The problem with Microsoft’s new “virtual commute”

On August 1st of 2017, I started work at my first remote job. Within a day or two I knew I had a problem: The divide between work and home had disappeared. Home was gone; it was all just work. Knowing that this was unsustainable, I thought about what I could do to recreate that divide and came up with what I called at the time my Mind Commute, which sounds fancy but was really just a list of things I did prior to starting my workday and at the end of it.

Microsoft’s virtual commute is work, not commuting

It worked. I got my home back. So when I heard about Microsoft’s new “virtual commute” feature in Teams, I thought, ‘yes, good.’ I want other remote workers who might be struggling like I once was to get relief too. Then I got a look at the UI (as it is now, anyway) in this Wall Street Journal report and realized what I should have understood immediately: this entire “commute” takes place in an app. In a work app, no less. Which means, in effect, that Microsoft is proposing that Teams users go to work in order to recreate the boundary between home and work. 🤔

That would definitely not have helped me back in 2017 when I first started working from home. It would only have reinforced the overwhelming sense that ‘my life is work now.’ I suspect it will have the same impact on remote workers who feel, as I once did, that they have no home anymore. Everything is work. It’s all just work.

Relying on work to provide a boundary around work is nonsensical. Please don’t do that. Make your own commute! Include physical movement in some capacity. By moving your body through time and space, you teach yourself that work is still a thing you “go” to; it’s still a destination, even if it’s not a physical one. This is how you create the divide between work and home in your mind, not by logging into your employer’s choice of work chat app.

What Microsoft’s virtual commute really offers

Which isn’t to say Microsoft’s idea isn’t a good one. I think it could be, even though I strongly doubt that it will accomplish what the company says it hopes to, i.e. recreate the work/life divide for remote workers. I would be shocked if it succeeded there. But if remote workers create their own commutes that don’t involve work-related apps or computers, Microsoft’s new feature could help Teams users get more from their workdays by encouraging them to use startup and shutdown rituals. That’s what this new feature really offers, not a virtual commute.

After all, if you’re logged into Teams, you’re already “at work,” not commuting to work.

Top photo by Tim Gouw

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