Though the current project started as a series of posts charting my grief journey after the death of my mother, I am no longer actively grieving. Now, the blog charts a conversation in living, mainly whatever I want it to be. This is an activity that goes well with the theme of this blog (updated 2018). The Sense of Doubt blog is dedicated to my motto: EMBRACE UNCERTAINTY. I promote questioning everything because just when I think I know something is concrete, I find out that it’s not.
Hey, Mom! The Explanation.
Here's the permanent dedicated link to my first Hey, Mom! post and the explanation of the feature it contains.
A Sense of Doubt blog post #2599 - 2017 HEY MOM Reprint - Studying Calculus
This is what I was doing on this day five years ago. I was studying for a calculus test.
So as I often do, I went back and grabbed THIS DATE from a prior year. I reviewed and noticed that I had not pulled from 2017 very often.
And so...
The study rooms in SANGREN at WESTERN MICHIGAN UNIVERSITY were awesome.
I miss those rooms.
I would often make musical mixes when I was studying there, though probably not when studying for a test.
Wow. Seems like another lifetime ago.
Here's today's reprint. Thanks for tuning in.
Blog Vacation Two 2022 - Vacation II Post #36
I took a "Blog Vacation" in 2021 from August 31st to October 14th. I did not stop posting daily; I just put the blog in a low power rotation and mostly kept it off social media. Like that vacation, for this second blog vacation now in 2022, I am alternating between reprints, shares with little to no commentary, and THAT ONE THING, which is an image from the folder with a few thoughts scribbled along with it. I am alternating these three modes as long as the vacation lasts (not sure how long), pre-publishing the posts, and not always pushing them to social media.
Hey, Mom! Talking to My Mother #633 - Studying Calculus - Exam #2
Hi Mom,
Studying for a Calculus test that I have today at 1 p.m.
These pictures are from my study session yesterday.
Up top, that's music by Brian Eno on the monitor. I included the video below.
The other picture has James Blake music playing, just FYI.
I work on my Musical Mondays posts while I study.
I am not sure how well I will do on this exam.
But the good news is that I have improved a great deal in the last two years.
I passed the second mastery test last week on the first try. I conquered those limits and derivatives.
This week's test is worth more points and is over not just derivatives but applying that knowledge to real work problems: analyzing functions, optimization, related rates, and so on.
A good take away is that when I made my study guide I went back to the problems that scared me the most in my first run of Calculus, the one right after you died, when I took a hardship withdrawal. I came up against problems in that course by exam #3 that I could not even begin to fully understand let alone complete correctly. So I put those problems on my study guide practice exam, and guess what? They are actually pretty easy.
I would say "wish me luck," Mom, but I don't need to. You're right here with me. All the time.
Thanks.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Reflect and connect. Have someone give you a kiss, and tell you that I love you. I miss you so very much, Mom. Talk to you tomorrow, Mom. +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ - Days ago = 635 days ago - Bloggery committed by chris tower - 1703.31 - 6:39
- Bloggery committed by chris tower - 2203.31 - 10:10
- Days ago = 2463 days ago
- New note - On 1807.06, I ceased daily transmission of my Hey Mom feature after three years of daily conversations. I plan to continue Hey Mom posts at least twice per week but will continue to post the days since ("Days Ago") count on my blog each day. The blog entry numbering in the title has changed to reflect total Sense of Doubt posts since I began the blog on 0705.04, which include Hey Mom posts, Daily Bowie posts, and Sense of Doubt posts. Hey Mom posts will still be numbered sequentially. New Hey Mom posts will use the same format as all the other Hey Mom posts; all other posts will feature this format seen here.
A Sense of Doubt blog post #2598 - This is what THOUGHTS AND PRAYERS gets you - 150 body bags and counting... THAT ONE THING for 2203.30
"Fuck your thoughts and prayers; we want ACTION NOW."
This is genius!
I love this.
