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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I think people tend to wildly underestimate the drawbacks of WFH.  Yes, you save commute time, but at the expense of no longer having a clear division between work and home life.  For most people, working in the office meant they weren’t distracted by the sink full of dishes, the pile of laundry, or other household chores every time they got up to go to the bathroom.  When they were at the office, they largely turned off the “home” brain and just focused on work.  When they WFH, the mental process of prioritizing and focusing isn’t just about the day’s work tasks, now home chores are competing at every turn because you could take five minutes to start a load of laundry or take ten minutes and wash all the dishes.  It requires more mental energy to stay on take than it did in the office.

And then at the end of the day, lots of people aren’t cleanly turning off their computers and going home to focus on home life.  They have the computer on the counter next to them while they make dinner, or they skip washing the dishes afterward in favor or knocking out one more work item.  It means your brain is pulled in twice as many directions every waking moment than it used to be, and that is exhausting.[/quote]

OP here, I was thinking something similar.  Basically I used to have discrete stressors -- when at work worried about work things, when at home worried about home things, but now I'm worried about twice as much for twice as long (ie every waking hour).

On a teleconference, and go up to get a cup of coffee or lunch (because there is no cafe) and see the pile of dishes or disheveled living room -- maybe I can multitask and clean while I'm on the call, but not all the time but I definitely get reminded of those looming todo items every time I walk by rather than blissfully out of mind while I sit at my tidy office.  likewise, i was always behind at work even before, but now I have much more opportunity to put in a little more time rather than doing that pile of dishes in the evening.

For us personally, we have 3 kids in 3 different schools (which is how it has always the way) but my oldest could maybe go to school on their own but they figure a 7th grade can walk 1.3 mile along a busy road rather than getting bus so I'm stuck driving all 3 kids both ways when I had expected the oldest to no longer need a ride.[/quote]

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