How to Be Productive After Returning to the Office
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Money Briefing for Monday, November 1st. I'm J.R. Whelan for The Wall Street Journal. It's been a long 18 months of cats and dogs and kids and nearby leaf blowers distracting people working from home. But now that employees are returning to the office, many face a whole new challenge. Like, how are they going to get any work done?
We're kind of like anxious and weird about going back to the workplace. We don't really know where like the rules and boundaries are. And people are just so starved for socialization that they just want to chat, chat, chat.
That's WSJ Work and Life columnist Rachel Feinzig. Coming up, we'll talk to her about how workers and managers can shield themselves from office distractions and stay productive. That's after the break.
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Remember adjusting to working from home? 18 months later, many workers are adjusting all over again to going back to the office.
How are workers’ distractions changing now that offices are reopening?
But besides having to wear work clothes and dealing with the commute, many face the daunting task of working amid the distraction of coworkers. Our work and life columnist, Rachel Feinzig, has been talking to career and workplace experts about how to focus in a crowd. And she joins me now. Rachel, thank you so much for being with us.
Thanks so much for having me.
So, you know, Rachel, we're talking about noise and distractions in the office, but working from home wasn't exactly like working in a peaceful public library, right?
No, I mean, there were like kids and, you know, people had their spouses suddenly at home. We were in like tight spaces. We didn't, you know, it happened overnight that we were stuck here. leaf blowers in the suburbs we had this like great story about people being driven crazy by lawn care so yeah it was not it was not this like bastion of peace at home but i think people kind of got used to it and adjusted and a lot of people's kids have gone back to school so now it can be a little bit jarring to head back to the office yeah so how is this adjustment going back to the office different from when we had to adjust to working from home When I'm hearing from my sources that like people are just so starved for socialization that they just want to like chat, chat, chat.
So I think it's like this weird moment, right? Like where we're kind of like anxious and weird about going back to the workplace. We don't really know where like the rules and boundaries are and we're like starved for socialization. I think it's just kind of like this weird mess.
Okay, so no doubt the interruptions can be bothersome and take up valuable time, but you spoke to a lot of career experts who said there are actually positive effects of interruptions?
Yeah, they can really foster connection, which can then lead to like increased job satisfaction, increased wellbeing. And that's especially true when the interruptions are not just like, oh, can you help me with this project? But when they get a little bit more personal and social, I mean, it is good for us to, mostly good for us, you know, to talk to other humans and to kind of have that connection.
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