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Coronavirus: It's tough working from home

Dubai - You are in touch with your work mates and bosses and staff like round the clock, and yet there is an eerie loneliness that Zoom cannot overcome.

Have you noticed one factor in the remote-working concept? The lines of the 9-to-5 schedule get totally blurred and you are sort of available 24/7. There is a kind of irrefutable logic to all of us imposing on each other. After all, it is not as if we are at office. We are home so what is the big deal?

Before all this you completed your day's work and were out of there. That evening is yours feeling has now evaporated. Since home is office the two have blended into a smoothie. Well, alright, maybe a smoothie is too steep but you get the drift. And because there is a kind of residual guilt working from home, we take kindly to intrusions at odd hours. No, no problem, I was working anyway. So between various audio-visual meetings, remote commands and the assessments of failure and success, everyone is working longer and harder. There is also huge insecurity because you feel out of the loop and are second-guessing all the time. You are in touch with your work mates and bosses and staff like round the clock, and yet there is an eerie loneliness that Zoom cannot overcome.

Not only are office hours melting like ice cream in the sun, we also have added to the stress on the home front by making our domestic priorities secondary. Shushing the children (dad/mum are on an office call), muting the sounds of a running home (switch off that vacuum cleaner) and working around the chores all take their toll. So if you feel a little low on energy, a bit overwhelmed handling multiple flanks, even snappy and waspish, it is par for the course. You are not the only one. Working from home and getting results is not easy. How we long for office? So much more efficient and we had the evenings to ourselves.