Why Workstyle is my Word of 2018

Firgas Esack - 22 Jan 18

Hello. I am a freelance Publicist. As we’re sharing, I have three high spirited sons, three unruly dogs and a house full of clutter because my photographer other-half is something of a magpie.

But lately, I also have a workstyle.

I was introduced to this concept by its architects and crusaders, The Hoxby Collective; a global community of freelancers who have the freedom to work at any convenient time and from any geographic location. I’m proud to be part of their 400-strong team, it feels revolutionary.

Why does the workstyle movement equate to the future? Because, getting 4-in-the-afternoon texts from your childminder telling you that your progeny is blue in the face screaming ‘I WANT MUMMY!’ and subsequently having to sneak off to the loos to recite ‘Stick Man’ to said child because if you walk out of the door even a minute before 5 pm you’ll be branded a Quitter, is rubbish.

The thing is, I have NO desire to be a SAHM. I love PR, it’s a job that essentially allows you to create and share stories all day. Often over champagne.  But within agency culture you will so often find meetings for the sake of meetings, puffed-up status update calls with clients (‘tickling their balls’, we used to call it…) and that time honoured trick of scheduling a mid-afternoon meeting with a journalist with the hope that it could ‘run on’. If you’ve been there, you’ve done all that.

If you saw me in ‘Freelance Mode’ over the last five years you would have spied some extensive juggling. Sometimes writing press releases whilst restraining a child in a Jumparoo. Or phoning a national paper whilst queuing in Mothercare. Or having tea with Vogue with raspberry Petit Filous in my hair. Because even PR agencies who embrace ‘the F-word’ still expect availability within traditional office hours.

But workstyle represents so much more than just flexible hours and remote working. It’s about feeling boundless because you’ve delivered your best work. Because you’ve had a coffee (OK, three coffees), done the school run on time and without having to park on the zigzag, walked the dogs, sorted the laundry and only then turned on your phone and laptop. And even more radically, once you’ve completed your to-do list –  you could even you turn them off again. (Yes, really!)

Presenteeism (or the need to be in an office from 9-5) is a hoax we have all become conditioned to; along with Diet Coke breaks and mid-morning KitKats representing a food group. What businesses should really be attuned to is productivity and trust.

When we were teenagers at boarding school my brother and his friends created what they called ‘The Mould Plan’. In short, it was an ‘ingenious’ way to spend your adult life in bed, including a pulley system to fetch beers from the fridge. Typical teenage boy dreams. You might be relieved to know that my brother now runs a successful catering business – but my point being that with if the WIFI in your bedroom was awesome and this was your workstyle, who is to judge, providing you got the job done?

Or – to look at it the way Wired’s Editor-at-Large Ben Hammersley does in his book ’64 Things You Need to Know Now for Then’ – quoting Moore’s Law; the idea that as the processing power of computers will double every two years, if you were working on a long-term project, you could simply sit on the beach for a while and let technology advance, then complete the task in a fraction of the time on the fastest platform. If you share his perception here, it’s not slacking or sunbathing, it’s working smarter!

(I jest, but it is all food for thought, right?)

I’m not saying that 2018 will be the year that I won’t have yoghurt in my hair – just that I shall no longer pretend that my phone reception is dodgy because I am scrabbling around looking for a lost plimsoll under the sofa, nor shall I hear myself giving ‘not right now darling, Mummy’s working’ as a reason not to go out and feed the ducks.

And if workstyle is a word I overuse over the next 365 days, well, it is better than ‘Fudgesticks’ or ‘Badgerfork’ or anything else from the dictionary of stressed-out-parent profanities.

Firgas Esack

I am a publicist working as part The Hoxby Collective. I have three sons, three dogs and I prefer my Martinis stirred, not shaken.

View profile for posts, events and more info