{"id":299,"date":"2021-11-15T05:00:14","date_gmt":"2021-11-15T04:00:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.sciencefocus.com\/?p=104880"},"modified":"2021-11-15T05:11:10","modified_gmt":"2021-11-15T04:11:10","slug":"its-time-to-accept-that-we-dont-need-to-return-to-the-office","status":"publish","type":"rss_feed","link":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcsciencefocus\/rss_feed\/its-time-to-accept-that-we-dont-need-to-return-to-the-office\/","title":{"rendered":"It\u2019s time to accept that we don\u2019t need to return to the office"},"content":{"rendered":"

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By Aleks Krotoski\n \t\t<\/p>

Published: Monday, 15 November 2021 at 12:00 am<\/p>

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The most overused phrase of the last 18 months has to be \u2018unprecedented times\u2019. And yes, it was accurate, for a while. But after that while, the times had precedent.<\/p>\n

Sure, we were still figuring out how to take ourselves off mute, and whether to wear one mask or two in the supermarket, and if shaking hands was okay when greeting someone we\u2019d not seen in the flesh for several months. But we were, in a nutshell, going about our business as usual. It\u2019s just that the usual was somehow different. We had arrived in the new normal.<\/p>\n

We\u2019re remarkably adaptable creatures, and to now try to return to a world as it was before COVID-19 is both disrespectful and impossible. Disrespectful because it\u2019s not giving us enough credit for what we can do, and impossible because everything is different now.<\/p>\n

This isn\u2019t coming back to the office after maternity leave and trying to figure out on your own which cupboard you can express milk in without interrupting your colleagues\u2019 meetings; we were all in it together. And together, we changed the world.<\/p>\n

As author Steven Johnson has written, the best way to guarantee new ideas is to interrupt the routine. A broken treadmill stops us in our tracks; it gives us the opportunity to see what we\u2019ve become accustomed to for custom\u2019s sake, not because there\u2019s anything inherently good about what we\u2019ve been doing. This global interruption allowed us to discard useless and even destructive practices in favour of something that could be better.<\/p>\n

It would be accurate, then, to say that the last few months are unprecedented too. We\u2019ve had to learn how to use a photocopier again, we\u2019ve rediscovered the \u2018delights\u2019 of commuting, and frankly we\u2019ve had to decide if we have the stomach to return to the office.<\/p>\n