For many people returning to their offices after more than three months in lockdown, doing so will be like visiting the ruins of a bygone era. Working from home, call it distributed work, remote work or work from anywhere, is definitely here to stay.

对于许多在禁闭三个多月后返回办公室的人来说，这样做就像参观过去时代的废墟。 在家工作，称为分布式工作，远程工作或在任何地方工作， 肯定会留下来 。

No matter how much we spend on partitions, colored safety distance stickers, or hydro-alcoholic gel dispensers, many of us will never return to the office on a regular basis, and will move on to systematically perform our tasks from other locations. Obviously, this will not be the case for everybody: some people require specific machines and to be in certain locations and cannot consider it, but according to most studies, they are now a minority.

无论我们在隔板，彩色安全距离标贴或水凝胶分配器上花费多少，我们中的许多人都不会定期回到办公室，而会继续从其他地点系统地执行任务。 显然，不是每个人都这样：有些人需要特定的机器，并且在某些位置不能考虑它，但是根据大多数研究， 他们现在是少数 。

Studies carried out at MIT or Stanford prove not only that the trend exists and has taken root, but that we are facing the development of a new economy based on remote working as the basis of greater productivity and even higher levels of innovation and creativity.

在麻省理工学院或斯坦福大学进行的研究不仅证明了这种趋势存在并已根深蒂固，而且我们正面临着一种基于远程工作 的新经济的发展， 这 是更高生产率 ，甚至更高水平的创新和创造力的基础 。

The news also makes it very clear what is happening: technology companies, leading the way, are letting their office leasing contracts expire, reducing the number of their headquarters, and remodeling them instead as places for socializing and for occasional meetings. Others have announced permanent plans for remote working and are testing the workforce to assess their ability to adapt to such arrangements. We are entering the age of hybrid or liquid work, replacing the simplistic idea from the end of the last century of just sending workers home. No, in the future we will work from wherever we want, but we will have many different reasons for coming to the office, which will be accommodated in formats and furniture that are very different from those of today.

这则新闻也很清楚地说明了正在发生的事情： 技术公司 率先 让办公室租赁合同到期 ， 减少总部数量并进行了改建，而不是社交和偶尔开会的场所。 其他人宣布了远程工作的永久性计划，并且正在测试劳动力以评估他们适应这种安排的能力。 我们正在进入混合工作或流动工作的时代，取代了上个世纪末仅仅派遣工人回家的简单想法 。 不，将来我们会在任何地方工作，但是我们有许多不同的理由来办公室，这些办公室将以与今天截然不同的形式和家具容纳。

What’s more, working remotely is not endless boring video conference meetings. Zoom, Google Meet, Microsoft Teams and similar tools are simply an attempt to move the most recognizable parts of our work from one channel to another. As time goes by and we learn more about countries such as the Netherlands or Finland, which started this trend many years before the pandemic arrived, we realize the enormous importance of asynchronous versus synchronous communication, and above all, how the latter enslaves us while the former sets us free. Tools such as Slack have seen a sharp rise in use in many companies, enabling us to share documents and replace synchronous meetings with much more efficient and productive approaches.

而且， 远程工作并不是无聊的视频会议 。 Zoom，Google Meet，Microsoft Teams和类似工具只是试图将我们工作中最知名的部分从一个渠道转移到另一个渠道。 随着时间的流逝， 我们进一步了解了像荷兰或芬兰这样的国家，这些国家在大流行到来之前就已经开始了这种趋势，我们意识到异步通信与同步通信的巨大重要性，最重要的是，在通信时代，异步通信如何奴役我们。前者使我们自由。 工具如疏松已经看到了急剧上升的使用在许多公司 ，使我们共享文档和更有效和高效的方法替换同步会议。

Many of us are now relearning how to work, leaving behind not only many unproductive hours a year sitting behind a steering wheel and contributing to traffic jams, but also many psychological habits dating back to the industrial revolution, centuries ago: dependence on the workplace, surveillance and micromanagement, or fixed and supposedly inflexible timetables based on some kind of divine mandate. But no we’ve seen that we can do things so much better, and in much more efficient and satisfactory ways.

我们中的许多人现在都在重新学习工作方式 ，不仅每年浪费很多无聊的时间坐在方向盘后面，导致交通堵塞，而且还留下了数百年前可追溯到工业革命的许多心理习惯：对工作场所的依赖，监视和微观管理，或者基于某种神圣使命的固定的，据说不灵活的时间表。 但是，我们还没有看到我们能够以更加有效和令人满意的方式做得更好。

The sooner we rethink offices, the sooner we will start to save money on rent (not just on offices, but on parking) — and more importantly, to provide the workforce with better ways of doing things — and the sooner we will be part of an evolution that will be the way things are done in the future.

我们越早思考办公室，我们越早开始节省租金(不仅在办公室，而且在停车场)上的钱-更重要的是，为员工提供更好的做事方式-我们将越早成为一部分未来的工作方式将不断演变。

Let’s be clear: working remotely, in fact, has long been not only perfectly possible, but the way forward. The pandemic has simply accelerated that transition.

让我们明确一点：实际上，长期以来，不仅完全可以进行远程工作，而且是前进的道路。 大流行只是加速了这种转变。

This article was previously published on Forbes.

本文先前已在《福布斯》上发表。

(En español, aquí)

( Enespañol ， aquí )