Take Homework Seriously

On an average I spend a little over two and a half hours getting to work and back every day. While the average for my city, Mumbai, is about one and a half hours, it does mean that a lot of people are spending a considerable amount of time in places they would rather not be. The averages for the rest of the country are no better. The worldwide average commuting time is a whopping 1 hour 20 minutes per person per day.

While the mathematics of lost productivity would be too tedious to calculate, I think all of you do understand the colossal waste of time that it takes for us to get to our offices. Add to that transportation and ecological costs…and the fact that commuting time is increasingly rapidly and you understand why commuting is almost a cuss word for most of us.

The solution to this nightmare has been with us for years now...telecommuting. The technology has been available for years and in fact gets more robust and usable with each passing year. Yet, as a community, we seem to shy away from adapting flexible working environments. Our desire to get to a place of work is almost as addictive as any narcotic out there, and like the narcotic, it has dangerous implications, in terms of time lost, ecological disaster and sheer stress-related illnesses that is sending more business to urban doctors than they can handle.

So this is another small attempt to keep the flame of telecommuting alive. I do try and achieve a happy balance of getting to work on days I absolutely have to—like when the magazine closes, or when there are management meetings. But equally try and work out of home when I feel I can stay away. But that is just not good enough. What would be really great is if the whole CHIP team, or for that matter the Tech2 and CompareIndia teams do not show up for work for a day every week and yet work gets done as normal.

That day happened for us on the day of the Bharat bandh. Most people across the three teams stayed home. Yet we had more stories up on Tech2, more products on CompareIndia and the schedules of both CHIP and CHIP Plus are on track. Everyone worked from home and everyone just ensured we had a perfectly productive day. The best part is the teams were more relaxed the next day in the office.

There is little point in discussing advances in technology, the power of the PC, speed of bandwidth (or its costs) and the ancillary benefits of chilling at home, playing with your kid and at the same time ensuring your work gets done. The point is we have everything we need to be totally productive from any location. Advances in cloud computing and even Microsoft’s latest move with Office 2010 pretty much ensures we are no longer tethered to one desktop or laptop. Yet, we continue to resist the allure of a better quality of life.

Agreed telecommuting does not work for everyone; the sales teams for example have to get out there and meet their clients. It probably also does not work out every day. But the majority of us apparently just go to work and come back home. So it’s this chunk that can benefit and by staying home, make it easy for the rest also to spend less time on the roads or in crowded trains and busses.

So let’s beat the summer heat, the crazy monsoon pile ups, morning and evening rush hours, heightened stress levels and bad canteen food, by simply deciding to work smart. We can begin slowly see how it feels and as we get more comfortable, increase our time away from our daily addiction.