Thinking on Work after Covid-19
This week we talked about distributed workplaces and whether they're here to stay
Kahran: Hi, I'm Karin.
Divya: Hi, I'm Divya.
Kahran: welcome to the 24th episode of thinking on thinking. This week, we talked about the aftermath of Covid-19 we were talking about distributed workplaces and whether they're here to stay. We talked about the ethics of distributed work and what kinds of work are well suited to being distributed and whether it's right to allow everyone to be distributed when some types of work require to come from the office. And we talked about our own experience. How does it feel like to move to working from home, and how did we adjust as it became clear work from home was here to stay? We hope you enjoy this conversation. We had a lovely time recording it.
You and your colleague work across time zones, but you prefer working later
Divya: Okay. So, like, we started working together during the pandemic, and we have generally worked across time zones. Not that, like, it's been too challenging, but how do you feel about that? Like, what do you think would be different if we were in the same space versus right now, when we are at approximately, what, ten hour time difference?
Kahran: Yeah, it's interesting because I had other colleagues, in the past, who I kind of shared a very different working, style with. So you prefer to do your kind of deeper work later in the day, and I'm someone who prefers to do it much earlier in the day. Right. It's 09:00 a.m. when I'm recording this, and I think it's, like, 05:00 p.m. or 06:00 p.m. for you right now. Right. and I think we're both very happy with kind of doing this type of work at this time of day for us. So I had a colleague, I think his name was Jatin, who was very similar. And unfortunately for him, he would still come to work by, like, ten. Right. Because there was kind of this expectation that you'd be at work, but he would always be at work till, like, seven or eight or later. Cause he would prefer to do his work in those hours after 04:00 p.m. So I think there were a lot of people who didn't fit into the kind of standard, like, you like to work from nine to five buckets, who just kind of suffered in the past when there wasn't this kind of flexibility. And it meant that the ability to kind of work with those people, was not as efficient, as it was if you were more able to kind of fit into the pre decided hours of when is a good working time and when is not that we've culturally kind of agreed on. So to answer your question directly. I found it really great because I think this actually, with this time zone and this difference gives us more overlapping working hours than we would have productively even if we were co located.
Divya: Because I have broadly worked from home over the last eleven years. Like, that has been my preferred mode of working. I've really enjoyed it. I've also worked across time zones, but do you feel like there are, like, certain productivity gains that you only get when you are in person? Yes, I have always found that explanation a little bit sus, but so, like, I would want you to maybe say more words about it because I always almost feel like, oh, it's a lie that middle management tells to everybody so that they can be present.
Kahran: No, it's like the small things. Right? Like, I could give you a couple of examples that immediately come to mind. when I was doing some consulting work for my sister's company, the clothing rental company, back in, I don't know, maybe 2019. I remember because I just happened to be sitting on the desk next to, like, they were in, like, four big tables, and the table I was sitting on was across from the table that did customer support. And, just because I could hear the things that they would have to ask each other about, it was becoming apparent to me that we had a problem where people would, like, people just wanted to see the clothes, and they were signing up with fake information in order to be able to get access to seeing the closet. And then there wasn't a way for them to change the information because we contextualized on the email address or something like that. We used it as a unique identifier. And that's the kind of thing where it's like, it's a product problem, that it would get filtered to you in a certain way by the time it got to you, or you could just solve the problem to begin with, you know? And so I think that kind of awareness, especially if you are a product person or someone who likes to kind of, like, understand full context, it's so much easier to get full context when you can kind of see the way people are behaving and see the way people are interacting with each other versus just being told.
Divya: Almost like, how when you are doing user interviews and you just see somebody use your product versus when you do an interview and you are talking about them, oh, how do you use our product? And there's like a, ah, night and day difference between those two things.
When did you start working from home? Because I don't think it would happen during COVID
When did you first start working from home? Because I don't think it would happen during COVID right? Like, you would have had experience of it beforehand.
