Working from Anywhere

In a world where place is important for many dimensions of life it is not surprising that we have expectations related to where certain activities will take place. We find the familiarity of a hometown or the routines of a city we have lived in for a long time convenient. And many seek out favorite locations for schooling, work, leisure, and other activities. It is perhaps this attachment to place as an organizer of major life events that make some reluctant to detach activities from their customary locations. Even as mobility has increased, our movements are often driven by the intent to locate in a new physical place where we can develop new attachments.

As the digital world of computing and communications has unfolded over the past several decades and promised to free us and our activities from specific physical locations, we have been reluctant to let go. This reluctance characterizes our continuing attachment to physical schools and workplaces. While digital schools and workplaces are developing all around us, we continue to look to physical locations for general attachment and orientation.

In light of our conventional attachments to place, the idea of working from anywhere seems more provocative than it might be otherwise. Richard Eisenberg reports on a study of 831 patent examiners from the U.S. Patent and Trade Office who exercised the option to perform their jobs from anywhere in 2012 or 2013. Unlike some other employer programs, these examiners were not limited to working from home and perhaps appearing in the office from time to time. Instead, they were give the option of working from anywhere.

What did these patent examiners do? Many of them relocated from near the Patent Office headquarters in Alexandria, Virginia, sometimes to lower cost locations, sometime to places such as Florida with the added benefit of a better climate, and sometimes to be closer to relatives. These employees were more productive working in their chosen locations, and those close to retirement extended their working years.

Working from anywhere is not without its challenges which include loneliness for individual workers and greater difficulty building a shared culture for employers. These same benefits and challenges confront educators as more and more educational organizations offer some or all operations online. Only time will tell if fully digital and networked institutions will become as desirable as place-based ones, but the advantages for some educators and employers as well as for some students and workers may move us all forward.