4 ms·

How could remote work not be more productive? Most of my friends/colleagues get back at least an hour of their lives each day they don't commute, and they all u

How could remote work not be more productive? Most of my friends/colleagues get back at least an hour of their lives each day they don't commute, and they all use the "extra" time to do more work. People wanna work. They just don't wanna sit in traffic, walk through parking lots and ride elevators for an hour every day.

prmoustache 3y ago
I think regardless of where you work there is an upper limit in time you actually are productive during a day and it is way way below 8 hours. Usually I do more in the first 2 hours of my shift than I do during the remaining 6 hours. Others might be more productive at different time of day depending on their own internal clock. We just can't be 100% focused on hour work and uninterrupted for so many hours. Also since commute time is not accounted for in your work time, this is a moot point. You don't work more because you don't commute. You just have more free time to do stuff out of work.
helboi4 3y ago
No I don't want to work if i never see human beings, i have no connection to my team and I'm deeply depressed because I am a young single person who doesn't have a family waiting for me at home
- stemlord 3y ago
  Your coworkers are not your friends and your company is not your family, and if your job is keeping you from having friends and family outside of work then you need to find a new job or place to live.
  - helboi4 3y ago
    Your coworkers can 100% be your friends what the hell man. You must be very unpleasant to be around if you refuse to make friends with any of the people you spend most of your waking hours dealing with. The key is making friends with coworkers who are a similar level of seniority to you who you get along with. My job isn't preventing me from having friends or family outside work at all, but I choose not to be miserable and antisocial for the majority of my waking day. Most people make friends at work, school or at sports teams. It's not weird to like making friends at work. I dunno how my job could be preventing me from making friends elsewhere but yeah its hard to spontaneously make friends in other settings when you don't naturally see the same people regularly. But my main point in the above comment was that I don't have the morale to do shitty work to make a corporation rich unless I have human connection with my team. I don't value any fucking corporation enough to lift a single finger for them. It's only having other humans around me that makes work feel at all bearable to do.
BlackFly 3y ago
Then your friends should reflect a bit. This study shows that there isn't a positive nor negative effect. If your friends are working additional hours each day when they work from home and they are representative of this study, then they are working more time to be as productive as they used to be. If they would just use the "extra" time to live their own life, they would probably be just as productive and have additional time to themselves.
bearjaws 3y ago
I think were at the point in capitalism (late stage corporatism?) that employees are more or less going to capture 'excess productivity' for themselves by doing chores and running errands. Same goes for the office, they will go around and gossip, several long trips to the break room and walks. Go on TikTok and look at the sheer apathy for corporations. "Think of the share holders" memes as an example. It's clear for 99% of workers there is going to be zero reward for producing more, so they simply aren't going to produce more, remote or in person. Exception is startups, which is part of the reason I work for startups.
coldpie 3y ago
> How could remote work not be more productive? When I had to WFH for a year during COVID, my productivity completely plummeted, almost to zero. It was very hard for me to be actually productive for more than 60-120 minutes each day. I could be playing video games or guitar, or watching videos, or petting my cats, or doing dishes, or cooking, or going for a walk. Instead I have to sit at this desk and do work? Ehh... no one will notice if I bug out for an hour... six times per day. I hated it, the guilt of being paid to do nothing stacked up like crazy. I went back to the office on the very first day that my state allowed me to. I wore a mask at the office every day for months in 2021, because the alternative was to WFH. Having to work remote was one of the worst periods of my life, and I think this experience soured my feelings about the work so much that it was a significant factor in my decision to eventually leave that job. (This is not a statement about anything or anyone other than myself. If WFH works for you, great. It doesn't work for me.)
- RGamma 3y ago
  We have a system where we clock in and out. This reduces the situation to "be clocked in when you work and clocked out otherwise" which is easy to handle psychologically. So if I'm distracted I can't be clocked in, generating time deficit, which will motivate me to not be distracted. And on the other hand I'm free to distribute the work any way I want. Needs honesty and trust of course, but I'd wager that's not an issue for most.
- Seacant 3y ago
  This mirrors the issue I had with work from home to a tee. During the pandemic, as soon as it was safe, I went into a ghost town of an office right up until they sold the building and made us all permanently work from home. I was eventually able to find that coffee shops filled a similar function for me, and now spend a majority of my productive workday at one. (Same disclaimer as parent - everyone works differently)
  - coldpie 3y ago
    > they sold the building and made us all permanently work from home I do think about this. I think my current workplace office has enough people that this isn't likely, but if they did get rid of it, I guess I'd try to find some co-working facility and see how that feels. More likely though, I'd quit and find some other job that does have a local office.
stronglikedan 3y ago
> How could remote work not be more productive? I live 10 minutes from my office, and there are much, much fewer distractions there. Anecdotal of course, but it's one way to answer your question.
- steveBK123 3y ago
  To me this is almost like internal vs external locus of control stuff. I can control my focus at home because I am in full control. In an open floor plan office environment, I have the added challenge of needing to shield my attention from others. For me the open floorpan office is like trying to do work in the middle of an airport terminal (not the lounge, sorry).
arendtio 3y ago
Due to concepts like 'trust-based working hours' employees learn to monitor how much time they spend working. So when you get more time as an employee, you don't spend it on the company, which doesn't pay you more. Instead, you spend it somewhere else, like on your family. I think the productivity gains of remote work depend on personality and type of task. Some things work better, others don't. But as the study shows, the net effect is neutral.

