Ask Paul: March 27 (Premium)

Even with Spring in full motion, this weekend will be a lot less interesting than usual. Thanks, Coronavirus!
The new normal
will asks:

Not really sure how to ask this, but the world basically changed how it works almost overnight. Events have been canceled, people are working from home, and software development has slowed down. Our internal use of Teams has skyrocketed and people are changing how they work. In many ways it brings into focus what is important and what is just extra in our lives. I am curious how you see this impacting what has been "normal" for us for the past several years and decades?

I’m not going to find the words for this. I’ll try and stumble through this.

There are two parts to this topic: Work and personal.

On the work side, I think the Coronavirus pandemic has accelerated a shift that was already happening, at least for those of us who can theoretically work from anywhere. There was still pushback from traditionally-minded executives/bosses in traditional workplaces about people not being in the office, and I think that’s going to effectively end. There are real benefits---for the company, financially and from a productivity standpoint---to letting your workforce be as mobile/agile as possible. And there are real benefits for employees as well, of course.

But there has to be some balance. I’ve been working from home since about 1994 so I’m used to the basic schedule. But I like to travel and get out and see people at least sometimes. We need that connection. We can’t just suddenly all work remotely all of the time.

On the personal side, I hope there are more important changes that come about because of this thing. Less of a focus on things/stuff, especially. This is something I’ve struggled with and thought about for many years. Not because I’m particularly enlightened or whatever. I just have questions. I think about minimalism and downsizing. About change. Big change.

We collectively don’t understand what’s important usually, but this crisis has really brought that home, finally. I’m not glad it happened. But I hope the positive side-effects last.

And seriously, I don’t even care about myself per se. I’ve had a great life. I want my kids, our kids, to have great lives too. We’ve left them quite the world, haven’t we?

I know. There's so much to say here.
Virtual whiteboard
Jchampeau

Sometimes I'll meet with customers in their conference room or huddle space and use a white board to diagram out a problem and then a solution. I'm usually (but not always) drawing pieces of network equipment an the ways they connect. Like most others, I'm no longer traveling and meeting face-to-face, so I'd like to recreate the whiteboard experience over Zoom. I'm looking at the Wacom One tablet currently, because I can connect it to my desktop PC and use it as a second monitor which is perfect for Zoom meetings. I love my Surface Laptop but I don't want to work from it ...

Gain unlimited access to Premium articles.

With technology shaping our everyday lives, how could we not dig deeper?

Thurrott Premium delivers an honest and thorough perspective about the technologies we use and rely on everyday. Discover deeper content as a Premium member.

Tagged with

Share post

Please check our Community Guidelines before commenting

Windows Intelligence In Your Inbox

Sign up for our new free newsletter to get three time-saving tips each Friday

"*" indicates required fields

This field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged.

Thurrott © 2024 Thurrott LLC