Couch or Cubicle?

Frank Butler  00:17
Hello Busybodies, welcome to another episode of the Busyness Paradox. I'm Frank Butler here with Paul Harvey.

Paul Harvey  00:24
Good day.

Frank Butler  00:24
And on today's episode, we've got something interesting we're going to talk about with the idea of going back to the office and the question of, should you go back. But before we get into that, let's hit some busy bites real quick. A few episodes ago, we actually talked about moving or being able to work in live remotely from work, people, especially, I think it was around the idea of San Francisco, Silicon Valley area where real estate prices are astronomically expensive, people being able to work remotely and the pandemic has sped that process up. Well, there's been some interesting phenomenon going on around that idea of property. Now, what was once affordable, is now getting what I would say, less affordable,

Paul Harvey  01:07
And not just in San Francisco.

Frank Butler  01:09
And not just in San Francisco, there's a wall street journal article that's titled "In Phoenix, Million Dollar Homes Can't Sell Fast Enough." And it says basically, the city's high end housing market has seen a surge in out of state buyers, since the onset of the pandemic, the story by Amy Gamerman, it really just highlights something we're seeing happen throughout the country right now, we hear about how inventories for real estate has been incredibly low throughout. And that's just driving this huge increase in pricing. I've read stories on several sites about houses having 2025 offers all above list

Paul Harvey  01:52
In like, one day.

Frank Butler  01:53
Right in one day. And when a house doesn't appraise, you're on the hook for paying the overage out of your own money. So it's been wild out there. And I think that certainly does have an impact on this notion of should I be a remote worker. Now obviously, if you're in San Francisco, Silicon Valley area, and the real estate prices are so high as they are, you're probably still going to find it cheaper to live somewhere else, but not if they're talking about maybe giving you a salary reduction, if you do work remotely as some companies have been discussing. Who knows. The other article here though, titled, also Wall Street Journal, real estate frenzy overwhelmed small town America. This again, echoes what I was just saying about deep pockets these multiple bids just saying about how hard it is to now get a house, and to be a part of that buyer's market because of the craziness that's going on. And again, it ties back to that idea of remote work, right? If, if you're given the ability to work anywhere you want, even the small town areas are experiencing huge increases in pricings. And while it might be affordable that some people may be coming out of New York City or San Francisco, those people who are in that area who actually have to be in that area are not benefiting from that environment. So it's really leading to some larger societal challenges. I think across the country,

Paul Harvey  03:16
My blood pressure is increasing my you're talking because I'm imagining my wife listening to this episode and saying, "so why haven't we sold that other condo that we used to live in before that we now rent out?" Because we're very much experiencing that where I live in New Hampshire, about 30-ish miles over the border from Massachusetts. We've gotten a huge influx of people remote working in Boston. So little condos like we have that were cheap when we got it 10 years ago, or whenever that was, are not cheap now. And someone, a friend of mine, just sold her condo - a very similar condo - and yeah, first day, multiple bids, went for 40,000 above asking price. Geez, I'm thinking, oh, boy. Maybe we need to kick those tenants out. But that's part of the problem. Like, where would they go? They're both grad students that live there. Where would they go? Like they could not afford anywhere else right now...in small town America here. So, to your point about the societal challenges.

Frank Butler  04:18
Yeah, I think that's the idea is we're seeing this sort of its own epidemic that's going on. And you're squeezing a lot of people. And I know there's been a lot out there about for examples of the millennial generation and even Gen Z who are now entering the workforce saying, Hey, you know, you're my great grandparents or my grandparents, were able to not even have a college degree, go out and get a house and, you know, stay at home, Mom, take care of the kids, all of that, like at their age. And I get why people think that way and the challenges that come from that. I think there's a lot more to it than just simply income to being able to afford a house. I think part of it was, you know, populations change right? We've grown, the country is grown. And we're seeing a change of how people want to live.

Paul Harvey  05:04
Whenever people bring that up, it drives me crazy. I mean, yes, everything you just said is true. But we're always hearing about us to be able to raise a family of 17 on one income and have a huge house. Like, you're talking about a very short window of time, when the US was the only industrial power in the world that hadn't just been bombed to smithereens. Like, yeah, that was a good time to be in the American workforce. But that wasn't, like, normal.