Kahran: Yeah. Even when I last worked in New York and with Shweta Anzahil, I was. We probably worked from office twice a week, and, like, once or twice a week, we would go to, like, a client site. Once a week, maybe we would pitch, and at least once or twice a week, we would work from home. but even before that, like. Like, in 2012, one of my clients was in London, so there wasn't that much of a point for me to go to the Bellevue office. So I would, like, maybe go to office once every two weeks or three weeks, but I'd basically go to our client's office in London or work from home in Seattle. and I would do, like, three weeks in London, one week off.
Divya: So, honestly, like, when Covid happened and everybody was, like, finding struggles with, okay, this is how most of it happened. My friends are like, oh, my God, it's going to be work from home. I'm going to be working from the couch. I'm going to be working from the bed. And I was like, guys, you'll need a table. If you want to do it in any sort of sustainable way, you'll need a table, you'll need a chair, you need a proper setup. And within the first six months, everybody was buying a new table, a new chair, bigger table, so that you can put all of your stuff on it. and it was just, like, very interesting that I realized a lot of these learnings that I've had over years of just working by myself. I didn't need to relearn them during COVID time. Like, honestly, 2020 and 2021 were so productive for me and my siblings, because we were just used to working from home. So while everybody else was having to slow down and readjust, we were just. It's not even hit the ground running. We were already running. Right.
Working from home changes how you interact with your work and with your colleagues
and so, like, why I asked you that is, like, what were some of the early challenges that you faced? Because even if you say, you know, you used to go to office once a week or twice a week, that's still more often than once in six months. or not even that. Yeah, right. Like, and also, I would imagine that, like, that structurally changes how you interact with your work and with your colleagues. Like, I'm seeing you every week is very different from, oh, I have to see you once every six months. So maybe I will not tell you any of my personal life and any of my personal stories, because you don't need to know any of that. Right. I don't know.
Kahran: Yeah, I would have to think about that from a couple of different perspectives. I guess to answer from my own perspective, which was kind of how you asked, I think there was a shift where in maybe my parents generation there was this idea that when you had enough money, you would build yourself a cool home office. But when I was growing up, that wasn't really a thing. Offices and libraries were kind of an outdated notion. so I think that there was a shift once the pandemic started where it was like, oh, a work from home moment is not going to be a temporary moment. So we can't just like, if I use an external monitor at work, I'm going to need to have an external monitor at home because I'm not going to be able to do whatever kind of work I like to do on that external monitor for months. So I think that was kind of a big shift at first, where people, you know, I particularly also recalibrated, like, oh, I'm not going to go to a co working space when I want to do meetings or I'm not going to have access to these bigger devices or screens. so whatever I want to have, my best working environment needs to be in my home. And that, I think, is kind of a big shift because then you start to think about how you use your space and how you divide your time, and physical distinctions start to blur a little bit. And all of those kind of aspects, I think we've all heard a lot about babies running on Zoom, calls, you know, have it finding a balance between work and personal time in a way that was more, strictly demarcated and separated. When I think about some of my friends experiences, especially people who have started working in the pandemic or people who have taken new jobs in the pandemic, it definitely seems like you're saying is true, right? Like those moments where you would like, be like, oh, hey, it looks like you had a hard day. Do you want to like grab a drink after work or go for a coffee or just chat? Right? Like, you never have those moments. and I think those are the moments that do build lasting relationships. M because I think even in the era in my life where I worked from home a lot, which was that, 2012 2013 era, when I was working in London, I didn't make that many lasting relationships, I would say I was closest to my clients, and that's probably because I spent so much time with my clients and I did kind of take them for a glass of wine when they had a bad day or, you know, we chatted over lunch and whatnot. There was all those kind of quiet moments that you kind of build relationships.