In this part of the country, even more than in Michigan, I am surrounded by people who are very triggered by the movement to reduce gun sales, gun ownership, and to control the access to these very harmful and deadly tools. It's the same "passionate intensity" as those flying American flags from the back of their trucks. Jingoism. Performance of patriotism. Overcompensating. Much like some men over perform their idea of heterosexual masculinity to compensate for deep insecurities if not repressed sexual feelings for men of their gender. It's all so transparent.
And so this...
THAT ONE THING.
Thanks for tuning in.
4 years since we marched in DC and around the world to end gun violence. 4 years of #ThoughtsAndPrayers. 4 years of broken promises. 4 years without ANY federal action on guns.
We've asked for the bare minimum. Now we're sending Congress a message they can't ignore. pic.twitter.com/fs9dOq5wSb
We were gunned down. Four years after our historic march, we still hear the same empty words, "#ThoughtsAndPrayers".
Sign our petition and reject empty words with ACTION. We can pass Universal Background Checks, a gun violence prevention measure that 90% of Americans support. pic.twitter.com/uiM7A7Gkwz
Four years since the 2018 March For Our Lives, today @AMarch4OurLives is placing 1,100 body bags on the National Mall, spelling out the words “thoughts and prayers.” pic.twitter.com/4Qpnv2c09P
'To those politicians that think that young people are just going to keep turning out for them, honestly, I send my 'thought and prayers' to them in the next election' — March For Our Lives co-founder David Hogg had this to say to politicians 'lying' about supporting gun control pic.twitter.com/BTfzePPAOl
Activists will use more than 1,100 body bags to spell out “THOUGHTS AND PRAYERS,” a condolence often invoked after mass shootings — and one that gun-violence-prevention activists decry as hollow, as more people continue to die. https://t.co/puZfVcKYIl
March For Our Lives board member Kelly Choi: ’Over 170,000 people have died due to gun violence since Parkland and if all you can say to that is ‘thoughts and prayers,’ you have failed every young person in America’ pic.twitter.com/AksAbec3Xa
'F*ck your thoughts and prayers, we want action right now' — March For Our Lives board member Bria Smith sends this warning to lawmakers who are avoiding taking on gun control: ‘One day, we’ll be taking your jobs’ pic.twitter.com/gbMkOhGFNm
‘How many more lobbying days do I need to tell our students to set up as they’re huddled under a desk, in a lockdown, as a man with an AR-15 roams their hallways?’ — Listen to this powerful speech from March For Our Lives’ Gaby Salazar on ending gun violence pic.twitter.com/9NKWET0wT0
It’s been almost 4 years since our march on the Capitol and 800+ sister marches worldwide. You showed up for us, fought with us, yelled for action, & demanded more than #ThoughtsAndPrayers.
Stay tuned for a surprise next week on our anniversary, as we continue the fight.🤫 pic.twitter.com/HXnBLRm890
I took a "Blog Vacation" in 2021 from August 31st to October 14th. I did not stop posting daily; I just put the blog in a low power rotation and mostly kept it off social media. Like that vacation, for this second blog vacation now in 2022, I am alternating between reprints, shares with little to no commentary, and THAT ONE THING, which is an image from the folder with a few thoughts scribbled along with it. I am alternating these three modes as long as the vacation lasts (not sure how long), pre-publishing the posts, and not always pushing them to social media.
- Bloggery committed by chris tower - 2203.30 - 10:10
- Days ago = 2462 days ago
- New note - On 1807.06, I ceased daily transmission of my Hey Mom feature after three years of daily conversations. I plan to continue Hey Mom posts at least twice per week but will continue to post the days since ("Days Ago") count on my blog each day. The blog entry numbering in the title has changed to reflect total Sense of Doubt posts since I began the blog on 0705.04, which include Hey Mom posts, Daily Bowie posts, and Sense of Doubt posts. Hey Mom posts will still be numbered sequentially. New Hey Mom posts will use the same format as all the other Hey Mom posts; all other posts will feature this format seen here.
