Stoicism and Working from Home
By: Matthew Sharpe
Tags: Productivity, Pandemic, Working From Home, Stoicism, Philosophy

Our (post-)modern world prided itself on having overcome plagues like those which horrified many of us in our high-school history classes. The last two centuries have also seen the widespread separation of the home from the workplace, and the spread of dedicated educational institutions for our kids.

With 2020’s hindsight, however, we can now see that many of us were a bit too hasty in assuming that all this progress was irreversible. In ways most of us couldn’t have imagined, the world has since been widely ‘locked down’ by a pandemic that has now killed several million human beings. Lockdowns continue in many countries in April 2021.

People in cities almost everywhere have been asked, even legally required, to work and stay at home, except under strict conditions. Many of us have become teachers to our children, in ways for which we have had no formal training.

Bedrooms have become classrooms, dining rooms offices, and our computers windows out upon the world, as well as meeting rooms, cafes and social clubs.

Many of the barriers have broken down which allowed us to keep public and private, work and home lives, business and pleasure compartmentalized. These barriers had (and have) psychological, as well as social importance. They enable us to retire from work into privacy, and return rejuvenated from time alone or with loved ones to the ardors of work.

Their removal has hence created many new potential stressors. Many relationships have been strained, and homes have been broken. In many ways, coronavirus has just made more extreme the wider tendency that social media, mobile devices, and the rapid spread of the internet have been visiting on us for two decades.

Yet, even the most extroverted person has a need, and ideally a right, to a space into which they can withdraw, if not Marcus Aurelius’ inner citadel, or Michel de Montaigne’s back room of the shop. We all need to adapt to our changing technological and work conditions, so we can make them work for us.

Stoicism is a philosophy designed to help us best deal with whatever fortune throws our way. It can furnish helpful advice, in the new worlds of working at home, and on tech, that Covid has brought in its wake.

1. apply the dichotomy of control

From go to woe in Stoic practical philosophy, there is the dichotomy of control. This is the principle with which the philosopher Epictetus famously opens his Manual (Encheiridion 1):

Some things are in our control and others are not. Things in our control are opinion, pursuit, desire, aversion, and, in a word, whatever are our own actions. Things not in our control are body, property, reputation, public office, and, in one word, whatever are not our own actions. The things in our control are by nature free, unrestrained, unhindered; but those not in our control are weak, slavish, restrained, in the power of others

None of us individually chose Covid. Few of us have our hands on the levers of power to choose lockdown, or its lifting. To struggle against the realities of a pandemic, by imagining that it is somehow unreal is to engage in wishful thinking. It is also to deny the real losses and sufferings of many millions, including many of the most vulnerable in our communities, in ways which skirt being deeply inhumane.

If it helps, think of mask-wearing and the many inconveniences of working from home as an act of self-sacrifice to help combat a lethal foe. Far from being a sign of weakness or cowardice, in this light, staying home is a noble thing, an act of strength and of service.

2. eutaxia, dividing your time and unifying your attention

One value of spatially separating work and the home has been that most people could give undivided attention to their work, at one place, and to leisure and the people we love, everywhere else. This spatial separation is now impossible for many. So, we must create it virtually, by exercising the Stoic virtue of eutaxia, good ordering.

Lockdown doesn’t mean we can’t still set aside places within the home which can be separated from shared spaces — if only by a door. Some of us have sheds or pods we can convert to home offices. This is a prudent move.

As for our time and capacity to pay attention, Zeus (read: our nature) has given us sovereign control over that. The problem for many people is that they now have too much control over their time, without the supervision of others around them in a shared workspace. We have had all to become our own bosses, in some ways.

Set aside time to plan therefore each day and, where possible, each week. Separate in advance times of the days when you will work, and when not. Inform your loved ones, including your kids, when these times will be. So they can shape their expectations around this schedule.

Such scheduling in advance seems so obvious as to be trivial. (Most workplaces will have meetings and internal deadlines which also give people good starts.) But premeditation in different forms is a definitively Stoic practice. And working from home, with others, means that when we don’t plan and subdivide our time, we see the costs a lot more quickly.

We then find ourselves working whilst parrying the kids, or juggling domestic tasks. In such a situation, we don’t pay undivided attention to our home lives— since we are half on the computers. But we don’t pay undivided attention to our work either. This is a situation which builds stress, frustration, and potential discord, if we then blame our loved ones for our inability to keep up with work.

With preplanning and forewarning, such triggers can be avoided.

3. when you knock off, turn off all work apps & devices

When you knock off, you need to knock off, even if you don’t hop in the car or on the train for a commute. Log out of your work computer, if you have one. Log out of the work email on your phone, if you have it on. Put the device aside until the morning, if it is a work-owned device.

Out of sight, out of mind.

Make a vow to yourself that you will only look at work emails during dedicated hours, or answer work calls when you are on the clock. This is an application of the virtue of justice, giving to each their due. Most of us are not paid to be 24 hours on call. Doctors and health specialists typically receive extra allowances for making themselves available in this way.

You also owe your family and loved ones your nonwork time. You owe yourself your leisure time. Think of this as being just to yourself.

If we find ourselves always feeling open to being contacted and called upon, this creates a sense of unease and scatteredness — what the Roman texts call stultitia. Clients, partners, students can wait until 8:30 am to receive our replies. If anything is really urgent, there will be special channels of communication which enable such emergencies to be addressed.

So, when you knock off, turn your work devices, and the work part of yourself, off.

4. leave (possible) anger with the sender

We cannot control what others think. Nor what they think of us. Many people out there have standards and values we don’t share. They evaluate us using those standards in ways that can surprise us, and strike us as unjust, foolish, or even malign.

