The Big Problem and Bigger Promise of Working from Home | Anne Helen Petersen

Anne Helen Petersen (0:00)

You can read these studies, you can know, oh yeah, I'm supposed to walk around the block to get my best ideas or whatever. But because our culture sends us all of these messages that unless you are doing, unless you are sending, unless you are visibly producing, you are not working, it's really hard to unmap that from our brains.

Michael Gervais (0:29)

Okay, welcome back or welcome to the Finding Mastery Podcast. I'm your host, Dr. Michael Gervais, by trade and training, a high-performance psychologist, and I'm really excited to welcome Anne Helen Petersen as our guest for today's episode. So Anne is a writer and journalist whose career took off as a senior culture writer at BuzzFeed, where she wrote several viral articles on pop culture and celebrity analysis. However, in 2020, she pulled the plug, she left mainstream to start up her wildly popular substack newsletter, Culture Study. And some of her more recent work, including her latest book, Out of Office, which I love, Anne thoroughly covers some of society's most pressing workplace trends, like the burnout epidemic and the transition to hybrid work.

So Anne and I were lucky enough to share the stage as speakers at Microsoft event earlier this year. And after meeting her, I knew, I just knew that I had to have her on the podcast to dive deeper into the pearls of wisdoms and the insights that she has about the future of work, which is what we're all kind of navigating right now in a very challenging time. And so Dr. Petersen, thank you for being here. I am incredibly excited to be able to, you know, have a conversation with you about the place that we spend most of our time for most of us, which is work.

So how are you?

Anne Helen Petersen (1:56)

Um, you know, I'm doing a lot right now. I feel like I'm going through a season of high intensity. And I've come to think of work that way for myself now, where I go through periods of concentrated, like a flurry of work, right? And doing lots of work travel and lots of work promotion and that sort of thing. And then I really like to try to plan these periods of rest and recuperation.

And I think that that like for me personally, because I'm a freelancer and have the freedom to control my schedule in that way, that works really well for me. I get really invigorated, but then I need those periods where I'm also, you know, recovering, spending time by myself, spending time not moving, those sorts of things.

Michael Gervais (2:40)

So how, all right, let's start with that, right? Because this is a conversation that I think most people go, oh yeah, I understand. I say it, you know, lovingly that I'm a professional sitter.

And I think most people are professional sitters right now. Like I have earned my tight hip muscles.

Anne Helen Petersen (2:58)

I've earned it.

Michael Gervais (3:00)

How about it? Yeah. And so what are you, what are you doing to find balance? Because you've been working from home from a long time.

And so how, how do you, how do you navigate this very simple dilemma, if you will, about you're working at home or living at the office? Like, how do you balance that?

Anne Helen Petersen (3:17)

Well, I give myself a lot of permission to do things that aren't work during the day and to also like set my own schedule about when work should reside, if that makes sense. So, and again, this is a great freedom and it's facilitated by the fact that I am a freelancer and also that I don't have caregiving responsibilities as like a full-time parent.

And so I, you know, oftentimes there'll be a day in the middle of the week where I don't work at all. I also should say that I live on an island, like an actual island.

Michael Gervais (3:48)

I mean, you really unplugged it.

Anne Helen Petersen (3:52)

Of 900 people. And to get onto the mainland, you know, you have to take the ferry and then you drive into town and stuff. So if you want to go in and do errands or whatever, it takes time. And so I like having a day during the week when I do that, to kind of break up the week. And then sometimes I'll do some work on a Saturday or on a Sunday. And to me that doesn't feel like, Oh, work is invading every corner of my life. I can't believe I'm working on the weekends. It's more like I'm doing work when I want to do work.