A Sense of Doubt blog post #2597 - Corporate BS over Work-from-home
Today is SHARE day, so these two posts -- one from 2021 and one from 2022. And another one via SLASHDOT from the BAFFLER.
I liked working at home, but as a teacher, I also like interacting with students and my colleagues IN PERSON.
And so I offer this today as a share because many people have the kinds of jobs that can be done at home and maybe, from now on, should be.
Thanks for tuning in as always.
ENJOY.
Blog Vacation Two 2022 - Vacation II Post #34
I took a "Blog Vacation" in 2021 from August 31st to October 14th. I did not stop posting daily; I just put the blog in a low power rotation and mostly kept it off social media. Like that vacation, for this second blog vacation now in 2022, I am alternating between reprints, shares with little to no commentary, and THAT ONE THING, which is an image from the folder with a few thoughts scribbled along with it. I am alternating these three modes as long as the vacation lasts (not sure how long), pre-publishing the posts, and not always pushing them to social media.
As vaccinations and relaxed health guidelines make returning to the office a reality for more companies, there seems to be a disconnect between managers and their workers over remote work.
A good example of this is a recent op-ed written by the CEO of a Washington, D.C., magazine that suggested workers could lose benefits like health care if they insist on continuing to work remotely as the COVID-19 pandemic recedes. The staff reacted by refusing to publish for a day.
While the CEO later apologized, she isn’t alone in appearing to bungle the transition back to the office after over a year in which tens of millions of employees were forced to work from home. A recent survey of full-time corporate or government employees found that two-thirds say their employers either have not communicated a post-pandemic office strategy or have only vaguely done so.
As workforcescholars, we are interested in teasing out how workers are dealing with this situation. Our recent research found that this failure to communicate clearly is hurting morale, culture and retention.
Workers relocating
We first began investigating workers’ pandemic experiences in July 2020 as shelter-in-place orders shuttered offices and remote work was widespread. At the time, we wanted to know how workers were using their newfound freedom to potentially work virtually from anywhere.
We analyzed a dataset that a business and technology newsletter attained from surveying its 585,000 active readers. It asked them whether they planned to relocate during the next six months and to share their story about why and where from and to.
After a review, we had just under 3,000 responses, including 1,361 people who were planning to relocate or had recently done so. We systematically coded these responses to understand their motives and, based on distances moved, the degree of ongoing remote-work policy they would likely need.
We found that a segment of these employees would require a full remote-work arrangement based on the distance moved from their office, and another portion would face a longer commute. Woven throughout this was the explicit or implicit expectation of some degree of ongoing remote work among many of the workers who moved during the pandemic.
In other words, many of these workers were moving on the assumption – or promise – that they’d be able to keep working remotely at least some of the time after the pandemic ended. Or they seemed willing to quit if their employer didn’t oblige.
We wanted to see how these expectations were being met as the pandemic started to wind down in March 2021. So we searched online communities in Reddit to see what workers were saying. One forum proved particularly useful. A member asked, “Has your employer made remote work permanent yet or is it still in the air?” and went on to share his own experience. This post generated 101 responses with a good amount of detail on what their respective individual companies were doing.
While this qualitative data is only a small sample that is not necessarily representative of the U.S. population at large, these posts allowed us to delve into a richer understanding of how workers feel, which a simple stat can’t provide.
We found a disconnect between workers and management that starts with but goes beyond the issue of the remote-work policy itself. Broadly speaking, we found three recurring themes in these anonymous posts.
1. Broken remote-work promises
Others have also found that people are taking advantage of pandemic-related remote work to relocate to a city at a distance large enough that it would require partial or full-time remote work after people return to the office.
A recent survey by consulting firm PwC found that almost a quarter of workers were considering or planning to move more than 50 miles from one of their employer’s main offices. The survey also found 12% have already made such a move during the pandemic without getting a new job.
