This week I took a look at my calendar and realized that I´ve spent more than 100 days working from home. It feels like time has stood still this whole time, but when I look through my calendar and my journal I see that in that time, I actually managed to get a lot of things done.
These past hundred days have been filled with online meetings like Zoom calls, e-mails about all sorts of things, like Coronavirus, race inequality, reopening procedures, but lately also about seminars and courses. Having been through this period of time and still being able to get things done makes me confident that we can adapt to more than we think. In general, I´ve enjoyed working from home, especially as my youngest children are still toddlers. It has given me the chance to see them grow and learn. A 100 days ago my 3-year-old was saying one-word sentences and now he speaks so well most of us know what he wants to relate to us.
But of course, after 100 days at home, there are things you miss, like going out for a stroll without masks. Interacting in a “natural” way with co-workers. Random treats on-route to work, at work, or on the way home. I fell like my days are more planned out nowadays, even though they aren´t. Random trips to the supermarket or browsing around the shop don´t happen anymore. At the same time, I don´t know from one day to the next what will happen. Will it be 8 hours of focused work with minimal interruptions? Will it be 4 hours but with better results and more thorough analyses than what I could perform on a regular 8-hour day at the office? I have no idea. Obviously, no random chatting with co-workers makes the day more focused. But at home I still get social interaction with my family, so in all, a workday probably contains as much social interaction to work ration regardless if I´m physically in the lab or working from the comfort of my own home.
In all, I would be happy to go back to the lab, but I don´t mind working from home either. Let´s see how the next 100 days will evolve!