Remote working

Thanks to the pandemic, it has at least once entered the social discourse as a crippled home office. Something that is difficult to move is difficult to move, bossy control addiction meets union dinosaurs and cramps everything that is and will be.

The necessary thinking has to be learned over time from the base, one can hardly imagine creative, free and wild sheep, but domesticated they trot wherever they are placed, unfortunately at the same level as, for example, administrative authorities. Idleness of the comfortable habit. But this is not another Austria Bash, I am only as

Guest in this strange country

And don't ask smirking questions about how a gigantic company like Facebook or Google was able to switch to home office within days, what do they do better than Tom, Dick and Harry in Peacock Land and comparable flop nations.

But I also see the consulting potential; remote working is part of my coaching and consulting. If you have to explain the simplest basics and nudge towards savings of up to 30.40 percent, then you are in good old embarrassing Europe.

Despite everything, one can attest to a peaceful democracy in social and societal terms, but all the home office bon mots of the last two years explain why, beyond the industrial decadence and clumsiness, we only benefit from purchasing power tricks. From created dependencies and the illusion of European values.

I am nevertheless very positive. The continent, apart from its nationalistic tendencies - where aren't there those? - is still capable of shaping and transforming things in small steps. It has a progressive, energetic youth, too few of them, but in conjunction with those young, wild revolutionaries out there, something new and strong can develop despite all these forces of inertia.

And the Schengen area is perfect for flexible structures, which so far have mostly benefited economically motivated Eastern Europeans and the few really well-run Western European companies. Use it, one would like to shout, and be amazed that Romanian nurses are using it more sensibly than the well-educated majority.

The comfort and small-town life, the frayed middle class, is still a bit confused and at a loss. People chew their way through life. Then on vacation they become schnitzel colonists.

But the topic can be taken a step further. The first funny quirks arose when the Zoom epidemic and addiction broke out. All the strange and never necessary conference and meeting nonsense, this endless reassurance that what you are doing makes sense, of course spiced up with the control addiction of the top people, it was simply moved to the internet despite all the ridiculousness that you always suspected.

When you look at all these strange split-screen meetings one day as a social historian, it becomes clearer: what I am currently packaging as comedy is comedy.

Zoom can look forward to a huge boom, and no one is asking why everyone needs to see each other when it comes to a completely rational or banal office or project topic. Organize with email, Slack or similar and everything is fine.

Always a nice option, but if you're not in love with each other, it's often more of a torture. You save yourself the trouble of smelling it anyway, and it's not a convincing argument.

That doesn't mean that HO and RW shouldn't be about maintaining a solid social component, but there are much nicer and more tempting approaches to this, especially with all the bandwidth saved and the much-hyped new efficiency. If this doesn't happen, then you have the wrong employees, I carefully repeat. Or chiefs, of course.

Of course, it is important not to simply throw people into warm water, but to teach them to enjoy their work independently and thoughtfully, if you can still call it that. Splashing around for Comanches.

I think I can mediate and inspire in both directions. Especially because it's not about cheering on the typical digital nomad overhelm of youngsters, but rather about very concrete relaxation and rethinking of established mistakes and rigid structures.

Whenever I hear these ridiculous discussions in a social partnership blockade that affects all employees, Austria can once again be viewed as an exciting black box, as a failed state with a good average standard of living, as a rum ball republic.

Whenever this maelstrom of concerns, this old white man and woman wisdom from the last millennium, scripted MS DOS work group catering, is what you can do is join in the moaning in friendly messages from Malta or the Algarve and remind people that it can also be a bit more chilled out fun.

Hey, that can be refined, that's where we can start, yes, it's that simple, yes, it's that simple, really, Mr. Hofrat, really, Madam Secretary General.

It's a win-win.

Yes, even more money for the jackdaw. Even more money for Mr. Uninhibited.

But also a lot more love time and opportunities and energy to help people or living creatures or the environment. And you can still have the Christmas party to cheat on your partner while drunk. Tradition obliges.

Sure. Not like the Americans but like smart Europeans, we can learn, we are living in the best basic conditions in the world. But we have to start making use of that.

I always laugh out loud when I'm told that working from home for two days is an innovation or a concession when applying for a job. Correct, trying to sell it.

For “jobs” that could mostly be done from the moon. Or a trained cockatoo.

But, but, what if an employee injures himself while going to the fridge? Things like that can happen to someone like that even in the office toilet that you can't predict, Mr. Works Council.

Perhaps the real concern of companies that are cautious about responding to the new opportunities is that their employees might discover their power and independence, but as far as I can see, experiences at those companies that are fully remote or have found exciting hybrid solutions hardly suggest this.

A certain level of commitment and reliability is still extremely popular, while the wild life of being a freelancer who is always looking for jobs is something only a few people aspire to.

But we could finally start to understand temporary work or employee sharing in a different way than just as a capitalist perversion for slaughterhouses and disenfranchised farm workers.

