I wanted this work-from-home piece to be more vulnerable than the bulk of what I was seeing at the time, I wanted to talk about some of the ways to make the world better without leaving the house, and I wanted to push back against the exhausting narrative that you needed to put on pants.
I was thrilled that Slack asked me to write about such a huge topic for them:
Just about every to-do list about how to work from home will tell you to get dressed as if you were going into the office. But there seems to be no concrete evidence that this advice is universally applicable. Marketing analytics manager Ginny Brown thinks this is advice worth re-examining.
“To me it feels like part of a whole class of beliefs that assign virtue to behaviors that align with modern corporate habits,” she explains. “And I’ve no doubt that it does work for some people, but it is amplified by the bias for what we think ‘real work’ looks like.”
I say it’s up to you what your ideal work-from-home wardrobe is. Maybe a favourite Sasha Velour T-shirt will fire you up and inspire you to do your best work. Or maybe you’ll learn that unless you put on dress shoes, you can’t get a single thing done. Just make sure that you stay presentable enough for any potential online meetings. Because you’re going to be having a lot of online meetings.
AUDRA WILLIAMS: Noted online emoter 