With the democratization of remote work, our potential workspaces have expanded to include an unexpected area from which it is now accepted that one can move projects forward like Sisyphus in pajamas: the bed. Indeed, when working from home, it is tempting to abandon the uncomfortable sitting posture and, at some point, relocate to that soft and rectangular haven that seems to beckon us. Let anyone who has never attended a remote meeting from their mattress throw the first memory foam pillow at me!
Although difficult to quantify, this trend seems to have taken root. A study conducted in 2020 by Tuck Sleep, which researches sleep for commercial purposes, showed that the Covid-19 pandemic had the side effect of increasing the amount of work done from bed. Among the 1,000 Americans surveyed, 8.8% spent between 24 to 40 hours per week in a paradoxical state of being both supine and productive. Even though it evokes a sense of hedonism, calling to mind the tutelary figures of Alexandre le Bienheureux (the indolent hero of the 1968 French cult film Very Happy Alexander) or Playboy founder Hugh Hefner – or even Winston Churchill, who also worked from his bed – this posture is sometimes a necessity, dictated by the lack of a proper desk in small apartments.
Despite its promises of an improbable mix between work and leisure, it often proves uncomfortable in practice. As a passive variable in a society where information flows rapidly, you may find yourself at risk for back pain or a stiff neck caused by an excessively static posture. All the micro-efforts you make during a day at the office without even realizing it (walking to the printer, the cafeteria or grabbing a coffee) vanish if you spend the majority of your working life lying down. This extreme sedentarity, which takes you from bed to bed, is accompanied by increased morbidity, exacerbating cardiovascular, metabolic and musculoskeletal issues.
Despite its risks, this temptation has become a new market, as evidenced by the fact that, on Amazon, one can purchase an intriguing cushion-desk on which to place a laptop and a latte, working while feeling like you're having breakfast at a hotel. Ikea has even launched a section on its website titled "How to work comfortably (and productively) from bed," where the hybridization of spaces dominates, neither truly restful places nor entirely credible work zones. Hence the recurring joke on TikTok, under the hashtag #WorkFromBed, in which an employee emerging from under the covers declares vindictively, "Oh, I'm at the office now!"
In a Reddit conversation dedicated to the theme of working from bed, it is clear that the reasons motivating this practice are very eclectic: pain (such as menstrual cramps), fatigue, the comfort provided by blankets, depression, the demand to work from wherever one wishes, the creative necessity to let one's mind wander...
Nevertheless, all of this requires certain arrangements to ensure that the realms of work and rest do not become completely indistinguishable. "I just make sure to have a transition between work and sleep: put away the laptop, go to other spaces to do something else before going to bed," shares BostonBluestocking. Is the horizontal worker not, ultimately, the most perfected product of a deverticalized working world, at last?
Translation of an original article published in French on lemonde.fr; the publisher may only be liable for the French version.