Divya: Oh. so that, like, made me think about this very interesting thing. So when I was, like, around 28 years old ish, right. A lot of my friends. So it had been five years since I had graduated from college, and a lot of my college friends were like, oh, man, it's so hard to make new friends once you're out of college. Like, when you're working, you have some friends. And I was just like, no, you just go and you meet people, and you hang out with them. Like, but how do you meet these people? And it's over time that I've realized, oh, because I don't have office friends, that I have had to develop this, and I've never had office friends. I've had to develop the skills that would be required to make friendships happen despite not having a quote unquote common connection. Like, when you were just talking about this, that reminded me of that. like, the social aspect of what a workplace gives you is, I mean, for a lot of people, they hate their office people, but you do have one or two people that you like, and you don't get access to those people either. Like you. That's one or two lesser people in your life who you like and who you can share an aspect of your life with.
Kahran: Yeah, I think that's really true.
Divya: M did you feel like the people that you were living with, you ended up sharing, like, more of your work life with them, or they ended up sharing more of their work life with you because you were living together?
Kahran: I would say that's very true. That's funny. That was a period that I lived with my friend Phil, and we became very good friends, from that period also, because I would get home from these crazy two week, really intense trips in London and then basically lie on the couch and kind of work for two days and get back to my regular rhythm because there was. Which is quite exhausting also. So, yeah, we would hang out and chat and, you know, make coffee and whatnot.
Divya: Yeah. Because I would imagine that, like, that mental energy has to go somewhere, and if you're just going to bond with people who are close to you, you will bond with people who are close to you over all different domains.
Kahran: I think you would also get your employees to start to put some of their energy into the other problems that plague you when people are running into each other. kind of like what I was saying a few minutes ago, and they hear about whether it's a customer service complaint or this frustrating processes. Yeah, you might casually chat about it, like drinking water or coffee or something, but then because people hear that, then they're going to actually be more likely to act on it or maybe be able to solve the problem. But I think that there's that aspect of improving work, I guess, or improving the environment that doesn't necessarily happen when you're not having those kind of non focused or non intent based conversations.
Divya: I really don't like how these days, our podcast episodes take us in directions that I'm like, oh, but I did not want to arrive at that conclusion. Why are we moving in that conclusion direction?
Should your office job also take up your social energy?
Kahran: Well, I think if you're arriving there, then it comes back to also the question I was wondering about, which is, like, what is ethical then? Because there is something to be argued. Like, my friend who works at the mayor's office was saying, you know, because of where the mayor's office is in New York City, there's only certain people who can live a certain commuting radius from it. But if you can make those jobs available, then you could be living, you know, deep in queens or, like, out on Long island, and you'd be able to do those jobs.
Divya: I have a separate thought here. Beyond the ethical. Like, should work be fulfilling those needs? Like, this is slightly gonna sound, you know, anti capitalist, but, like, should your office job also take up your social energy? So, very early on, when we were thinking about joyous, you introduced me to the concept of a third space. And I've been, like, recently reading or hearing about it in podcasts and books and all that. Like, third spaces are vanishing as people's workers become intense, as we become more and more, like, perpetually online. and post pandemic. Like, it's even worse. Like, just the concept of third space is, like, evaporating. And I wonder if rather than work becoming that place, the third space needs to be the place where you feel, like, the sense of belonging, where you feel, like, the sense of connection. You can go there, you know, that you are around like minded people. You can socialize. I don't know.
Kahran: You know.
Kahran: Like. Like, generally, work is the second space, right? So then the third space is a. Yeah, I know.
Divya: I know.
Kahran: Yeah, yeah.
Divya: Right? So, like, that's why I'm saying that. Let's say that the first space is your home, which gives you a sense of belonging, right? and, like, your work can be a place that gives you some amount of sense of meaning or value or fulfillment and some amount of sense of belonging. But does it have to be the, like, you know, only driver, apart from your home, that gives you a sense of belonging? Or could we cultivate, like, you know, more of these third spaces?
