There are many mental health benefits to working in the office.
Easy. This isn’t an insecure manager harking back to the good old days of presenteeism, getting their team in so they can check they’re all working. This is about creativity and mental well-being.
Working from home could be seen as the promised land for creatives. Finally, some peace and quiet. The silent office we’ve all craved. No more dreaded open plan. No hovering account people asking: “Have you got a minute?” We now have the beautiful efficiency of being able to flip open your laptop and away you go. None of your precious time wasted on the commute and an end to office distractions. Those inane conversations about sleep, or the fallout over someone microwaving fish. You have pure unadulterated focus on the brief you’ve been given. The ability to chat with your creative partner with no-one listening in. The dream.
Or is it? My observation is working from home quietly chips away at people’s creativity, because it chips away at their mental health. It makes small problems grow into big problems. The silence of the bedroom amplifying insecurities. Creatives closing in on themselves trying to solve everything by themselves. No boundaries between work and home mean it all merges into one monotonous churn. Ideas become overthought, tight, and laborious.
But this is what the hovering account person does. They get you to lift your head from your laptop for a moment. The inane conversation takes your brain away from the problem you’ve been wrestling with. When you return, you have a bit more clarity. Listening to someone talking about a dream they had (as boring as that is) might trigger another thought. Seeing someone microwaving their lunch will encourage you to get up and go hunting for your own. You’ll look at a shop window, see a fly poster for a new band, an argument at the bus stop, or a weird piece of stone cornicing you’ve never noticed before. The simple fact you’re wandering about, rather than shuffling from your bedroom to the kitchen in your slippers, means you’re doing your body a massive favour.
When you get the client feedback there’s a consolatory group huddle. A quick solution to helpfully reverse you out of a cul-de-sac. Seeing people go home at the end of the day makes you think: “Maybe I should go too. I’ll sleep on it. It’s only advertising after all.” Because that’s what a bog-standard-run-of-the-mill-boring-four-walled office does so brilliantly. It gets you out of your head. It provides distractions and distractions can be good. Our belief is having a neighbourhood of different brains from TV, data, social and advertising chatting, sharing thoughts and distracting each improves our thinking across all disciplines. That’s the way our office is designed, to encourage meaningful happenstance.
The rather predictable conclusion to this is that, of course, it’s a balance between working from home and going in. I’m not suggesting that creatives should be in the office all the time, because a blend clearly works.
Cal Newport’s Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World makes a compelling point about having moments of complete, undistracted focus to get to meaningful work. But my point is this: when you do go into the office, embrace it. Don’t just go in because your agency has told you it’s now doing three:two or whatever the latest thing is. It shouldn’t be a chore. Enjoy the distractions. Listen to the small talk. Notice people on the commute. Study what people are doing. Look at what they are reading. Allow yourself a moment to look out of a moving window.
It will make you feel happier and that will make your ideas better.
Aidan McClure is co-founder and chief creative officer at Wonderhood Studios
