The Real Reason You’re Having a Hard Time Getting Things Done at the Office
If you still don’t have your office groove back, there might be a scientific explanation. Hybrid work arrangements mess with our brains. Frustrated bosses who survey their half-empty officescapes say it makes no sense that somebody who worked full time in an office before 2020 can’t show up like they used to.
But neurologists and behavioral scientists say the collective amnesia for effectively working alongside each other makes perfect sense to them. Some workers have lost the muscle memory in their minds required to get jobs done in an open-office setting and, like flabby biceps, that muscle has to be exercised to strengthen, says S. Thomas Carmichael, professor and chair of the neurology department at UCLA’s David Geffen School of Medicine.
After years of remote work, our brains’ selective attention skills and ability to block out distractions is weakened, Carmichael says. Those who prefer to work from home might not like one of his remedies: Make yourself work from the office more often. “The brain is really good at understanding contingencies, so if we just say ‘I’ll just get this done when I’m at home,’ we don’t learn it as well," he says.
Drowning in a sea of ‘what ifs?’ Knowing how effective working from home can be has created a simmering unhappiness, says organizational psychologist Cathleen Swody. Many workers lose their uninterrupted autonomy in social office spaces. Maryia Babinova, a senior software engineer in New York City, tried going into her office several days a week back in 2021 and found it nearly impossible to be productive.
“The first 30 to 45 minutes of my day were taken up by saying hello to everybody," she says. Babinova says even small office time wasters have become a major annoyance. A trip
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