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When CEOs offered a glimpse at their work-from-home rigs, finews.asia asked itself if remote work is the future. After diarizing his day, editor Peter Hody has his doubts. 

6:15 a.m. – The biggest advantage of working from home is also a major drawback: no time lost commuting between home and the finews.com newsroom in Zurich – so my workdays are longer.

Admittedly, I can sleep a little longer, which comes in handy on early shift days like today. Otherwise, everything is the same: I shower and dress like every other workday. The only exception is I head for my office at home barefoot and settle in faster.

6:45 a.m. – While my computer starts up so I can publish our first piece, I have a quick look at my emails from overnight, monitor the newsflow, and drink a few sips of tea. 

7:00 a.m. – A few press releases trickle in, I write one or two briefs.

At home, my family begins to stir. The door to my office is still open – and with «my office» I mean the room my wife cleared out for me four weeks ago when we began working from home. Solidarity in times of coronavirus. «Still open»? In the newsroom, my office is always open. Trying to do this in a household with children is an exercise in futility.

7:40 a.m. – My younger son wants his bottle, which is my job. I check on my older child – still sleeping. Home-schooling doesn't start until 8:30 a.m., so I let him rest. 

8:00 a.m. – Everyone is up. My kids barge into the office: «Dad, what are you doing? Do you have to work today?» The door is still open.

8:45 a.m. –  I start preparing for our morning editorial meeting (pictured above). The minutes before are a flurry of multitasking between checking breaking news, teeing up story ideas, convincing my kids to get dressed, and getting breakfast ready. This happens while I'm on the phone with a company flack who is unhappy with a story.

I make myself coffee and eat a muesli at my desk – the same as I would do in the newsroom. Everything else is different: no quiet moment of contemplation while waiting for the S-bahn, or while waiting for our high-tech coffee machine in the newsroom to heat up so I can get a cup of coffee.

Instead, working from home means being a productive journalist while juggling the constant unpredictability of young children.

9:00 a.m. – finews.com convenes for a video conference – the most important appointment of the day. We discuss news, story plans and schedules, but also more subjective impressions and feelings and anecdotes from everyday reporting life, quirks of certain banks, broader developments in the industry. This relatively unstructured back-and-forth is where most of finews.com's story ideas are generated. 

We've interacted mainly through video conferencing for four weeks now. finews.com has become a digital collective. After I send out an invite on Slack, my colleagues appear on video one after the other, pantomiming at first until everyone has sorted their audio. Almost everyone is wearing athletic wear.

Video conferencing illustrates what a newsroom can't replicate working from home: direct, interpersonal exchanges on topics and ideas, a quick query or banter across a desk, or lending a hand when you can see someone needs it. 

But meetings are disciplined in terms of structure and time. I frequently mute my line because of the noise from my children, even though «my» office door is now shut.

9:45 a.m. – I check the calls I missed during the meeting. Often they are repeat calls from the same number with an increasing urgency – mostly public relations agencies or company flacks, sometimes redialing several times within a few minutes.

10:00 a.m. – I start working on my stories for the day. Slacks's telltale alert sounds every few minutes with a colleague letting me know they need a piece edited, have questions about a source or contact, or need input for a story.

Slack and video-conferencing – tools we never used before coronavirus and quarantine. Working from home proves to finews.com what consultants said one day into the lock-down: the pandemic accelerates digital adoption. 

10:30 a.m. –  I miss my comfortable «boss chair» in the newsroom, which has armrests and swivels, rocks, and tilts backwards. Not for the first, nor for the last time.