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Comment by adriand | Hacker News Reader

After working from home since March 2020 I recently leased an office in a beautiful building that is mainly occupied by a nonprofit focused on musical education, which is delightful to be around (and I keep finding musical instruments that no one minds if I commandeer). I am loving it, and it really makes me think that the key thing about WFH is freedom.

I don’t mind going to the office because no one is telling me to go to the office. I choose when and whether to go. And it’s also my own office that I’m paying for, and if I want to take a nap because I’m tired and need to rejuvenate for another round of coding, then I lock the door and sleep.

I mainly got the space because my family is home for the summer, and in the first days of having it I reflected that a lot of the joy I get from it is also freedom-related, in the sense of being free from family responsibilities for the day.

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I’m having trouble thinking how to explain to my SO “yeah, I’m going to pay for my own office so I can have more freedom and reduced family responsibilities.” I might be legitimately sleeping in said office for the foreseen future.

Edit: for context my only child is a teenager, and we have 2 dogs.

Allow your SO to do the same, problem solved. Its not "I have an office and you don't" powerplay, its "we both need offices"

the teen and dogs will sort it out. Admittedly, the in-house ground level will be 15cm higher, consisting of compacted chip wrappers, pringles tubes and doritos bags combined with .. something covered in hair, and chopsticks.

I mean, how do you presently manage finances, especially wrt large financial decisions? How do you discuss difficult topics now? Though I imagine framing it differently than “I’m unilaterally deciding to have fewer responsibilities around the house” is going to improve the odds of success.

you need an office so you can focus on your work. to many disruptions at home. or you need to meet clients

I had a similar setup for a few years in Munich. My office was 5 minutes bike ride from home, I had a nice window and met a lot of interesting people. I would be happy to be in that setup again. The thought of sitting in a cube without window or an open office fills me with dread.

when our team got moved to the companies main office we were going to be put in rooms that were pretty dark and had few windows. i insisted on being in a room with a window or i'd quit. they ended up custom fitting my desk in an empty corner in the hallway which was smaller than your standard cubicle size but had a window.

This is so spot on. Right now I work from like three places every day. I do some work at home. I'll move to a coffee shop or something somewhere and then my company has an office I'll usually spend some time in as well.

I walk between those spots. I like to take meetings on those walks or just use the time to clear my head. It's great.

It's not about officed or not officed... it's about my ability to find the best spot for me to be in any given moment.

With the freedom mindset, would you consider a co-working membership where you could use any number of their locations (if there's availability like that near you)?

I don't know what rationale Gladwell has provided, but I've just got to add (with a throwaway account, naturally) that WFH has been disastrous for me, and indeed a double-digit number of close acquaintances have reported the same. Mitchwell and Webb was pretty prescient as to the reason why: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IW3lhfVpLL4

We are not meant to be alone. Weird things happen when we are alone for too long.

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