Getting organised and the open office problem

What do you mean working half-from-home and half-from-office wasn't a good idea?

Like many academics, I currently work in an open office. This was not by choice and I would have been less likely to take the job in the first place had the open plan been in place then. But, such is life.

For a long time I’ve felt pretty guilty complaining about it. After all, my school teacher colleagues typically work in an open plan staff room. When I am at my teaching job, I work in open plan there much more happily, so I had to wonder if silly feelings about academics being ‘elite’ and ‘more deserving’ of an office were in play.

Nope.

Nopedy nope.

Feeling bad no more!

I’ve recently listened to the audio book of Getting things Done by David Allen. It’s part of a whole ‘get organised’ kick I am on, thanks to my inspirational (newly permanent) academic colleague Julie Arnold. What started with trying a bullet journal quickly slid into binging podcasts on productivity, and has now extended to listening to a full book about it. Getting things done. Yes, that is one thing that is hard in the new open plan paradigm, and until today I was still thinking this was all on me.

A useful video overview of the Getting Things Done method by spellbound notes.

Allen’s advice is that maintaining multiple workstations can hinder productivity, and suggests that treating one space as a ‘cockpit’, and other spaces as secondary, satellite desks or hot desks for mobile work, can work better for many people.

It turns out that I am one of those people. I don’t have the bandwidth to keep two physical spaces in sync, especially as I still use a blend of paper and digital files and books.

So, over the summer I have been reorganising my home office to be my ‘main’ office, to try and maximise it;s functionality. I was already spending all of my writing time here, as well as some online teaching time, so it makes sense to stop denying that this is the desk I am at the most.

It has been a long process of accepting what open plan means for my academic workflow. I typically like a lot of social contact, so working from home sometimes felt lonely, or like hiding. It’s strange to work alone again so much - I didn’t like that aspect of my PhD research time. But now I am trying to give this way of working a shape that fits with my needs, so it seems easier (and more obvious) to do things this year like proactively schedule social meetings and collaboration time.

It’s also more obvious that I need to keep this desk tidy. Ugh. And sort out my email inbox, that’s a thing.

Do you work in an open plan office, as an academic, educator or otherwise? What is the culture like and how do you conceptualise your space to get work done and increase happiness?