Frank Butler  05:32
Well, and then you had the huge population growth after that, right, then the baby boom. And well, people like to say the boomers are responsible for this boat, kind of, but not really, it's their parents who are scared of response, the silent generation for having those kids, because there was success brings a lot of, as you say, we were the only industrialized nation that really wasn't absolutely level because of World War Two. And then on top of that, with that population growth, people were having to buy the houses. And so if you want to get an affordable house, you have to look further out, at the end of the day, that's the unfortunate reality. And the city centers everywhere have become incredibly expensive to live, even Chattanooga, I find the prices for 1000 square foot, one bedroom or two bedroom, one bath kind of place is astronomical. Whereas my wife and I live in the countryside, basically. And we got a lot of house for similar money, you know, and yeah, we have to drive a lot more.

Paul Harvey  06:26
It wasn't that long ago that the opposite was true, that no one wanted to live in the inner cities, and all the widespread disappointment about all these, like wonderful city centers that have gone to pot and now runs in the suburbs. And all of a sudden, it's flipped around again. Now there's this huge demand to live in the city centers and they become astronomical.

Frank Butler  06:45
Yeah, you know, it's funny, you mentioned that though I came across an article the other day about this phenomenon. I think I might have sent it to you. And it was about how, because the professional worker, the knowledge worker, is spending so much more time working, you know, so many more hours, which of course, here the Busyness Paradox were kind of trying to push against that 40 hour work week has been the de facto, and I should say, 40-plus Hour Work Week, being the real de facto standard. But what we're seeing is that that's been driving this influx of knowledge workers, professional workers moving into the city centers, because they're spending more time working, they want to spend less time commuting, and all those other things that go with that. So they're gentrifying those, the city centers again, because of that very phenomenon.

Paul Harvey  07:32
And I think the article that you sent me, maybe it's just me, reading what I wanted to read in it. But it kind of touched on what we talk about all the time, of the impression management aspect of these long hours being part of it, so that we actually have this like fake busyness-driven shift in socio economics happening in cities. It's kind of fascinating.

Frank Butler  07:57
It is fascinating, isn't it? We really are rewarding as you work the wrong attributes at the end of the day, right? Yeah. And that all comes back to this idea of faking busyness. And for what, because at the end of the day, we know more and more, at least we're seeing this, quote, unquote, rising grind lifestyle. So this is an article you had sent over from Inc, that basically gets into the idea that that rising grind lifestyle might actually be killing you. Right?

Paul Harvey  08:27
At the very least, it's probably not making you more productive. Exactly. Because you've got no slack resources, you're exhausted, your creative juices are spent.

Frank Butler  08:37
Yeah, yeah. And I think that's gonna be another episode, we're gonna definitely get into about this idea of, of slack. Or at least, I guess it's the theme of the underlying theme of The Busyness Paradox of saying, hey, it doesn't help you to work a lot. It doesn't make you a better worker. And in so we're gonna have more about that, obviously, in later episodes, but this one was really starting to build around that idea of the real estate aspect with the busy bytes of real estate. And we've weaved a little bit here into this idea of saying, hey, why is why are we seeing this phenomenon going on? That's what the whole idea of the knowledge professional worker wanting to be closer to the office. But this now leads to, I think, the core topic for today, which is, should you go back to the office, right? And again, this was one of those things that came up. I believe it was a wall street journal article, too. Yeah. Yeah. by Rachel Feinstein, I guess it's German. If it's not, I'm sorry. Yes.

Paul Harvey  09:30
Good thing you speak German. I would not have known how to pronounce that.

Frank Butler  09:34
Yeah, I think it's German. So I'll apologize, if Rachel listens to the podcast and says I said it wrong. I apologize in advance. But with that, though, there's a lot of questions around this. Don't, don't you think, Paul this idea of should you go to the office.

