Working from boat – The Property Chronicle
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Working from boat

Investor's Notebook

Why be stuck at home when you can Zoom aboard with a far better backdrop, go for a dip at lunchtime – and be just as productive?

So, how has working from home been for you? Having a good idea of the Property Chronicle readership I imagine it has gone rather well – better than you’d care to admit to your boss. What’s not to like about no commuting, being able to exercise each day, and not eating sandwiches for lunch?

You may have got on surprisingly well with your partner – although that’s not true for everyone: I gather divorces are about to go through the roof. If you were stuck at home with young kids, you might have been telling your colleagues how difficult it was but secretly delighting in the extra time spent playing with them. If your kids are school-aged, at what point did you decide to a) pay up to get them home tutored, or b) effectively give up and let them decide their own educational priorities.

For She-who-is-Mrs-Blain and me, the initial excitement of lockdown was tempered by how quickly our fit and athletic 25-year-old son emptied the fridge of all the local produce and organic veg boxes we’d carefully chosen to see us through. It was a revelation and quite expensive. Otherwise we ate well, exercised, lost some weight and generally enjoyed more time together. Our daughter stayed in London – and missed out on some great games of Risk!

According to the universities that have researched this, the average workday increased by 48.5 minutes, as did the number of meetings (up 13%) and the number of emails sent to colleagues (+1.4%). But the length of those meetings was much shorter, meaning overall we have been actually spending less time in meetings than before Covid-19.






Investor's Notebook

About Bill Blain

Bill Blain

Bill Blain is Strategist for Shard Capital, a leading investment firm. Bill is a well known broadcaster and commentator, with over 30-years experience working for leading investment banks and brokerages at senior levels. He's been closely involved in the growth and development of the global fixed income markets, and pioneered complex financial products including capital, asset-backed securities and private placements. Increasingly, he's involved in the Real and Alternative Assets sector seeking to explain their complexity, how to generate decorrelated returns, and create liquidity in non-listed assets. Bill is a passionate sailor, talentless painter, plays guitar badly, is learning the bagpipes, and built a train-set in his attic.

Articles by Bill Blain

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