My VR Office Experiment: Day 7

Day 7 in the Virtual Office!

Total Time in VR: 5 hours and 24 minutes (across 10 VR sessions)

Use Cases: Team Meetings (54 min), Focus Time (1 hr 29 mn), Evening Fun (59 min), 1:1 Meetings (54 min), Mini-Mindfulness (30 min)

While in VR with a co-worker today I was asked an interesting question: “How does this platform (Horizon Workrooms) help you focus better on work?”

I didn’t have to think long to give a simple answer. When I put on the headset, that is when I “go to work”. When I’m at work, my house no longer distracts me, just like it didn’t when I left the house for an office in my past jobs. Once in the VR Office, I focus on tasks, and drive against my to-do lists. And I stay away from my phone and any other “internet distractions”. Some of that is discipline sure, but a lot of that is the fact that the virtual environment I’m in pushes me to focus more on what is before me (across my glorious 3 massive monitors!)

Cup Half Empty: Not a lot to complain about today. Mainly because I swore to myself I’d stop complaining about keyboard tracking for at least a week. I switched to my Apple Magic Keyboard (mini version), which in the past has worked just fine in Workrooms. Alas, today it was also floating above the table and a bit wobbly. Never un-usable, but still a distraction that many people would not tolerate. So a barrier to wide adoption of VR for Work for sure.

Cup Half Full: I attended our All Company Weekly All Hands from VR again this week, and it continues to impress me how awesome it is to have a massive monitor for the thing that I’m watching second-hand, while working on a separate massive screen. I had multiple meetings with my team today, continuing our work with data analytics (meaning we were reviewing spreadsheets on the virtual wall). Suddenly a boring meeting is fun!

#TLDR

Week 2 is chugging along fine. No big earth shaking moments in VR today, but also the VR space is becoming second nature for me. The challenge to articulate how VR helps me focus was clarifying for me. I know more questions like that are coming my way as I keep using VR for Productivity, so it’s good to start practicing quick responses. No delayed Slack text response possible, as the questioner was seating right across the table from me!!

I wrapped up the day with “Evening Fun”, showing up in the stats for the first time. Showing off some VR over at our local coffee shop. It’s fun to watch people fly in VR for the first time, over the glorious Walkabout Minigolf courses!

Till Tomorrow…