Kahran: The part that I think I'm struggling with is I'm not sure if I agree with your contention that a third space is a place for belonging. Because if you think about the third space, like, historically, bowling alleys in America were considered a third space. then obviously more recently, like, coffee shops, you know, there was a time, libraries, I would say that those are gathering places of people. But oftentimes you might meet people who are maybe not in your immediate circles or even your circle circles. So I think maybe a characteristic of third spaces is that they're a place that different kinds of people gather, and so you are able to kind of expand your purview. So, I don't know. I also maybe disagree with the notion that they're vanishing. I think that they're just changing, and they will always be changing. Right. And maybe if we're like. I think we're actually leaving a time where, like, alcohol and, like, bars were really much like a third space. And now we're starting to see a time where, like, alcohol is becoming less of a social necessity, and you're starting to see a rise again of activities that are not as alcohol dependent. but I would still say those activities are third space is, to me, kind of.
Divya: I mean, I would also. I would also say, though, that, like, for a lot of people, the third space is a digital space. Like, it's a virtual space. It's not a real space. Where do I spend? Ultimately, I have 24 hours in a day. If I'm going to end up spending 12 hours of it on work, including my commute and getting ready, how much time am I going to spend elsewhere? M and I also think that, like, going to the first point that you made that maybe they don't have a sense of belonging is, you know, how all kids who like quiet, like books, like reading, end up, loving libraries. They don't have to like each other, but they can still feel a, like, you know, sense of belonging to the space that you don't have to like all of the people who come there, for you to feel like you belong in the space, you might like the thing that you do there. Like, I'm not saying it has to bring you a sense of community, but belongingness can come from more than just community.
Kahran: That is an interesting notion. I've turned it over in my head a couple of times.
Kahran: Yeah, I think if you think historically, you're not wrong at all. Right? Because then there was a lot of work that was very labor intensive or menial or not fulfilling, and we found other ways of finding fulfillment, whether it was harvest festivals or different occasions that would kind of bring people together. actually, I don't know if I mentioned it on the podcast, but it was really entertaining. When I was in Louisiana a couple of weeks ago, and we just happened to go to this place for breakfast, and every Saturday and Sunday, they had line dancing from like 08:00 a.m. till noon. And it was just like a thing. The whole community turned out, and we happened to get there at like, 1130. So we were just there for the end of the dancing, and at 12:00 everyone left. It was just like a thing that people came there, and it was so full. It was maybe like 150 people were there, and then 20 people were there as soon as the dancing was right. So, like, I think. And Louisiana is still a place that is kind of more, It doesn't have as developed, ah, of an economy. A lot of it is labor based, driving, whether it's tourism or fishing or, you know, whatever. so I do think that there is some truth to that notion that, like, people will have a need, and they will find a way to fit that need or solve for that need, even if their work is not giving them fulfillment, there will be these other things that give them fulfillment. And maybe what's possible is that we're coming out of an era where work really filled so many needs for people that was so all encompassing, and maybe work doesn't need to do that anymore. Maybe, you know, if we do have more distributed work, we will see people forming more other types of social relationships. I don't know, though, because the whole online thing is kind of a troubling, like, new phenomena. Right?
Divya: Yeah.
Kahran: because if you don't, if you feel that sort of like partial fulfillment. And I think something we talked about really early on in the podcast was. I think I was talking about how when you like something, you can kind of engage with someone in a shallow way, but it fills the need a little bit. So then you don't go chasing that deeper engagement, but then long term, you start to feel like you're suffering almost because you don't have that deeper engagement with your friends or your close loved ones. So, I don't know. I don't know if that maybe you'll be able to find enough kind of sense of belonging and community online that you don't go out seeking those spaces. And, you know, I don't.
Divya: I don't know, though, like, if that is a problem of us being millennials, because if you look at how, like, people who are younger engage with the Internet, it is completely different. Like, so, for example, I think that, like, we would instinctively trust somebody that we have seen way more easily than someone that we have never seen, regardless of how long we have known them online. And I have, like, I have had friendships where, like, I didn't see people for six years. Like, six years after knowing each other was the first time that we met. And these are, like, long term friends, all of that. And, like, the way we met first was online. but I know that, like, kids who are even younger just engage with this thing very differently. It's almost like they have a completely different social norm around it.