Our early findings suggested some workers would quit their current job rather than give up their new location if required by their employer, and we saw this actually start to occur in March.
One worker planned a move from Phoenix to Tulsa with her fiancé to get a bigger place with cheaper rent after her company went remote. She later had to leave her job for the move, even though “they told me they would allow me to work from home, then said never mind about it.”
Another worker indicated the promise to work remotely was only implicit, but he still had his hopes up when leaders “gassed us up for months saying we’d likely be able to keep working from home and come in occasionally” and then changed their minds and demanded employees return to the office once vaccinated.
2. Confused remote-work policies
Another constant refrain we read in the worker comments was disappointment in their company’s remote-work policy – or lack thereof.
Whether workers said they were staying remote for now, returning to the office or still unsure, we found that nearly a quarter of the people in our sample said their leaders were not giving them meaningful explanations of what was driving the policy. Even worse, the explanations sometimes felt confusing or insulting.
One worker complained that the manager “wanted butts in seats because we couldn’t be trusted to [work from home] even though we’d been doing it since last March,” adding: “I’m giving my notice on Monday.”
Another, whose company issued a two-week timeline for all to return to the office, griped: “Our leadership felt people weren’t as productive at home. While as a company we’ve hit most of our goals for the year. … Makes no sense.”
After a long period of office shutterings, it stands to reason workers would need time to readjust to office life, a point expressed in recent survey results. Employers that quickly flip the switch in calling workers back and do so with poor clarifying rationale risk appearing tone-deaf.
And even when companies said they wouldn’t require a return to the office, workers still faulted them for their motives, which many employees described as financially motivated.
“We are going hybrid,” one worker wrote. “I personally don’t think the company is doing it for us. … I think they realized how efficient and how much money they are saving.”
Only a small minority of workers in our sample said their company asked for input on what employees actually want from a future remote work policy. Given that leaders are rightly concerned about company culture, we believe they are missing a key opportunity to engage with workers on the issue and show their policy rationales aren’t only about dollars and cents.
3. Corporate culture ‘BS’
Management gurus such as Peter Drucker and other scholars have found that corporate culture is very important to binding together workers in an organization, especially in times of stress.
But many of the forum posts we reviewed suggested that employer efforts to do that during the pandemic by orchestrating team outings and other get-togethers were actually pushing workers away, and that this type of “culture building” was not welcome.
One worker’s company “had everyone come into the office for an outdoor luncheon a week ago,” according to a post, adding: “Idiots.”
Surveys have found that what workers want most from management, on the issue of corporate culture, are more remote-work resources, updated policies on flexibility and more communication from leadership.
As another worker put it, “I can tell you, most people really don’t give 2 flips about ‘company culture’ and think it’s BS.”
In a flip of a switch, the pandemic accelerated remote and decentralized work arrangements. For many, especially tech and knowledge workers, the shift appears here to stay. A recent survey by venture capitalist firm Initialized suggests the top location for high-tech startups is in the cloud with workers connecting remotely. What does it mean when Silicon Valley is no longer a physical location and talented workers are geographically untethered?
We’ll review this trend and its implications for attracting and retaining talent. Research conducted in conjunction with my research team, David Greenway and Tamara Montag-Smit, shows workers hold three distinct levels of remote-work expectations. Most intriguing is an emerging creative class of workers that choose to thrive in an individualized location of their choosing versus a prescribed creative hub. Communities and companies alike are competing for these workers. Possibly you are or aspire to be one of these workers. I look forward to sharing this timely knowledge with you and hearing your experience.
Presenter:
Kimberly Merriman, Ph.D., is a widely published scholar and noted authority on workforce issues by sources such as the Wall Street Journal and The Conference Board. She currently serves as a professor of management at the Manning School of Business and has extensive involvement in the real estate industry. She also brings value to others through executive board positions, expert testimony and litigation support, entrepreneurial endeavors and mentoring. Her authored business book, Valuation of Human Capital: Quantifying the Importance of an Assembled Workforce, was nominated for the R. Wayne Pace HRD Book of the Year Award. Kimberly’s current projects examine real estate trends related to the workforce.