Stoicism doesn’t deny any of this. On the contrary. Readers will know Marcus Aurelius’ morning practice, in the very first thought of Meditations II, 1:

Emails, with all of their conveniences, have not diminished the ways people can judge and misunderstand each other, and argue.

When we receive an email (or a text-only message on social media), we receive just words on a screen. We don’t have access to the expression or body language of the sender. We don’t hear their tone. We can’t ask them to clarify anything they’ve written, which we’ve found ambiguous or potentially unsettling.

All this means, as Donald Robertson has discussed, that we are much more likely to read something awry than if we were chatting face to face. (Plato already picked up on some of these issues, with writing, as far back as his Phaedrus). Anything we write to others, meanwhile, presents the same challenges for them.

So, what should we do from a Stoic perspective when, sitting at home in the study, with the kids next door, someone emails us something we find hostile or unfair?

Marcus’ morning premeditation from Meditations II, 1 should be close to your mind in these moments. This type of thing is as old as human beings, and as young as each new day. It is happening to millions of people right now, and at every moment.

For a start, don’t respond straight away:

We should always allow some time to elapse, for time discloses the truth. Let not our ears be easily lent to calumnious talk …” (Seneca, On Anger II, 24)

Apply the dichotomy of control ((1) above), and realize that all you have control over is how you respond. Recall that this person will have only said what they thought was rightful, however unbalanced we find their views.

Recall also that the email medium is limited, in ways we have said. Acknowledge that you may therefore be interpreting this email incorrectly.

Recall also Epictetus’ wonderful little metaphor of the two handles of any situation. One handle will lead you to assent to the idea that you have been harmed (‘this person is unbearable …’ etc.), and lead to forms of distress, as well as an angry response which will probably make things worse. The other handle will not (‘whatever s/he might say, it is in my power to respond with patience …’).

Try putting the best possible spin on the words that initially trouble you. As Seneca suggests in On Anger, even try setting up a mock advocate for the sender in your head, presenting them in the best light:

We ought, therefore, to plead the cause of the absent against ourselves, and to keep our anger in abeyance: for a punishment which has been postponed may yet be inflicted, but when once inflicted cannot be recalled. (Seneca, On Anger II, 22)

Remember also that, before you reply, the person reading your email is in the same boat, in terms of possible misconstruals of your words. So, if there is anything you feel you need to say, which might be construed as itself problematic, exercise caution.

Consider emailing and asking the person to chat by zoom or telephone. This will enable you to ask and answer, clarify and correct, and for your colleague to make their position clearer.

5. exercise good companionship (eusunallaxia)

Wherever there are enough people, even (or especially) in online groups, there is almost always rumor-mongering and gossip— see again Marcus’s Meditations II, 1. The virtuality of working from home might reduce this in many ways. But it creates other media for it. Also, where disquiet or ‘toxicity’ is being spread around, we can now take it direct into our homes.

The Stoic lists of virtues include, under justice, the specific excellence of eusunallaxia, good companionship. This is the knowledge of how to relate to others without blame. Under moderation, the Stoics include the confirming virtue of aidēmosyne, a sense of honor in how we treat others.

If someone relates to you something ‘bad’ about a third party, always respond with caution. If they are in distress, comfort them. Advise (or, where your role makes this appropriate, assist) them to follow available procedures in your workplace for redress.

But do not immediately share their perspective or their pathos. Empathize that they are feeling distress, but don’t become angered or grieved yourself.

Remember that you have only one person’s hearsay at this point. Recall also that the third party being negatively presented will have their side of any story. The allegations about them might be unfair, or motivated by any number of ignoble intentions. So, to accept the first account you hear, without hearing the others’ side(s) of things, is unjust, and a breech of good companionship towards the impugned.

Recall also the basic principle of the rule of law: that everyone deserves the presumption of innocence, even when they have in fact acted poorly, and the right to defend their actions.

A Stoic can’t rightly stand by and let injustices and nastiness transpire. But we should also recognize that each person has a different role in any institution. However much people might want us to take sides in disputes, it usually isn’t our rightful place to do so, only to assist in treating everyone justly.

If there are emails about such divisive subjects that must be attended to, and which threaten to create stress you might carry with you into your home life, apply the scheduling advice (2). Make a time to read these emails when your attention is undivided, and when you can reflect coolly on how to respond.

If you find yourself going over such situations in your head, again set aside a time to think things over and decide on a course of action, perhaps writing things down to clarify your deliberations. Until and outside of that time, remind yourself as many times as you need to, that these things can wait.

6. remember that all this too will pass

There are gains in time many of us have won in Covid, by not working away from home. For many of us, up to 2–3 hours a day commuting is freed. But as we’ve seen, we now have extra weights on our shoulders, in trying to find and maintain a balance between our different public and private roles.

Those of us with younger families will know firsthand that some days, it becomes impossible to do a full scheduled days’ work, without placing an inordinate caring (and teaching) weight on our partners’ shoulders.

It is worthwhile then to consciously reappraise our expectations, for as long as Covid lasts — in consultation with our loved ones, and our workplace. Prioritizing what needs to be done, and deprioritizing what is less imperative, is sane and sage in these circumstances.

To measure your achievements and shape your expectations by pre-Covid standards may be needlessly setting yourself up for heightened anxieties and disappointments.

Finally, we all should remember that, truly, even pandemics pass. They have in history, and will soon enough tomorrow. Societies will return to a post-Covid-normal, even if many of us continue to work a good deal more from home than pre-2020.

In the meanwhile, we can all take Marcus’ words as another daily Stoic touchstone: