Moreover, the closer you look at the collaboration research, the more caveats you find. Yes, collaboration in the office has seemed fundamental to solving big problems. This is in part because although casual conversations aren’t immediately productive, they build the trust necessary for groups to freely exchange ideas and feedback without making everybody hate one another. But a great deal of office-based collaboration turns out to have been pure wasted time. Other research suggests that we’ve been consumed by “collaboration overload” for years and that we might be better off clawing back up to 20 percent of collaboration time for ourselves to avoid burning out from an eternal purgatory of circling, circling, circling back.
As the COVID-inspired flight to larger houses boosted home prices, the pandemic took a sledgehammer to urban amenities, and downtown rents fell. Restaurants, bars, and museums have closed, and remote work has made living close to the office less valuable.