Day 39 in the Virtual Office!
Total Time in VR: 2 hours and 33 minutes (across 5 VR sessions)
Use Cases: Community Time (39% – 59 min), Focus Work (32% – 49 min), 1:1 Meetings (19% – 29 min), MiniMindfulness (10% – 15 min)
This is the last working day of the year, and to some degree that last day of the VR Office Experiment. I am going to write up the Week 8 Wrap Up tomorrow before the Holiday Break truly begins, but my professional work is done for 2022! What a wild ride these past two months have been in the VR Office. And today ended on a solid footing, being that the typical “downshift” before break was in full effect.
A nice mixture of focus, 1:1, and community time today is a perfect end to my week and the experiment. I am so excited to see what the data says about the viability of VR for Productivity. I am confident it is viable. But for what? How much time? These questions will find answers in 2023.
Cup Half Empty: Nothing empty to report today. I did try and join my manager in Eleven Table Tennis but the collab was not working (which is par for the course with that game. A game I’ve loved since playing on tethered Rift and Vive Pro). We ended up in his “Horizon Home” which was my first time seeing the meta avatar in the Home, and that was pretty cool.
Cup Half Full: Hosted Community time with my department and we had a blast. Such hijinks with a bunch of people who are all over the country (and Canada). We’ve all been together in the real world a couple times, but you’d think it was much more when you experience the team having fun together.
Also wrapped the year for MiniMindfulness and had one of my favorite new memories. We climbed the big tree in Original Gothic Hard, and one of the meditators didn’t like the stability offered by the branch they were on. So I moved locations and offered my branch. What a weird experience. A cool experience. I hope to have many more with MiniMindfulness 2.0 in 2023!
#TLDR
A good final working day. VR makes my work better. VR makes my life better. But I’m an early adopter. I’m a beta tester. Let’s just say it, I drank the VR kool-aid a long time ago. But I’ve done a good job (I think) of keeping my focus on proving out the use case here. I’ve had bad days. I’ve had “let’s just do zoom” days. I’ve been honest when things fail. And I have never fudged the numbers just to make VR for Productivity look viable. The data is just waiting to be un-wrapped. But I’ll wait a bit and let it settle before digging in. One last post for the VR Office Experiment to come. So for the last time for a bit I say,
Till Tomorrow…
Carrier Pigeon XR 