People who have grown up on the Internet are now joining workforce
Divya: And, like, it would be interesting to see, like, how those people, when they join workforce, what are their expectations? Because they are joining the workforce, right. I don't know if, like, you know, we want to call them Gen Zers or whatever, but, like, basically people who have grown up on the Internet are, now joining workforce. And what does that look like?
Kahran: Yeah, I think what you're highlighting in a kind of roundabout way is, like, I think there's. There's a transition problem, right? Like, there are people who have an expectation because they've worked in a certain way for a while, or they grew up in a certain way, and then it's very difficult to kind of transition. So be like, oh, yeah, work was really fulfilling, and you got all your friends through work, and you met your partner through work, and finding the right job is the most important thing for you. And then to transition from that mindset to a mindset that's like, hey, you can find your community online, and your work can enable your community and enable your life, and it doesn't need to be. Your life could be, like, a really difficult transition. But I think you might be right in highlighting people who are growing up with that second notion. It's not going to be as crazy to them because they're just going to look at it as saying, yeah, I already had my friends. Why would I lose my friends every time I change a job? Like, how asinine.
Divya: Yeah. Oh, my God, that would be asinine.
Kahran: But we do it all the time. We have for generations.
Divya: Oh, my God. I have only had to do that once, and it felt so stupid, and it felt like a waste of a year of my social energy because I made connections with some people and, like, those connections went away.
Kahran: Yeah.
Divya: Because I did a job and then I was no longer in that job.
Kahran: I thought it was interesting. Almost none of my former colleagues were at my wedding, right. Very, very few. It's not that they weren't invited. A lot of them were invited from, like, you know, 2012 to 2018 years. There was six, seven years that I was working, but none of them came. Right. And just because once you, once you lose that, especially in the culture that we have, working culture, you don't really stay in touch. Like, there was a working culture that brought you together and you engaged on that sides of your personalities. And then.
Kahran: I think we actually talked about it in a much earlier episode, one of our first few episodes, that there's almost this expectation of your vendors and your colleagues today that you'll. That they'll be your kind of people in a multifaceted way. And I think part of that expectation also manifests in this. It's like, if I know you're my person in a multifaceted way, obviously I don't want you to leave from my life just because I've changed jobs. Whereas if I only look at you in a one faceted way, it's not as big of a deal. When I change jobs, I, even think it might answer my ethics question, too, which is like, maybe that's also a question of right now.
Divya: Yeah.
Kahran: Like, it seems like an ethical choice because of my own, growing up and my expectations of work and my expectations of what work should be and is. But for people who grew up with distributed work, it's like, yeah, you know, if you're taking a job that requires you to be in the building, you know, you're taking a job that requires you to be in the building. But if you're taking a job that doesn't require you to be in the building, why should you be in the building?
Divya: Yeah.
Mac: When we think about distributed work, we think of organizations
Coming back to the question that you were saying about your friend who's working in a bureaucratic job, I would imagine that, like, a lot of these jobs would be, they don't require you to be in person. They really are literally paper pushing jobs. You take information from one place and you transfer it, sort it in another place, and you really don't need to be there in person.
Kahran: Yeah. Like, one of her big, like, big. The big parts of her role, she was explaining to me, is helping all of the other agencies, at part of the New York local government, to be cognizant of, that there's female genital mutilation that happens in New York and there's different communities that kind of practice this in different ways. And these are ways that you can engage with those communities or engage with people to help educate them about the practice and why, you know, what it does in all of this, right? You should, yes. So, but like, her job basically is like following up to see, like, you know, do they have appropriate processes in place for reporting these things, for tracking these things, and then doing kind of like interventions and trainings. You have to be where those people are, right, whether it's virtually or like in person, but you don't necessarily need to be in an office that's not where those people are, when that's not part of your job, but a lot of work is that way.