The great enforced global experiment in working from home is coming to an end, as vaccines, the Omicron variant and new therapeutic drugs bring the COVID-19 crisis under control.
But a voluntary experiment has begun, as organisations navigate the new landscape of hybrid work, combining the best elements of remote work with time in the office.
Yes, there is some push for a “return to normal” and getting workers back into offices. But ideas such as food vouchers and parking discounts are mostly being proposed by city councils and CBD businesses keen to get their old customers back.
A wide range of surveys over the past 18 months show most employees and increasingly employers have no desire to return to commuting five days a week.
The seismic shift in employer attitudes is signalled by Google, long a fierce opponent of working from home.
Last week the company told employees they must return to the office from early April – but only for three days a week.
That’s still way more than tech companies such as Australia’s Atlassian, which expects workers to come into the office just four days a year, but it is a far cry from its pre-pandemic resistance to remote work.
Hybrid work is here to stay. Employers will either embrace the change or find themselves being left behind.
Gains in productivity
Google began – under pressure – to soften its opposition to remote work in 2020. In December of that year chief executive Sundar Pichai told employees:
We are testing a hypothesis that a flexible work model will lead to greater productivity, collaboration, and well-being.
Google’s corporate headquarters in Mountain View, northern California. It has softened its historical opposition to remote working by insisting workers must return to the office for three days a week.
Its chief concern has been protecting the social capital that springs from physical proximity – and also perhaps with keeping employers under surveillance.
But longstanding (and widespread) management concerns that employees working from home would lower productivity have proven unfounded.
Even before the pandemic there was good research showing no productivity penalty from remote working – the opposite, in fact.
For example, a 2014 randomised trial involving about 250 Shanghai call centre workers found working from home associated with 13% more productivity. This comprised a 9% gain from working more minutes per shift – due perhaps to fewer interruptions – and a 4% gain from making more calls per minute – attributed to a quieter, more comfortable working environment.
Research in the past two years supports these findings.
Harvard Business School professor Raj Choudury and colleagues published research in October 2020 that found allowing employees to work wherever they like led to a 4.4% increase in output.
In April 2021, Stanford University economist Nick Bloom and colleagues calculated a the shift to remote working resulted in a 5% productivity boost. Though their working paper, published by the National Bureau of Economic Research, was not peer reviewed, it was based on surveying 30,000 American workers, which is a decent sample size.
Our relationship with work has changed
There are good reasons most of us don’t want to go back to the old normal. It just wasn’t that great.
While working from home can brings challenges of other kinds, not least the ability to switch off and stop working when work is done, working in an office can increase stress, lower mood and reduce productivity.
My own research has measured the effects of typical open-plan office noises, finding a 25% increase in negative mood even after a short exposure time.
Then there’s the time spent commuting. Not having to go into the office every day frees up hours of time to do other things. Particularly in winter it’s nice to not have to leave and arrive home in the dark.
Preferred number of days working at home, by occupation
The importance of these things should not be underestimated.
In a June 2021 study by McKinsey of 245 employees who had returned to the office, one-third said they felt their mental health had been harmed.
The experience of the pandemic has lowered our tolerance for this old world of work.
Nothing exemplifies this better than the growth of the “lie-flat” trend, which began in China and is now a global phenomenon. Increasing numbers of people are rejecting the idea of pursuing a career at all costs.
They don’t want to spend their life being a cog in the wheel of capitalism and are choosing to work less – even not at all.
No one size fits all
Rather than a bastion of meaning and fulfilment, the structures around how we have conducted work has for many people meant an existence of quiet desperation. The pandemic has brought an unforeseen opportunity to change this narrative and rethink both the way we work and the role of work in our lives
For some, no job is better than a bad job. The rest of us will settle for the flexibility we’ve had over the past two years.
