Social Rituals and Work

One thing that is good about working in the office:

Social Rituals!

When working remotely, your context is your home. You can miss out on certain social rituals from the office

When you have a big list of things to do and you’re at home in a comfortable place, you sit down and focus on it. You keep working on it while there are no distractions.

The office provides one distraction that is crucial: social rituals!

One example: when you’re hungry at home on your own, you can skip those hunger cues to keep working at your to-do list or just have a “quick snack”.

When one person is hungry in the office, there’s a good chance others are also hungry. There’s a social effect - one will asking others to lunch and that starts the social ritual that is lunch.

At home, you don’t have this cue and there’s a good chance you work through lunch.

On the other side, when colleagues commute to the office, they have to also have to commute home.

Like lunch, this is another indicator: the end of the work day. When you have a commuting buddy, there’s a good chance you or they will initiate the commute home routine.

When you and your commuting buddy are already home, what do you do?

Well if you still have things on your to-do list, you will just keep working at it. (If your to-do list is empty, why isn’t there more items?! 😄)

In office work has benefits - the social rituals of stopping work to eat together, commute home together, or other things.

Work is more than just “work”, there’s not working where in-office has strong physical cues to kick off social rituals.

😉😉