Divya: Another thing that just reminded me of is so one of my friends, he works in climate change, and he and, he and another m person are doing this like, new think tank organization, NGO. Like, I'm unsure what exactly they're calling themselves right now. but like, their premise is that oftentimes in case of something like, you know, any problem that the nonprofit sector is trying to solve, different agencies across the world are trying to solve those problems. But because they are in such problem ridden areas, they often don't have that. And they are so resource starved, they often don't have the time to do research on who else has solved this thing. So, like, somebody who's working in Peru on, like, let's say some like, you know, problem might have solved a part of the same problem that somebody in Nigeria is trying to do, or somebody in Myanmar is trying to do, right? Or there is like, replicability of solutions as well. Like, oh, I have done this thing or I have solved part a and can you solve part? And what they are trying to do is like, connect those organizations, especially because climate change is not the kind of problem that an individual organization can solve. Like, quite literally, the entire world has to come together for it to be solved. and what they are trying to do is just facilitate that. And when we were discussing about distributed work, it just made me think about that. So when we think about distributed work, we think there is an organization and then there are like workers all around the world, or like all around the country or in the same time zone, whatever, like, those are, that's how people are doing things. But distribution can also look like a you find the best talent wherever the talent is, if your work doesn't require you to be in person, or b, you find the solutions wherever the solutions are, as long as it's not geographically locked. And in terms of it being a solution, you can just use it.
Kahran: Yeah, I think that makes sense. I was thinking while you were talking about how Boeing used to get so much shit when it was launching the 787, I think it was because it was made all over the world, different parts of it. And then they were shipped, somewhere in the US, I think, for final assembly. People were like, you know, this kind of supply chain will break down. You can't do just in time sourcing for these kind of big, complicated things. And, you know, sure, there was hiccups, but eventually they pulled it off. Now it works. but. Right, it's a very distributed workforce, but what they did is they just use small vendors. It was something that, once upon a time, Boeing did everything themselves, and now there's a thousand different vendors who are making individual components that are then used.
Divya: In the plane, and now that's how all manufacturing is done.
Kahran: Correct. And that's why, for example, I remember there was a whole saga when Apple was trying to move their manufacturing of their highest end Mac. I think it's like this $5,000 Mac called a Mac Pro to Texas. And the story, I don't know how true the story is, but the story is that they ran out of a certain type of screw. And in China, where it was being made, there's a thousand factories that make that screw. So you literally just go down the street and be like, hey, we need to get a regular supply of this screw being added. But in Texas, no one makes the screw. And the amount of work to try and get the screw shipped from wherever it was, because there's no other kinds of m manufacturing that are happening there. so that's kind of an interesting kind of side point where. Yeah, because things have gotten distributed and gotten locked into some of the distribution, patterns, it is kind of hard to change some of that now. Can't consolidate if you want.
Divya: That's also very interesting, because, like, normally you would think about manufacturing as the last job that can be distributed, but if you look at it from that perspective, honestly, it has been one of the first ones that was distributed.
Kahran: Yeah. As soon as you break down the job into a standard set of processes, then you'll start to, immediately start to look for optimizing those individual processes, which eventually will push you into distribution, because likely there's some advantage to doing one thing in one part of the world, whether it's historic or geographic or.
Divya: Even the current contextual, current work culture.
Kahran: Yeah.