Paul Harvey  09:49
There's a lot of questions and not a lot of answers. Being in our line of work, you can't help but think about this kind of stuff. And it's difficult. As always, the answer ends up being "Well, it depends." Our favorite. But this is like a really big It depends, you know, and the Wall Street Journal article you mentioned makes this point that this is a once in a lifetime opportunity to make this call for yourself, we're not going to see again, a situation where the average employee has so much leverage over whether they work remotely go back to the old way of doing things, some hybrid of the two, there's a very small window of time here, where people can make this decision for themselves. So making the wrong one for yourself would be unfortunate. At least that's the way it seems like it's going to play out and nobody knows for sure. But you can really argue it both ways. I don't think there's an answer. That's right for everybody. But I think we're the real meat of the debate comes up is what are the pros and cons either way you go? And what's going to happen? Like, what's the prediction? Are we as a society going to generally shift back to how things were before the pandemic? Or is it always going to be different? And I've heard convincing arguments on both sides. I've always been of the mindset, always...well, I've generally thought since the pandemic started that this is probably accelerated some changes that were already happening in regards to remote work and such. But I don't really want to see things go back the way they were before. But it wouldn't surprise me either. But there's a lot of human nature involved. And we're so bent on the idea of impression management and the appearance of working hard, which involves being at the office long hours. And if we're so driven to do that, that cities, socioeconomics are changing because of it, it's not a stretch to say that after the pandemic is over, we will probably migrate back to putting in a lot of face-time at the office.

Frank Butler  11:41
Yeah, it's hard to unring that bell. Yes. And that's the key. Now, there's a lot of obvious benefits to remote work. We've talked about them in previous episodes, this article even talks about them. For a very simple thing, like just think about commute times for some people or having to eat lunch out, and the amount of money that costs you versus being able to have food at home and save the money doing that or eating healthier, or having the benefit of not having to look like you're always busy, you know, being able to go use the bathroom when you want without people monitoring your time spent those kinds of things. And just being able to get the job done. And here, again, we really believe in the idea of focusing on the output not time spent for a lot of reasons. But as you say, there's a lot of what's the word? Inertia? Yeah, there's a lot of inertia here, that will probably lead to at least some return to quote unquote, normal of how it was pre-pandemic. Now, I think there will be people who are going to benefit from this. And again, I think this is the bigger point from all of this is, we will see some people want to go back to the office, we'll see some of that return to normal, but there's going to be a swath of people who want to work remotely, who want to stay at home and work in their office. And that should be okay. There should be nothing wrong with that. But this comes back to that article by Rachel here in the Wall Street Journal  l. What happens if you do want to stay working remote, but you're not getting that face time? And who gets the rewards, then? Is it going to be the people who were in the office.

Paul Harvey  13:15
And your co-workers are. Exactly.

Frank Butler  13:16
Yeah, right. So I think that's the conversation we have to have. And for those of you who are managers, or aspiring to be managers, or leaders or whatever, there's different approaches or different views, we have to take at this to make sure that you're not getting biased based on or doing things that you don't necessarily think are in your best interest to make you the most productive.

Paul Harvey  13:37
I think, in the spirit of doing that, it is important to...we've kind of focused a little bit more on the benefits of remote work and the downsides of conventional office work, whatever you want to call it. But there are pros and cons going the other way too. One of the biggest to me, that was mentioned in this article, is the...she, uh, refers to it as preserving some sort of physical transition between work and home. I think that's a big one. If anything is going to drive me back to the office sooner than later, it would be that. I've always kind of fluctuated on this but I think there are times in your life where you really need that separation, for one reason or another. It can be psychologically healthy, and there's a lot of benefits. But if that involves a three-hour commute in heavy traffic, okay, maybe not so much then. And the flip side that we've talked about before, where you don't have the face time pressures at home, but we have a lot of ambiguity when you're working at home. Another point she makes in the article is that some people took the time they saved, not commuting and just work more because of it, partly because they were kind of overcompensating for not having the face time. So I'm going to be answering emails at three in the morning. You know, it can cut both ways. And I think a lot of it comes down to what's your personality? What's your psychology basically, as well as what are the financial and logistical realities of your workplace? What are other people doing that you work with? Are you concerned that you will miss out on a promotion? Because your coworkers get more face time than you if you work from home? Are you okay with that? Are your coworkers planning to go back? What's happening at your company? is a big part of it also.

