Léonie, what is unique about your personal work model?

My hob­by­horse is most cer­tain­ly work­ing re­mote­ly from New Zealand. Work­ing re­mote­ly gives me in­sight into what I took for grant­ed, for ex­am­ple, be­ing re­spon­si­ble for or­gan­is­ing my dai­ly rou­tine, build­ing sus­tain­able re­la­tion­ships from afar and con­tribut­ing my strengths from a dis­tance. It’s in­ter­est­ing to see how these habits change when I’m work­ing in Switzer­land.

I no­tice time and again that I place more re­stric­tions on my­self than my work does. It can be the tini­est of things: a few weeks ago, I dis­cov­ered mak­ing phone calls while out for a walk. It is fas­ci­nat­ing how much is re­solved, par­tic­u­lar­ly in very tricky or per­son­al con­ver­sa­tions, when I am lit­er­al­ly on the move.

I like break­ing new ground by ex­plor­ing and push­ing bound­aries. This also means that I some­times fail spec­tac­u­lar­ly, whether it be due to the hur­dle of in­ter­na­tion­al bu­reau­cra­cy or against my own stan­dards. This is per­fect­ly OK, it pro­vides ma­te­r­i­al for great sto­ries and also en­sures that I nev­er take my­self too se­ri­ous­ly.

Marco, what is it like for you?

My work mod­el is, in it­self, not so spec­tac­u­lar. I work 0.8 FTE and, in do­ing so, try to bal­ance my ca­reer am­bi­tions with help­ing to look af­ter our son and my ‘side job’ as a gui­tarist in a post-met­al band. Be­cause of this, I great­ly ap­pre­ci­ate the flex­i­bil­i­ty TBF of­fers.

It’s hap­pened that in the mid­dle of the work­ing day, a tune has en­tered my head. A tune that (nat­u­ral­ly) had to be record­ed im­me­di­ate­ly. Two hours lat­er, af­ter my fin­gers had cooled down again, I car­ried on work­ing. The work­ing day might have been longer, but it was twice as pro­duc­tive. On more nor­mal days, I use the flex­i­bil­i­ty to go on planned and spon­ta­neous out­ings with the fam­i­ly.

Of course, things do not al­ways run smooth­ly. To use Léonie’s ex­pres­sion: I ‘failed spec­tac­u­lar­ly’, par­tic­u­lar­ly in the be­gin­ning. There were times when I spent a whole day in front of the com­put­er with­out achiev­ing a lot, be­cause I al­lowed my­self to be dis­tract­ed too much while work­ing from home or some­where out­doors. The pay­back fol­lowed im­me­di­ate­ly: adding a con­cen­trat­ed night shift onto the work­ing day. Les­son learned: fo­cus!

De­spite all of the flex­i­bil­i­ty, I am look­ing for­ward to more so­cial con­tact in Beck­en­hof, the TBF of­fice where I am based. Drink­ing an oc­ca­sion­al spon­ta­neous cof­fee with the team or go­ing for a walk around the of­fice for no rea­son... that is some­thing I have def­i­nite­ly missed in the last 1.5 years.

And how have you experienced this change, Isabel?

Even though I have no chil­dren at home, I ap­pre­ci­ate the flex­i­bil­i­ty of the new work­ing arrange­ment. Since there is enough space for my whole of­fice in my ruck­sack, I can choose to work wher­ev­er I want. For ex­am­ple, I oc­ca­sion­al­ly go to Bern for a face-to-face meet­ing, work from home if I want to avoid dis­trac­tions (or lim­it them to my cat), or I go to the of­fice in Zurich if I am itch­ing to speak to my work col­leagues. This reg­u­lar change of scenery en­sures that every­day life is full of va­ri­ety while also pre­sent­ing un­ex­pect­ed chal­lenges, such as when doc­u­ments can only be made avail­able by the cus­tomer in phys­i­cal form, and I first need to find out when and where I can col­lect them.

I ap­pre­ci­ate the time flex­i­bil­i­ty, es­pe­cial­ly when I am dri­ving to the moun­tains with­out any traf­fic jams on a Fri­day af­ter­noon and then can sit in front of the lap­top again when I’m there. How­ev­er, I no­tice that in ad­di­tion to the frame­work set by my cal­en­dar in the form of ap­point­ments, I of­ten im­pose ‘rules’ on my­self that are ob­so­lete un­der the new work­ing arrange­ment.

My wish for the fu­ture is that I ques­tion these ‘rules’ more of­ten – and ig­nore them where ap­pro­pri­ate. I will then be able to choose where and when I work based on the needs that arise from the tasks ahead and my dai­ly sched­ule. I would like to use this flex­i­bil­i­ty for more of the small things; not just to hang out the wash­ing (which, for me, is a sur­pris­ing­ly good ac­tiv­i­ty for study­ing a com­plex prob­lem), but also in win­ter­time, to take in some air out­doors in the af­ter­noon while there is day­light and sun­shine, and then car­ry-on work­ing feel­ing re­freshed.