My mother is staying with us at the moment.

My partner and I both WFH, as does my Mum, which means that there are three adults working for three different companies, under the one small suburban roof. 2022, hey?

It’s hardly a broad case study, but for my Millennial partner and I, it’s been an enlightening experience.

The first bombshell came when Mum emerged from her room at 11am one morning. Our four year old was in the bathroom; Mum hovered in the hallway. Seeing the confusion on my face, she explained – “we’re on a 5 minute bathroom break.”

A bathroom break?! I don’t think I’ve had one of those since I was in high school. Granted, I work in a creative industry where much of my time is my own to manage, but the thought of needing permission to go to the toilet sends a shiver down my spine.

Next, she came out to the kitchen at lunchtime. She had headphones in one ear, on hold with the bank, and scurried around making a slapdash lunch. “Only got 20 minutes for lunch today”, she whispered over the hold music. “I hope they answer in time”.

We may WFH, but she may as well be in the office. Her hours are regimented, and from what I can see, it seems like face to face hours are king.

Meanwhile, my partner and I are juggling two full-time jobs with two full-on kids. Our work days stretch across 12-14 hours, because that’s what works best for us.

Most mornings, we’re on our laptops in our pyjamas. It’s probably not the healthiest start to the day, but a serve of emails over breakfast helps us get ahead of the day. And we need it, because by the time my Mum’s into her second hour of work, we’re still wrangling toddlers into outfits under tense negotiation, serving the third round of breakfast, and putting a load of washing on.

When the daycare and preschool drop-off is done we’re in Deep Productivity mode – the pressure of a 3pm pickup really does wonders for your ability to get things done.

But often in the afternoons, my partner has a quiet patch, and can take 90 minutes out to head to the gym. He’ll jump on an evening Teams meeting from the kitchen when he’s prepping dinner, and I might lock myself in the bedroom to finish a story uninterrupted.

At 4.30pm, Mum logs off. She’s been at work since 7am.

After a few days of working in each other’s orbits, I start to doubt myself. Am I lazy? I’ve always taken pride in being an industrious worker, office or not, but now I’m gaslighting myself. After all, I eat when I’m hungry, have a break when I need some fresh air, and take all the bathroom breaks I like. Am I kidding myself about being a hard worker? Has the pandemic made me less productive, more lackadaisical about my responsibilities?

I once had a manager who told me, when I was on the brink of major burnout, that hours don’t matter. If you get your work done, she said, it doesn’t matter how much or how little you work. If you can produce quality, creative work, to the deadline, then who cares whether you were at your desk from 9-5 or not? Isn’t the outcome the whole point? At the time, I remember feeling slightly unsettled by her revelation. I felt like a naughty schoolchild, being shown how to sneak out of the classroom.

But the pandemic changed everything, including a major shift in the way we think about work-life integration. Recently I had a flashback to one of my first jobs in retail. It was the slow season, and work was deathly quiet. There’s nothing more boring than watching a clock. The golden rule of retail, of course, is that you should always look busy – no one wants to go into a shop manned by bored hovering salespeople. So, armed with dusting cloths, we’d perch on stools, dusting shelving that we’d dusted the day before. Neatening rows of clothing we’d already folded. Spacing hangers out, one finger width apart. Very busy. Very bored.

I distinctly remember thinking, on one of these painstaking days, that one day I would have a job that ended when the work was finished, and not when the clock struck 6.

After all, if you’re not paid hourly, then you’re probably paid for a skill, or to produce something. How you get it done is on you.

Once we’ve got the kids to sleep, it’s not unusual for my partner and I to sit up in bed together, our laptop screens illuminating the dark. Every wellbeing expert advises against this practice – we quite literally bring work into bed with us – but there’s something cosy and comforting about it. We work in silent companionship, uninterrupted, without the distraction of emails pinging and calendar notifications popping up. It’s peaceful, productive.

Our bums may not always be in seats, but there’s no less heart in our work.