Comic Strips

The pandemic handed us all a super easy win on doing something about climate change by forcing a large chunk of us to (temporarily, it seems) stop sitting in our cars twice a day. Instant reduction in the amount of CO2 we're producing. It's not 100% of the solution, but it's not nothing, and a year in, most of us had adapted just fine (I'd argue, most who could WFH, prospered, seeing a lot more benefit than negative).

But nah - let's get back in our cars, waste time at the beginning and end of every day, spend more money on coffees and lunch, and breathe in the cubicle goodness because, fuck it - that's the way we've always done it.

"How DARE my employees use WFH to take the edge off the negative aspects of being at work! I'm canceling WFH! They make me so mad I need to... have a tumbler of bourbon... from the fully stocked bar... that I keep prominently displayed in my office... for 'client meetings'... next to my office chaise lounge.

sips

I feel like the last hard worker left. Tsk tsk tsk."

Actually that's often the most productive thing you can do. If your mind is fuzzy and you try to work through it you will continue to have low productivity for the rest of the day, but if you take a 30 minute nap to refresh your mind then you'll have higher productivity for the whole rest of the day.

As long as he pushes out that report on time I don't see anything wrong here, moving on.

Y'all applauding this, when it reads more like an Anti-WFH comic than anything else.

Cause this is exactly what all the anti-WFH propagandists are trying to get people to think WFH is, just a scam used by lazy thieves.

That's completely out of line. Why is he wearing pants?

15 minutes of just sitting in the calm quiet is proven to reduce stress hormones in the body by helping regulate the hypothalamic-pituatary-adrenal (HPA) pathway. 15 minutes of quiet every day can work wonders on your mental and physical health. Deactivating the HPA pathway reduces the stress hormones in your system, which reduces every bodily systems stress reaction. This can help your mood, obviously. Anxiety, depression, irritability, all responses to stress. It can also help with autoimmune issues, though. Stress hormones cause your immune system to go into overdrive because your body is expecting to have to deal with a wound as a potential source of infection. Lowering those stress hormones has been demonstrated to help with autoimmune disorders like lupus, fibromyalgia, psoriasis and others. It's said that we operate in two modes: fight or flight, or rest and digest. When you're stressed, your body moves resources away from your digestive system. It's basically saying "We dont have time to digest food right now, we gotta run away from this bear". If you're stressed all the time, you're always running your digestive system inefficiently. So regulating the HPA pathway has been correlated with improvements in shit like Crohn's, colitis, IBS and other digestive issues. Constant stress boosts your heart rate, constricts your blood vessels and increases your blood pressure, so regulating the HPA pathway can lead to decreases in the risk of cardiovascular diseases.

Thing about sitting quietly in a calm space is that a lot of us, myself included, will fill that space with thoughts that just cause more stress. Luckily for us anxious folk, meditation exists and is quite literally the culmination of millennia of smart, dedicated people trying to solve this exact problem. There are tons of resources online where you can learn how, many of them are free. They'll teach you how to detach from stressful thoughts and situations, how to stop agonizing over what's already done and being terrified of what could happen and just acknowledge what's going on right now. Try it. If I'm totally wrong and you hate it you're only out 15 minutes.

Tldr - stress hormones make your whole body go into emergency mode. Emergency mode is good during emergencies, but not good all the time. Bringing your body out of emergency mode when there's not actually an emergency helps pretty much every part of you be healthier. You can bring your body out of emergency mode with 15 minutes of sitting quietly in a calm space. Meditation can help you establish that calm space.

CEOS HATE THIS PRODUCTIVITY TRICK!!! /s

Some of my most productive days since I started WFH were when I took a 30 minutes nap in the afternoon. Taking a nap, a shower, then sitting down with a light snack to finish doing a thing is legit optimal.

and still, still, I'm significantly more productive, creative and and willing to collaborate because I'm rested and removed from office politics and personas...

I've been taking brisk long walks at work everyday. Helps me be way more productive than I ever was in the office. WFH is amazing.

My first WFH job I felt so bad taking a nap because I was tired while on the clock

Oh, the number of times my introverted mind has become exhausted after a meeting, and instead of taking a 30 minute nap and play time with doggo followed by a 4 hour focused work session, I'm borderline catatonic with a headache for the next 2 hours until it's time to head home.

I left a job of eight years for a WFH job. I lasted 15 months and they worked my ass off. 11 and 12 hour days for weeks on end and still unable to keep up. I left and took a 49% pay cut. I'm selling shit on ebay to pay the bills and no longer WFH, but I'm back to 40 hours a week.

You may joke but this is real.