The other day, my best friend up in New Jersey paid me a surprise visit down here in Virginia. He recently started a new four-day-a-week job and was down here on one of his off days. We were talking about work, and the different arrangements we’ve all had.

I went from normal a conventional full-time position to fully self-employed. I’ve only ever held one full-time job, albeit for almost five years. He’s worked part-time, as well as two weeks on/two weeks off—on boat crews—and now an almost-conventional full-time job. The only sort of work schedule neither of us has ever done is hybrid (though when I was authorized to work fully remote at my old job, pre-pandemic, I still came in once a week. So I guess that more or less was what we now call hybrid work.)

A couple of things stood out to me from our rambling conversation...