My VR Office Experiment: Day 22

Day 22 in the Virtual Office

Total Time in VR: 2 hours and 29 minutes (across 5 VR sessions)

Use Cases: Focus Work (38% – 56 min), 1:1 Meetings (23% – 33 min), Team Meetings (20% – 29 min), MiniMindfulness (20% – 29 min)

Winter came today, and with it a dip in my VR time. One thing that VR will never fix is tough winter driving (until we all live in the metaverse…which sounds awful actually.)

The four categories for today are becoming a solid trend. I use VR for solo work and meetings with individuals and teams (and meditation). These are metrics I expected, but it will be interesting to see how the numbers look at the end of the experiment. I did a lot of “HR Work” today in VR, which made something that might seem tedious at times more enjoyable. I think that’s one of the levers of the VR Office to really consider. What activities might you enjoy more just because you’re in VR when you do them?? I definitely enjoy my 1:1 discussions and my morning stand up meetings with my team more in VR then I would on Zoom. I’d probably like them even more in person, but as I work for a fully remote company that’s not really an option.

Cup Half Empty: Everything went pretty smoothly today. I did some testing of PC Monitors in Workrooms and confirmed that PCs are limited in a way that Mac computers are not, at least for now. To create multiple monitors in the Private Office with a PC you must have that many physical screens running at the same time. My testing was with an open laptop and monitor. That config gave me dual screens in the VR Office. There is a note that updates are coming to add Virtual Monitors to PCs. With my Macbook hooked up, I can create 3 virtual monitors (big ones!) with one 13 inch screen, and the laptop doesn’t even need to be opened!

I’ll keep grumbling about the keyboard issues. My Logitech MX Keyboard failed to map at all today.

Cup Half Full: This afternoon I had a toothache. I’ve always been fascinated with “VR for pain therapy”, and so instead of taking some pain meds I decided to use VR. I immersed myself in my full rig: Face Cover with Fan, Noise Cancelling Airpods, and Neck Fan. I basically did everything I could do to disassociate myself from my physical environment. Then I started some music and got to work. And I forgot about the tooth. Yep. The brain can be tricked, if you have the right tools. I’m not saying it would always work, but it did today.

I actually did a similar test after knee surgery a while back. Instead of taking all of the opioids I’d been prescribed, I used Walkabout Minigolf, and would fly around the courses having a blast, thoroughly distracted from the pain of my knee. And I only took half the pills that I had been given. Something worth pondering…

#TLDR

The return to full speed continued today. I felt productive doing tasks that I might have drug my feet on if I was just staring at my screen. I had several face-to-face meeting in VR that wouldn’t have been as fun if I was just staring at my screen. I even used VR to manage some low-level pain. That’s a positive impact I hadn’t even considered when I started the VR Office Experiment. What else might come up in the weeks ahead!?!

Till Tomorrow…