This March and April scientists all over the world are working remotely. Although most changes in the academic community take lots of time, the quick response to the virus threat brings optimism. Some conferences are held online, Ph.D. defences have turned digital, meetings and discussions continue. Hopefully, our experience of virtual conferences will push for maintaining some part of the scientific discussions via online communities and platforms – no better way to reduce scientists’ carbon footprint. While some might doubt that large-scale digital networking will ever work, perhaps it is partly because they have never had a chance to experience it before.
The forced home-office might also redefine one’s working routine for good. As now it is a time to focus on manuscript and proposal writing, experiments planning, analysing, and all sorts of creative work, we might discover that a shared office and more or less fixed working time was never helpful. Of course, this is a completely individual matter, so if you are struggling, some words of advice: daily short morning online meetings that we practice at AIP set me in a right working mode;there is no point in feeling guilty about engaging in little distractions as the best ideas may come when idle; and, above all, a good soundtrack never fails.
JD 