I say :

Remote working is the dream, it is real life, of course you could add passive income to that, but that is another story. And both should in themselves be nothing more than a temporary solution to a redesigned planet and social contract.

But for the next 20, 40, 80 years, alongside robots and the magic of AI and genetic engineering, we have a great opportunity to offer as many people as possible the most amazing life possible.

If this is not pursued further, the conclusion is that all the pinball and mindfulness seminars at company expense, all the empty promises, only represent the illusion of improvement.

Why have we not had a real reduction in working hours for so many years?

Maybe because everything together really only serves to suck as much money upwards as possible, starting with middle management, whose meaning and purpose gets a different essay.

Even though a lot is written about the trend, almost everyone still thinks of home office as working in the same city or at least in the same country, insurance or taxes are cited as a counterargument as if these contracts were commandments carved in stone from the holy land.

And even if you stay in one region, you can only imagine how much you can save on rent for a family in a remote area. A Corsican country house instead of a cozy Viennese room.

But this would require rethinking other blind spots such as learning and teaching.

(Corona neighs in the background, well, what did I want to tell you with me.)

To combat clichés right from the start, I am concerned with honest persuasion when dealing with the company boss, whereas the employee's eyes need to be opened to the magic that can lie in a freer life.

So far, all of these things have been too much dominated by the digital nomad boom from the pre-Covid era; the whole thing is possible in a more conventional and grounded way.

I will point out some approaches, and furthermore it will really require studies, but certainly not from those who, deep down in their hearts, have neither understood it nor want to.

The potential must be expressed in numbers, but also focused on wellbeing to create a new guiding culture.

Not just an option. It must become a human right to be able to live one's life as best as possible. And what we still consider to be work today is something that most people are happy to accept.

In this coaching and consulting it is not my intention to discuss the strange three-part division of work, sleep and leisure; in this brainwashed gene pool that is obviously a thing for the next century.

But a Tease

be allowed. We can simply send Emil and/or Lotte to Brac, or Trieste or boldly to Cyprus, wherever, they like their new relaxed existence with pools and dreaming of the southern lifestyle, we then halve their working hours with only a one-third salary cut, which is enough to enjoy the apartment and pre-season everyday life.

Squeak, the duck stops. It's not worth it, oh, the boss doesn't need an office anymore, and the house or apartment in Austria isn't too bad at AirBnb either. It's like the revelations that you can save on a car in the city and therefore pay a little more rent. Ohhhhhhhh.

But what if I need a car sometimes?

Ohhhhhhhh, then just borrow one.

Is all this really possible?

Yes, a small group of initiates have been living on these paths for many years, one could try to benefit from their experiences in order to achieve a clever transformation and scaling.

And business travelers are similarly hybrids. There is so much to tell here, too, pandemic truths are once again being disguised, such as the fact that it was never about business but always about the trip. About visiting a brothel as an expense at the expense of all customers' margins.

Back to the start as a remote worker. At the beginning, it is really necessary to start thinking that everything is caught up in an obsessive neurotic workaholic, no matter how much you talk about life balance. Because this is taken seriously, it immediately becomes a natural-feeling 20 or 30 hours as the maximum and only when it fits perfectly into the day. With three months of vacation. That's right, Generation Z!!!

Could you run a shop like that? Just look at the smarter tattoo artists 🙂

Of course, all this sounds far too good to be true, and people usually choose slavery voluntarily.

An endless list of obligations serves as explanations and excuses. And the infamous reward of retirement. Frail or not, you will never experience 70 with the same joy as 30, 40, or 50.

Even someone like me, who has never been forced into the work process that my clients know, feels and recognizes all of these social, almost sociopathic rulesets that are imprinted on the brain from a very early age. Again and again, in ever new variations and generations.

The omnipresent control, the real Big Brother, is working remotely.

And yet it is not my aim to revive the already failed hippie romanticism of the 1968s; it is fun to create, to design, to interact, to simply live.

Being part of this system is neither shameful nor wrong, but it is my aim to loosen it up a little, to confront the rigid corset of the past with an alternative model that cannot be dismissed as fantasy and impossibility.

That sounds dangerous, doesn't it?

It tastes like eternal short-time work on the terrace with a view of the bay where you once tried to switch off when you were stressed.

The children of the deserters play on the beach with the kindergarten teacher, who is also a deserter and on the verge of burnout.

Zoom shares are collapsing. Star link, on the other hand, is becoming cheaper and is even profitable in Central Europe.

Salvini is starting to get on the nerves of all the Austrians. The mafia is also considering going remote.

But what does a classic Austrian boss do when everything is running so smoothly? He comes up with more strokes of genius, he becomes a creative rather than an administrative winner.

From wherever he wants to be. The savings alone suddenly only amount to taxes in Central America at the corporate level...

But that's a different kind of consulting. I create images in minds and hearts, that makes me happy. Come by for a cappuccino, my exact location is on Google Map.