Frank Butler  15:13
Yeah, I think that's so key. What do you hear your boss saying, I know, for example, that JP Morgan's, Jamie Diamond has said, I can't wait to get everybody back on the office, that's when we're going to be the best, we're creative. So if you're in an environment where your CEO or your higher ups are saying, we're looking forward to being back in the office, we're going back to the office, you're probably going to want to go back to the office, even if they leave you the option of remote work, you're probably going to find yourself an unbeneficial situation, if you don't go back in only because they're not going to create policies or systems to help make sure that people are being treated fairly, if some decide to work from home or do some sort of high flex type thing where they go in some days and not other days, or whatever, it's going to be HSBC that bank, I think we covered them in a busy Biden and other episode, they're cutting down several floors, and they're going to a pot desk environment is what they call it. So basically, they get the- they're getting rid of office space, because most of their executives are traveling anyway. And they're gonna have some level working from home, and those kinds of things. So why do they need to have as much office space, so they're gonna have to come up with systems to help ensure that they're treating everybody fairly, because of the fact that they're traveling a lot, or they're getting to work at home, too. So they might have this hot death situation. But that's going to certainly have an impact on how they evaluate people,

Paul Harvey  16:39
I think that might actually be beneficial for them. If they're restructuring their office layout and the real estate holdings, based on the assumption of more remote work, I would imagine that that's just going to kind of happen, that they'll build in policies and evaluation norms to accommodate those remote work, folks, I'd be more concerned about the companies that are just opening up the offices again, and saying it's up to you.

Frank Butler  17:06
Exactly. I would too, because you know, you're going to be concerned about how they're going to evaluate people. And if they're saying, Hey, we're open, but they're not talking about how they're changing either office structure or other processes around evaluations for those who decide to work remotely, then yeah, I think you've got something to discuss. And again, in that situation, if you do find you're in the situation where there's not a lot of direction, that's something that you'd probably also want to look at, with regards to how your boss is doing it, right, your direct boss, that's going to be the one evaluating your performance. If he or she's deciding to work more often from home than going into the office, that could mean something that you'd be better served, or you're at least able to do that as well. But you'd also probably want to make sure there's some face time going on when he or she's in the office, as well. So you'd want to make those kind of allocations. Now, again, there are those people who want to work remotely, but move somewhere else. Again, that's going to come down to what kind of policies are in place already? How is the company going to evaluate you? And are there going to be concerns about? Are you going to get passed up on promotions for not being face to face? That's something that again, you have to read the room? In a sense, yeah. What are you hearing the upper level management saying, What are you hearing your direct manager say, this is that time that you want to have those conversations with your management?

Paul Harvey  18:26
Because it's not weird to ask about that kind of thing right now.

Frank Butler  18:28
Not at all this is the time to do it

Paul Harvey  18:30
A year or two from now might be like, "eh, what?" Like you said, there's inertia and that inertia is going to return. There's inertia now, there's gonna be more inertia later.

Frank Butler  18:39
Well, and that goes back to people don't like change, right? Yes, we were forced to change for the pandemic. And while there's a lot of people who liked working from home, there's a lot of people who didn't, I hear it all the time. I can't wait to be back in the office. I'm like, why not love it, you know, but that's true. It's one of those that everybody's different. And that's one of those things that I think is going to be interesting in the future, though. How are people going to be attracted to new jobs, right? If you're in an institution that makes you come back, and that's not for you, you're probably going to look for another organization that has culture that allows you to work more remote or more frequently from home.

Paul Harvey  19:16
And now you've got the skills to do that. Have you ever worked remote before? Of course I have you idiot. We all did. Right? But stepping into that lifestyle, that career path of the remote workers gonna be a lot easier for most people now.

Frank Butler  19:31
Yeah. And I think that's going to be a different question. It probably won't even ask it anymore, is probably going to be part of the recruiting package. Hey, come work for us. You get to work remote. We've got great promotion plans in place, blah, blah, blah. I think it's going to be certainly something we're going to see utilized as a recruiting tool for some companies. So again, read the room. Be careful. Now, going back to something Paul had said earlier to one of the things is that there's the idea of sometimes it's good to commute in having that separation between work and home. I will say that one of the things that keeps me I would say a little bit more centered, in a sense to having zones in your house that you do not do work, right. So your bedroom should be someplace that you never check, email me, I want to check your email, you got to get up, leave the room and do it, you got to have safe zones. I like to keep my work itself to two particular rooms, primarily my office at the house. But I think that's something that you need to do is find specific boundaries, create structure around work in home life, and stick to it as a good boy, I think that's going to help you if it's going to help your mentality to just have zones that are for work, and zones that are for life, right for your home life for your personal life, family life, whatever it is. So make sure you create boundaries, even if it has to be a carved out place in a house or an apartment, make sure there's a designated area that's going to be for work and then make sure there's a designated area. That's no work. It might be even your just your bed. So you might be in a studio, make that bed the safe zone. 

