living with my family, similarly to Sammy, who expect me to help around the house and do some things with them on their time, it makes trying to do my own things a bit trickier. Especially since living in the same space as other people heightens my anxiety like crazy. I still get up for pretty much all of my classes, and I do my best to get completely dressed and ready as if I was going to go in person. I also try to work in different rooms than my bedroom since that tends to help as well. But I am struggling a lot to find the motivation to do any outside class stuff because I’m sitting at a computer for all of the classes, and sitting at it longer to do my homework makes me anxious.
Finally, an article that actually seems to understand how people are actually feeling about working remotely. Working exclusively from home has been incredibly difficult for me particularly because I worked hard in college to physically separate my school work with my personal life and suddenly that is no longer achievable. While I have not seen a decrease in my productivity whenever I sit down to work on something, I have seen a significant decrease in my motivation to get my work started. When we were learning in a public place, I had other people around to hold me accountable and motivated me to work, however, now my only motivation is deadlines and the desire to keep some sort of decent academic standing, although I know I have been slipping since remote instruction began. I found the tips at the end of the article actually helpful and plan on instituting some of them into my everyday life while we are all in quarantine.
I'm constantly trying to remind myself, and the people around me, that is completely okay to not be your most productive, motivated, and create itself during a global pandemic and social isolation. I see a lot of posts on social media saying that now is the perfect time to get your creative juices flowing and make something super big, like write a book, or do a mural, but everyone handles situations differently. And it's okay to feel burnt out and to feel unproductive. I think prioritizing our mental health and our physical health at this time is the most important thing, and if that doesn't include being your most “creative and productive” self that is okay! I know personally, lately I have had no creative motivation or inspiration which has been frustrating. I'm trying to take care of myself, and for me that doesn't mean throwing myself into my work. And that's okay! Global pandemic!
I like many (or dare I say most) other students have been struggling to transition to isolated online schooling. I have also been using some of these techniques to try to help my current situation. I start my day very early and focus my work in the morning and stop working at night if possible. I also have a 15-minute check-in with another person in the morning to essentially plan out my day and review the day before. These strategies have not made this easy, at all, but I do think they help. I find the Zoom Camera tip less useful to me. I have been called out for smiling in class (implying I wasn’t paying attention) and they were probably right. There is often commotion outside my window and my dog sometimes acts ridiculous and sometimes I get a funny text in the corner of my computer. (all distractions that would likely not be present in an in-person class). But the feeling of being scrutinized about how my face looks has stuck with me, Can I really not smile? This has caused keeping my camera on to be a stressful decision. I will be seen as a less dedicated student but I will also feel comfortable to look surprised when the police pull up to my neighbor's house to sing happy birthday.
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