During the past 35 or so years I have been working in technology. Many of those years spent as an independent consultant based in my home office. With that said, you would think moving my office at Stratix to my home office would not be much of a change. Perhaps it is not so much the physical change but the mental one. The few times I have worked from home in the last three years, I felt somewhat more productive due to a lack of normal, in the office distractions.

This time however things are strangely different. Uncertainty plays a huge role here. We are all wondering how long will this go on? What will things look like on the other side. Being an optimist I know we will survive this but what will that survival be like.

I had a colleague relate an interesting prediction he heard from a relative. “More business will go bankrupt than people will die from this event”. While I truly hope both of those results are minimal it does raise a question. How do we deal with a mass shutdown of life in America with the prospect that a significant portion of it may not restart?

I am very fortunate to work for a technology company that has both the talent and the resources to continue operating in an almost entirely virtual state. Obviously we are not delivering equipment or visiting customers but there remain thousands of users to support. Many are on the front lines of this crisis caring for the sick, enforcing the law, running the supply chains and governing. We can connect with any user, anywhere and help sustain their efforts to combat this menace. We are in much better shape that a lot of businesses.

Back to the move though. This relocation has forced me to clean things up in the home office. It feels good to discard things you no longer have a use for. Making way for things you do. Remove an cabinet that just took up space. Toss some old software CDs that were who know how old. There was sadly, one casualty as I did manage to break the volume control on the speaker system attached to this computer (there are now 3 in the office). Otherwise the redo went well.

So, tomorrow marks the beginning of a different normal. I’ll keep you posted…

RB

Shout out to @ArtPost of the p4photel.com for the inspiration.