Divya: Going back to our previous thing about, having third spaces and all of that, last year, when I was consulting with a team that was working on creating physical experiences post pandemic IRL, it was very interesting that all of their investors or potential investors were very bullish on the idea because they were like, oh, the demand for physical experiences is going to go up. And even right now, as I look at, how. Just how the Bangalore scene locally has been sort of almost blossoming. It like, looks like that pre pandemic bic used to have, like, you know, one or two interesting events in a month. The rest of you were like, I could attend or I could miss. These days, there's at least an event a week where I'm like, oh, I don't want to miss this thing. Why? I can't go every week. I just don't have that kind of time. But I wish I could go every week. And this is just one venue that is doing things, and there is appetite. Because every single time that I have gone there, post pandemic, it's full. It's 100% capacity. Sometimes over capacity. People are like, you know, flooding the stairs, people are flooding the lobby. It's just so. It's very interesting that, like, people do have that desire to find belongingness, connection, whatever it is. Like, post pandemic, it has increased. But I feel like it's also increasing in other areas, rather than just people wanting, like, none of those people, I think, want to go back to work. They want to do other things. They don't want to, like, you know, go back to office.
Kahran: That's interesting. Yeah. I was at a poetry workshop, I think, last week, and, one of the. One of the poets I met, she was telling about how she and her husband have always lived in the same place, and they maybe have spent, like, two weeks apart maximum. But she was taking a two year visiting professorship at Brown. And Brown is maybe like a four hour flight from Colorado where they live.
Divya: Oh, wow.
Kahran: And it was just interesting kind of hearing how she was talking about. Right. Because it was. I think part of it is what you're saying, right. It's like everyone spent three years kind of caught up, and there's this almost partially like excitement, but partially. Almost like fear where it's like, you know, what? If that happens again, we have to seize these moments and seize these opportunities. As they arise.
Divya: Yeah.
Have you found something in your mind sort of changing following the pandemic
Have you found something in your mind sort of changing? I know you were traveling an okay amount, even during pandemic, considering that, like, half of your life was in us and half of it was in India. But, have you felt like, oh, the pandemic changed these things. I want to do these things now?
Kahran: I think. I personally feel like I'm less focused on the future. And I think other people may be similar. I'm not sure. But I think there was a time where, especially before the pandemic, I really kind of focused on saving and investing and figuring out kind of where, what I could do to kind of make myself well, set up for this future dates. And now I kind of feel like, you know, I don't know, when I got home finally from India at the, after lockdown kind of lifted, I, like, bought a Tesla because I'd wanted to have a car for years. I never bought a car. I really wanted to have a Tesla. And I was like, what am I waiting for? Right? Like, what day is going to be the right day? And so I think some of that, it's changed my mindset a little bit. Like, one of the things that I think I didn't agonize for as long as I maybe would have before was buying plants for my apartment in New York. Once I got here, I just kind of did one day, and I feel really happy that I pulled the trigger on some of those kinds of decisions. So I think some of these larger purchases, whether it was larger monetary or larger, just like, mentally, because it occupies space in your life, like, physical space or mental space, have become a little bit easier or feel a little bit more like they should be done, I guess, maybe.
Divya: Interesting. Like, your risk taking appetite has been changed when it comes to things that you want in your life, I think. Would you have taken this poetry workshop before?
Kahran: Well, I, registered, before, but didn't go. So there's a telling data point. I think maybe I could use my example of a few episodes ago, but I was telling you about how I really wanted to order a mattress, and I finally got around to ordering the mattress, and I think something like that, right? Like, I would feel like, am I a bad person for not, you know, wearing. Wearing down this previous mattress until it, like, got used up? Or, like, you know, should I be changing mattresses so quickly or whatnot? Right? Like, there's all these, like, questions of partially of identity, and I think partially of, like, what will people think of me if I do something like that? When those questions, I think, have really reduced where it's like, either I don't care or it just doesn't feel like, as big of a deal post.
Divya: The pandemic, you know what that made me think about? so normally, people tend to have, like, a lot of distractions in their life, and pandemic forced everybody to sort of be in touch with themselves, regardless of, like, you know, however much you might want to distract yourself and however much, like, you know, things might be difficult, but you're still forced to spend more time on what do I want and why do I want it? And do I want it here or not? And, I wonder if, like, something like that is true for you. In this case, you're like, oh, okay. I am slightly more sure in what I want. Like, we are tribal creatures. It would be impossible to not care about what other people think because of the isolation, having a more individualized perspective, if that makes sense. because, like, so many people who were sort of, like, on the fence about having kids around me had kids during the pandemic.
