Communication

I've been kind of sick lately. Not a cold or anything significant but my tooth got an infection. Problem was that its under a dental bridge and there was no relief. My face got swollen and it hurt like hell. I was instantly relieved when it burst but I had to have minor surgery to save the bridge. A lot of stitches. Swollen and hurts like hell again plus a minor fever.

What's the point of this? During this period I took several days off and worked from home. It was (and still is) a pretty busy period and deadlines wait for no one. Interesting re-discovered fact: working at home can be an order of magnitude more productive than working at the office. There are no distractions. Simply being able to focus myself, get into the zone and stay there for long periods of time works wonders.

That is, until there comes a time where I needed to communicate with the outside world. There are tasks which can be accomplished by putting yourself inside a virtual bubble and simply ignore external I/O until you recognize that a significant amount of time has passed because your stomach is growling for lunch/dinner. But most tasks just demand some level of interaction with co-workers in order to progress.


And this is where working from home gets a little more difficult. This may sound strange in the era of e-mail, web cameras and teleconferencing so I guess I'm a bit old school. But I notice that some of my crucial interactions with people are not accomplished easily without face-to-face communication. Perhaps I'm doing something wrong or I haven't found the right way to do the job. But there's an additional possibility. Perhaps the bandwidth of unspoken conversations that take place using body stance and body language is significant in a face-to-face encounter.