My workplace, by contrast, is primarily focused on activities that benefit the organization(s) it serves. That’s why they have to pay me to work there; it’s significantly less fun than tossing squealing children into the creek.

If your workplace prevents work, it is broken. Shifting you work to your home is not necessarily a solution, but could be a short-term patch that will permit you, personally, to work. It is often a very bad non-solution for the collective in the long term, because it permits the workplace to remain broken and dysfunctional while eroding any existing interpersonal bonds between workers.

Wow, I wish I worked in the platonically ideal office that kmoser inhabits. I was interrupted four times just while trying to watch the video.

Was one of the people your boss trying to tell you to get back to work?

I’ve never had any problem working in the open (I’m a programmer) and I have far more issues working in isolation.

If working in isolation works for your and your job great but don’t go thinking that it works for everyone and every job.

Persons who have a less eventful home than office are living a very dull life, I think. Or they are childless, unmarried, friendless geeks – wait, I’m being redundant! Sorry. What I meant to say is my home life is more exciting and involving than my office life and therefore I am unlikely to get more of my employer’s work done if I am in that more exciting, involving, constantly swirling mass of lovable chaos I call my home.

http://www.viddler.com/explore/cluecon/videos/1/

If you’re constantly interrupted by emails, IM, texts, phone calls, or people knocking on your door, there are easy solutions: close your email and IM, turn off the ringer on your phone, and put up a big “Do Not Disturb” sign on your office/cubicle.

True, meetings can interrupt your work flow and prevent you from getting into the groove, but real-time meetings are often necessary to hash out things that would take forever via email. If you’re going to meetings that you don’t need to be at, either you’re silly for wasting your time or management is silly for wasting your time. But to say that meetings are evil is just wrong.

The other side of this is human interaction. I miss that from my office days, however, I happen to be more introverted than extroverted so I can cope with that better than some might be able.

The home office is something that only works for some. You have to be someone who can manage yourself efficiently as well as cope with the lack of human interaction.

I like the buzz of our open office. But I find I’m most productive in the morning before people get in, and start buzzing.

But…but…that is my job.

Ok I’ll just close my door. Oh wait I work in an open plan office staring at two people opposite with five people over my shoulder and five more walking past every second. And they all wanna chat.

Headphones playing ambient noise is about the only way I manage to get anything done during business hours.

If a large part of your work is to motivate, inspire, coach and guide people you place should be on the work floor. The same applies for multifunctional teams, they require to know each other, and have frequent communication. The office is a great place for them to meet and align their thoughs

Depending on your work and position it’s more or less efficient to work in the office.

But you know what? I do. And how often do I bring my work home with me? I think I did it once in the last year.

And they all wanna chat.

In other words: you can get work done in an office, but not if the office doesn’t want to work.

In my profession (software development), team members working from home can be very disruptive because others on the team might need to communicate with them, which is easier and more efficient in person, in the office. In short, there is a social aspect to many careers, and working at home excessively can be anti-social and lower overall productivity.

Unfortunately, 37Signals has a very abrasive, confrontational attitude in their opinions, that can make it difficult (and sometimes unpleasant) to work with colleagues who zealously advocate and practice their positions.

I see two major problems in the modern office. One is the office itself: a baseball diamond sized or larger auditorium filled with waist-high cubicles. These came about solely and only because cubicles, as office furniture, can be depreciated faster than actual walls can so accountants love them. For everyone else they are a disaster. After doing some studies pointing out that productivity drops by at least 20% in a cubicle environment Microsoft, for example, did away with them and replaced them with offices with doors that closed – ie. environments where work is possible.

If a machine needs a particular environment to work there is never any question as to instantly shelling out whatever it takes to give it the right temperature, humidity and lack of vibration. Even hinting that a nickel might have to be spent on a human’s environment will cause management to have a fit.

The other problem, in North America, is a complete lack of employee training in how to do anything involving other people. No one has a clue as to the difference between IM, phone calls, e-mail, blogs and document databases and invariably use the wrong tool (usually e-mail) for the wrong job. Most people spend about a day and a half of the five day work week doing e-mail – most of which should have been shovelled into internal blogs. Few people have a clue as to how to make meetings anything other than a complete waste of time: no decisions are made, no one keeps track of what was said or done at the meeting and there is only the vaguest idea of what the meeting was supposed to have been about before it got highjacked by someone’s pet peeve.