Kahran: Yeah, me too.
Divya: like, so many people had kids, it's insane.
Kahran: It felt like either, people got married or if they weren't, like, immediately falling, or if they were already married, they had kids during the pandemic. But one of those two occurred for everyone.
Divya: Yeah. I also know quite a few people who started their own businesses during pandemic.
Kahran: Yeah, I don't know. For me, I think it comes back to this thing of, it's like, who cares what people are going to say or think? Like, we might be dead anyway, you know?
Steve Gooms: I think commuting has changed dramatically since the pandemic
I think kind of going back to what you were mentioning, though, I think the traveling has really been an interesting thing of, like, changing and then kind of coming back. So I feel like spaces and airports during the pandemic were really different. Right? Like, I remember walking through, Charles de Gaulle in Paris, and it was the only time in my life that, like, it's all these super fancy stores, right? And they all were closed, and it was just, like, crazy. It was, like, very spooky, to, like, be walking through and seeing all these, you know, like, shops closed. They're never closed. but now it's like, there's just no one wears masks, right? Like, a handful of people will be wearing a mask on an airplane. Like, no one's wearing a mask inside the airport. It feels like. And people are just, I don't know. I've heard this term revenge travel, right? Like, people are trying to make up for a lost time. And it does feel like a lot of that is going on just from looking at people's instagrams. Like, everyone went to Mexico. It felt like then everyone went to Italy.
Divya: Huh? Yeah. But nobody is going to revenge your work from office.
Kahran: No, no one is dying to run back into the office. I think commutes are just such a thing. It's crazy how much time people would spend commuting, and we just accepted that as a given. It's ridiculous.
Divya: Yeah. It's actually one of the key markers of your unhappiness with your work, your commute time. It's just like very understandable. If you're spending like an hour both sides, that's like 2 hours of your 24 hours Day. Basically, you are spending 10% of your life in traffic. That's not good.
Kahran: And both my husband and my best friend, are both chemists and they both spend 3 hours a day commuting. This is crazy.
Divya: Yeah, yeah.
Kahran: Really crazy.
Divya: Yeah. I mean, it would be interesting to just see where things go with how people are returning to work, how things will change in longer term. Like, not just right now, because right now I'm sure office, like senior management and middle management is like, no, we must bring people back. But like, there have already been some like, you know, explorations into how is productivity changing with work from home. Are, ah, people happier? What does that mean? And like, as more longitudinal data comes in, it would be interesting to just see like what is the like, actual data saying and also what is the cultural sense of things.
Kahran: I think what we might see is a new kind of like era, of companies. So like, remember how like in the fifties or maybe the seventies even, right. Everyone was like wearing suits to work, right. And like there was this kind of expectation of work wear and like how you behave. And then there kind of came a new wave of companies where people were like, oh, we could just wear whatever we want to work and still be able to do work, and we could have flexible hours and still be able to do work. But those suited companies still exist. They just became a smaller proportion of the, of the overall economy. So I wonder if now what we'll see is like, companies like ours start to rise up, which are a distributed workforce, and they will just start to occupy more of a section of the economy versus we start seeing too much of the like suited companies or you know, the old style flexible workplaces converting to being a, fully distributed, workplace.
Divya: Yeah. that makes a lot of sense. That would be interesting.
Kahran: That's what I'm here for. Just delivering insights all day, every day.
Divya: Awesome.
Kahran: Yeah, this is cool. This is fun.
Divya: This is super nice.
Kahran: Bye.
Divya: Thanks for listening to this episode of thinking on thinking. Our theme music is by Steve Gooms.
Kahran: If you found this topic to be interesting or have other topics you wish we would explore on a future episode, please reach out to us at, our website, joyous.com studio.
