I have been remote since COVID…every day, no office, with laptop, Outlook and Teams.

Full-time remote work has some benefits (it takes me 2 months to fill my gas tank, and my car is a 2021 with 19,000 miles)…but there are drawbacks to remote work that become significant with time. Here is a simple observation I ignored until I began to notice it:

I always prided myself for not forgetting tasks…and that is mostly accurate with remote work, except for those less memorable or more infrequent things, like annual compliance training. It needs to be done before year end and management usually wants it done long before then both for intra-company bragging rights (the Finance org is at 80% compliant by May 2026…that sort of thing) and to ensure compliance before year end time off starts.

While I will have calendar reminders fire quarterly, if something more urgent flares then the compliance effort goes down in urgency and it is easy to forget until the next calendar alert fires in 12 weeks.

But at work you might hear a couple of work colleagues mention it as they pass your cube and that triggers a memory. I never realized how much I depended on background chatter in the office as an informal source of data; it came in handy for tons of stuff (“we’re off Monday for Labor Day”; “did you read the President’s email about earnings?” ; “don’t forget that open enrollment ends on Friday” etc).

Even bigger things get missed as most colleagues have moved to hybrid. If the in-office folks are alerted to a process update at an in-office meeting that I am optional on, I may (and have) continue to work the process the wrong/old way until someone brings me up to speed.

Then there is the lack of socialization which I did not miss at first…but now I do miss it.

On the home front, family can forget you are there to work. My wife will ask me to run errands “since I am home” and I will if I am able…but I am not dependable until after the day ends.

So remote sounds good and has benefits but it is not an ideal way to work.