No one size fits all. The downsides of working from home include missing coworkers and losing the benefits of serendipitous conversations. The nuances of how much time we need to spend together in the office for outcomes like creativity, belonging, learning and relationship building varies between individuals, teams and job types.
But what is certain is we don’t need to be together five days a week to make these things happen. With a shrinking workforce and an increasing war for talent, employers who don’t provide flexibility will be the losers.
And then the essay turns to Jonathan Malesic's new book The End of Burnout:He casts a critical eye on burnout discourse, in which the term is used loosely and self-flatteringly. Journalistic treatments of burnout — such as Anne Helen Petersen's widely read 2019 essay — tend to emphasize the heroic exertions of the burned-out worker, who presses on and gets her work done, no matter what. Such accounts have significantly raised burnout's prestige, Malesic argues, by aligning the disorder with "the American ideal of constant work." But they give, at best, a partial view of what burnout is. The psychologist Christina Maslach, a foundational figure in burnout research — the Maslach Burnout Inventory is the standard burnout assessment — sees burnout as having three components: exhaustion; cynicism or depersonalization (detectable in doctors, for example, who see their patients as "problems" to be solved, rather than people to be treated); and a sense of ineffectiveness or futility.... Accounts of the desperate worker as labor-hero ignore the important fact that burnout impairs your ability to do your job. A "precise diagnostic checklist" for burnout, Malesic writes, would curtail loose claims of fashionable exhaustion, while helping people who suffer from burnout seek medical treatment.
Malesic, however, is interested in more than tracing burnout's clinical history. A scholar of religion, he diagnoses burnout as an ailment of the soul. It arises, he contends, from a gap between our ideals about work and our reality of work. Americans have powerful fantasies about what work can provide: happiness, esteem, identity, community. The reality is much shoddier. Across many sectors of the economy, labor conditions have only worsened since the 1970s. As our economy grows steadily more unequal and unforgiving, many of us have doubled down on our fantasies, hoping that in ceaseless toil, we will find whatever it is we are looking for, become whoever we yearn to become. This, Malesic says, is a false promise.... [The book] is an attack on the cruel idea that work confers dignity and therefore that people who don't work — the old, the disabled — lack value. On the contrary, dignity is intrinsic to all human beings, and in designing a work regime rigged for the profit of the few and the exhaustion of the many, we have failed to honor one another's humanity.... William Morris, in his famous essay "Useful Work Versus Useless Toil," dreamed of a political transformation in which all work would be made pleasurable. Malesic thinks, instead, that work should not be the center of our lives at all....
Burnout is an indicator that something has gone wrong in the way we organize our work. But as a concept it remains lodged in an old paradigm — a work ethic that was already dubious in America's industrial period, and now, in a period of extreme inequality and increasing precarity across once-stable professions, is even harder to credit.... The top 1 percent of the income distribution is composed largely of executives, financiers, consultants, lawyers, and specialist doctors who report extremely long work hours, sometimes more than seventy a week....
But the strange work ethic the rich have devised seems highly relevant for our understanding of burnout as a cultural phenomenon, especially as it spreads beyond its traditional victims — doctors, nurses, teachers, social workers, anti-poverty lawyers — and courses through the ranks of knowledge workers more generally."
- Bloggery committed by chris tower - 2203.29 - 10:10
- Days ago = 2461 days ago
- New note - On 1807.06, I ceased daily transmission of my Hey Mom feature after three years of daily conversations. I plan to continue Hey Mom posts at least twice per week but will continue to post the days since ("Days Ago") count on my blog each day. The blog entry numbering in the title has changed to reflect total Sense of Doubt posts since I began the blog on 0705.04, which include Hey Mom posts, Daily Bowie posts, and Sense of Doubt posts. Hey Mom posts will still be numbered sequentially. New Hey Mom posts will use the same format as all the other Hey Mom posts; all other posts will feature this format seen here.