Paul Harvey  21:03
Yeah, I've even heard of people that go outside in the morning, walk around the block, and then walk back into their house through another door if they have one, to create some of that psychological separation. Yeah. And it sounds ridiculous on the surface. But I think it makes a lot of sense. 

Frank Butler  21:18
It does, right? I think so too. If you were used to listening to music on the way into work, or a podcast or something or reading a little bit, you can do the same thing to you can emulate that. Throw in some earbuds go walk around the house, or walk around the building, take a walk on your street, or

Paul Harvey  21:33
Listen to at least three episodes of The Busyness Paradox, and then you know, start your day.

Frank Butler  21:37
There you go. That's exactly, catch up on the Busyness Paradox. But no, I think there's a lot of ways of at least trying to create some level of well-being in your own home if you want to work from home. And if you can work from home, as we start to exit the pandemic, which is what's going on now we're starting to see an end to the blanket processes and requirements that the pandemic had, we're starting to see face masks, requirements being lifted. For those who are vaccinated, we're seeing people going back to the office. I know, for example, here at work, if you've been vaccinated, you no longer have to wear a mask on campus. Really. Yep, that's the new one here. So it's going back to a new normal, but it's still going on. Now. We'll see how long it takes though before they say they want everybody back regularly. 

Paul Harvey  22:25
That's why this is the time to be having this conversation with yourself and your family. Because, however things are going to end up, they're going to end up that way sooner than later. Like, this is the time to figure out what you want for yourself. 

Frank Butler  22:36
Exactly. And that could mean a lot of things, it might mean that you're at the wrong company. So you need to start planning for a job transition, looking at getting your resume brushed off and dusted up and looking pretty and getting those qualifications in there and start looking for jobs and finding those companies that are offering you the ability to work remotely. Or maybe you're in a company that's saying, Hey, we're going all remote, because it's going to save us on real estate. And you go you know, I really want to have that face time. So you go find an organization that's going to allow you to at least be back in the office, if that's what you're looking for, if that's what you want. Yeah, exactly. And I think for employers, this is something important to understand your ability to be flexible from here on forward and giving people an array of options. Now, obviously, not all jobs have this flexibility. But for those that do, it's time to consider how do we create policies and practices around that, that's going to make sure that everybody is being treated fairly.

Paul Harvey  23:31
Or are you going to be missing out on good employees? Because you're not offering them the options that they're looking for?

Frank Butler  23:37
Exactly, exactly.

Paul Harvey  23:39
And that might not be a thing as much in some industries, in some areas of the world as others. It's like the reverse of your read the room. Read the...read the place where you live. What's it what's the vibe?

Frank Butler  23:50
Yeah, what's the vibe? Yeah. But there's a lot going on. So I think there's a lot of things that you can do to make sure your environments better. And at the end of the day, I think that's one of the things that we do this podcast for is to help you with tips, tricks, how to think about things, helping create structure and what have you, to make work life better for you. That's why we say hey, reach out to us ask us questions. We'll dive into it. We'll cover a topic, we want to hear from you. 

Paul Harvey  24:15
And that's why we say listen to at least three episodes of the show every morning, without fail.

Frank Butler  24:20
Without fail

Paul Harvey  24:20
You need that structure 

Frank Butler  24:21
That's right. And you might get a good ad or two in there every once in a while.

Paul Harvey  24:25
You never know which episodes will be sponsored

Frank Butler  24:28
That's right.

Paul Harvey  24:28
Or by whom 

Frank Butler  24:29
Surprise sponsor. Well, thanks for listening to another episode, everyone.

Paul Harvey  24:34
Good day.  

Paul Harvey  24:37
The Busyness Paradox is distributed by Paul Harvey and Frank Butler. Our theme music is adapted from its business time by Jemaine Clements and Bret McKenzie. Our production manager is Justin Wuntaek. We hope you enjoyed this episode. And we'd love to hear from you. Please any questions, comments or ideas for future episode topics to input at Busyness paradox.com, or find us on Twitter. Also, be sure to visit our website, busynessparadox dot com to read our blog posts and for links to the articles and other resources mentioned in today's show. Finally, please take a moment to rate and follow or subscribe to our show on Apple podcasts, Spotify, I-Heart Radio, Google podcasts, or your preferred podcast provider.

Transcribed by otter.ai