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Agree? Disagree? Stop sounding off to your computer screen! Instead,
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When I was ten, my father used a stack of pennies and a grilled cheese sandwich to teach me three of life's most valuable lessons.
The sandwich was what I ordered at the restaurant where he'd taken me for lunch. That was lesson number one. If you really want to impress your kid, take him--alone, no siblings, no spouse, no friends--out to lunch. At a real restaurant. No fast food. Preferably one with booths.
The stack of pennies was for lesson number two. We were going to make a decision, my dad and me, about which public school I would attend for sixth grade. Would it be Nathaniel Hawthorne, with its enrichment class and particularly gifted teachers (and two-public-bus-commute)? Or Riverside, a good school nearer to us that many of my friends attended?
Classic dilemma. Risk versus security. Bigger upside versus known benefit. It was The Big Tradeoff, though at the age of ten, how was I to know? One by one, the pennies slid back and forth across the table. How many pennies was each "pro" and "con" worth? My father let me decide. By the time we got to the hot fudge sundae, the choice was clear. It was right there, clear as day, spelled out in copper on the gray linoleum tabletop.
I had cause to remember that lunch a week or two ago at another lunch meeting (at a better restaurant, and I didn't order grilled cheese). Three friends and I had agreed to meet to Talk About Our Professional Lives and Prospects. This is something everybody does, but people who work at home do it more and I think with more relish. After all, we have made a conscious lifestyle choice. We have traded in hour-long commutes, sterile buildings, constant interruptions, and tiresome office politics for flexibility, independence, and a more natural, holistic blending of our professional and personal lives. Along with the freedom to go barefoot if we want.
At least: that was the theory.
As we sat and talked our way through various frustrations of home-office life--isolation, interruptions from family members, the constant presence of work in the home--I began to wonder. Between the four of us, we represented the entire spectrum of the nouvelle American workforce:
- An ex-telecommuter now working from home as an independent contractor;
- A professional mom working four days per week at a big software company;
- An entrepreneur seeking to launch her next successful business; and
- A stop-out mother now ready to re-enter the workforce with a part-time consulting business in her home.
We had all had jobs we liked. We had all begat happy families. We were all contented immigrants to a north shore Boston town known for its traditional values, sense of community, and white-steeple New England charm.
And yet not one of us felt we'd truly solved The Big Tradeoff.
Tiresome office politics? Yeah, but at least you're part of a real community--not dangling to one by the slender width of a phone line. Constant interruptions? Okay, but constant silence can play just as many games with your mind. Sterile buildings? Uh-huh, but then there's Artie who cleans up your office every night, empties the trash and vacuums the carpet. Hour-long commutes in the dead of winter?
Hmm. Okay, well at least we're clear on that one point.
But you get the message. For every "pro" of home-office life--except one--there's an equal and opposite "con." It's a 1990s American corollary of Newton's Law of Motion. How's a person to make a choice, when The Big Tradeoff is tied after nine and headed straight for extra innings?
This week, I came up with at least a partial answer.
Pennies worked for me in simpler times. Faced with this more complex logic puzzle, I figured, perhaps a solution lay in devising a mathematical tool that would be equal to the task.
Voila! I give you Calkins's Home Office Compatibility Quotient (a.k.a. "CHOCQ"). Here's how it works.
Though it looks complex, the CHOCQ formula is a simple fraction: all of the pros of home office life divided by all of the cons. All of the factors that complicate and ease the life of the home office worker have been distilled into three categories: Work, Home/Family, and Personal. The value for each category is calculated by adding together the two major factors within that category (see box for a description of each factor). Then the user may elect to add one more value (w), as a multiplier of the category or categories that are most important at this point in his or her life.
"PRO" FACTORS
Work - Independence: the ability to truly shape your own work day
- Focus: no (or at least less) office politics and fewer office distractions
Home/Family - Management: the many conveniences in having someone around the house
- Involvement: the freedom to coach soccer, attend teacher conferences, share milk and cookies after school
Personal - Lifestyle: no commute, more time (theoretically) for personal interests
- Environment: what you wear, what your office looks like, what radio station you play--it's all up to you
"CON" FACTORS
Work - Career Impact: out of sight, out of mind may mean a slower climb up the ladder for telecommuters
- Productivity Drag: sometimes, you just need to be there to get the thing done
Home/Family - Proximity Conflict: for some families and marriages, this much togetherness is too much of a good thing
- Distraction Potential: kids, dogs, that good book, the jogging trail, the refrigerator--they're all out to divert you from what needs to be done
Personal - Isolation: exactly how much do you like talking to yourself?
