Member-only story
The 4th Wall — Adjusting to Work in The New Ordinary
OK- the alarm goes off. You’ve probably been awake seconds before the alarm goes off. From that point every part of the “getting ready for work” ritual has shifted. Especially the one where you leave your home and travel to an office and embody the work persona.
To work remotely you must create a 4th wall. You are no longer in the lounging at home mode, even though you haven’t left, rather you have created a quasi stage, with cameras, lights, and zooming action.
The 4th wall is a theater term. When you see a play, the actors create the 4th wall between the audience and the characters within the play. Rarely do they break the action to bring down the safety of the 4th wall. This imagined wall keeps you, the audience, in a state of buying into whatever is being presented on the stage. The actors incarnate into characters that take you on an adventure, and you have chosen to enter into a state of the performance.
Goodbye to the you who was office centric. And identified as such. The shirt, tie, suit, beautiful shoes are stored away as you say “Hello sweatpants”, don a dress shirt (who cares what’s on the bottom), open a laptop and sit on your favorite dining room or kitchen chair to embody the faux actor behind the 4th wall of work.