- Home/Work Inseparability: how good are you at leaving the office door closed--when it's just ten steps away from your bedroom?
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I've lost you, I can tell. Let me take you through my application of CHOCQ to my own work situation.
I assigned values to each factor, based on how important to me they are on a scale of 1-10, with 10 most important. (For example: working with a large degree of latitude is important to me. Thus the Independence factor received a value of 9. On the other hand, I think I can stay focused amidst most forms of office distractions and politics. So the Focus factor got just a 3.) I then assigned values from 1-10 to w, the weighting mechanism for each category, thereby indicating that for me, right now (with three daughters aged 5, 8, and 10), Home/Family is the most important priority in my life.
My CHOCQ turned out to be 1.7, which--according to the very scientific scale my wife and I worked out this week (I can show you the napkin)--makes me "moderately" home-office compatible. Which sounds about right to me.
What Your CHOCQ Tells You |
If your
CHOCQ is: |
You are: |
Above 4.0
2.0 - 4.0
1.0 - 2.0
1.0
0.5 - 1.0
0.25 - 0.5
Below 0.25 |
Utterly Home Office Compatible
Very Home Office Compatible
Moderately Home Office Compatible
Smack Dab in the Middle
Moderately Home Office Averse
Very Home Office Averse
Utterly Home Office Averse |
Try it. You may find, as I did, that the most valuable lessons your learn in calculating your CHOCQ don't derive from the final tally as much as from the act of establishing the values. What I gained in pursuing all of these arithmetic gymnastics was a way to break apart and stare down The Big Tradeoff. My CHOCQ reveals that where Work and Personal factors are concerned, I'm fairly neutral, even a bit home-office-averse on the Personal side. But the Home/Family advantages are so compelling and so important to me right now that it's an easy trade to make.
Did I know how it would come out? Sure. But that's not the point. It wasn't the point of my pennies-and-cheese lunch so many years ago, either: my dad (and I, if you'd pressed me to a wall) knew exactly what the pennies would tell us before we slid the first one across the table.
And that brings me to the third and final lesson of that lunch with my father: that no amount of noshing or gnashing will change the way your gut tells you to go when it comes to The Big Tradeoff. But it can serve a different, no less useful purpose: helping a reluctant, skeptical mind catch up to a heart that knew at once, instinctively, which way to go.
And, as a nourishing bonus of a different sort, justifying the occasional hot fudge sundae. ANDREW CALKINS lives and works at home in Massachusetts with his wife, three daughters, two cats, and innumerable other distractions.
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Reactions to "Facing Down the Big Tradeoff"
I really like the idea of Juggle and plan to look at it regularly. Your current series of articles is very timely for my office, as we have just been asked to come up with a departmental plan to reduce our emissions into the ozone. We had been talking about telecommuting as one option for some of our employees.
I read your article "Facing Down the Big Tradeoff" and liked it very much. Then I tried your Home Office Compatibility Quotient formula. I have a question or two about how to calculate my responses.
I understand choosing a prioritizing number of 1-10 for the "pros", but in choosing a priority number for the "cons," I had more of a problem. If the scale is 1-10, and 10 is the most important, does that mean that for the "cons" I should reverse the scale? In other words, on the distraction potential, for instance, am I weighing how important it is to me to not be constantly distracted by the kids or pets or how likely I am to be so distracted? And on the isolation factor, I wasn't sure how to measure it. What if I see isolation as a pro rather than a con? Do I give it a 10 (because I WOULD like to be isolated enough to talk to myself), or a 1 (because I would not want to be isolated all day every day)?
Thanks for the article and for your help.
Debbie Zimmerman
Assistant to the Director, Administrative Office of the Georgia Courts
Writer Andy Calkins responds:
Thanks for your letter--and for trying out the Compatibility Quotient. No, you would not normally reverse the scale for the "cons," because that would upset the balance of the equation and lead to exactly the reverse outcome from what you'd intended. For example: if all of your "pros" were 10s and all of your "cons" were exactly equivalent 10s, you'd end up with a quotient of 1 (the numerator would equal the denominator), reflecting your perfectly balanced attitude. If you reversed the scale, giving all of your "cons" a score of 1, you'd end up with a score that would be way off the charts.
However: your second question is trickier. If you really do see something I've listed as a "con" as a "pro," then I guess I'd suggest that you do reverse the scale in that one instance. If you're all for isolation, don't give it a 10 because that will count against your compatibility rating; give it something in the 1-4 range, which will result in a higher point score and thus reflect your attitude on the matter.
Good questions. Glad to see there are thoughtful readers out there who are paying attention!
Andy
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