prmoustache 3y ago

I think regardless of where you work there is an upper limit in time you actually are productive during a day and it is way way below 8 hours. Usually I do more in the first 2 hours of my shift than I do during the remaining 6 hours. Others might be more productive at different time of day depending on their own internal clock. We just can't be 100% focused on hour work and uninterrupted for so many hours. Also since commute time is not accounted for in your work time, this is a moot point. You don't work more because you don't commute. You just have more free time to do stuff out of work.

helboi4 3y ago

No I don't want to work if i never see human beings, i have no connection to my team and I'm deeply depressed because I am a young single person who doesn't have a family waiting for me at home

stemlord 3y ago
Your coworkers are not your friends and your company is not your family, and if your job is keeping you from having friends and family outside of work then you need to find a new job or place to live.
- helboi4 3y ago
  Your coworkers can 100% be your friends what the hell man. You must be very unpleasant to be around if you refuse to make friends with any of the people you spend most of your waking hours dealing with. The key is making friends with coworkers who are a similar level of seniority to you who you get along with. My job isn't preventing me from having friends or family outside work at all, but I choose not to be miserable and antisocial for the majority of my waking day. Most people make friends at work, school or at sports teams. It's not weird to like making friends at work. I dunno how my job could be preventing me from making friends elsewhere but yeah its hard to spontaneously make friends in other settings when you don't naturally see the same people regularly. But my main point in the above comment was that I don't have the morale to do shitty work to make a corporation rich unless I have human connection with my team. I don't value any fucking corporation enough to lift a single finger for them. It's only having other humans around me that makes work feel at all bearable to do.

BlackFly 3y ago

Then your friends should reflect a bit. This study shows that there isn't a positive nor negative effect. If your friends are working additional hours each day when they work from home and they are representative of this study, then they are working more time to be as productive as they used to be. If they would just use the "extra" time to live their own life, they would probably be just as productive and have additional time to themselves.

bearjaws 3y ago

I think were at the point in capitalism (late stage corporatism?) that employees are more or less going to capture 'excess productivity' for themselves by doing chores and running errands. Same goes for the office, they will go around and gossip, several long trips to the break room and walks. Go on TikTok and look at the sheer apathy for corporations. "Think of the share holders" memes as an example. It's clear for 99% of workers there is going to be zero reward for producing more, so they simply aren't going to produce more, remote or in person. Exception is startups, which is part of the reason I work for startups.

coldpie 3y ago

> How could remote work not be more productive? When I had to WFH for a year during COVID, my productivity completely plummeted, almost to zero. It was very hard for me to be actually productive for more than 60-120 minutes each day. I could be playing video games or guitar, or watching videos, or petting my cats, or doing dishes, or cooking, or going for a walk. Instead I have to sit at this desk and do work? Ehh... no one will notice if I bug out for an hour... six times per day. I hated it, the guilt of being paid to do nothing stacked up like crazy. I went back to the office on the very first day that my state allowed me to. I wore a mask at the office every day for months in 2021, because the alternative was to WFH. Having to work remote was one of the worst periods of my life, and I think this experience soured my feelings about the work so much that it was a significant factor in my decision to eventually leave that job. (This is not a statement about anything or anyone other than myself. If WFH works for you, great. It doesn't work for me.)

RGamma 3y ago
We have a system where we clock in and out. This reduces the situation to "be clocked in when you work and clocked out otherwise" which is easy to handle psychologically. So if I'm distracted I can't be clocked in, generating time deficit, which will motivate me to not be distracted. And on the other hand I'm free to distribute the work any way I want. Needs honesty and trust of course, but I'd wager that's not an issue for most.
Seacant 3y ago
This mirrors the issue I had with work from home to a tee. During the pandemic, as soon as it was safe, I went into a ghost town of an office right up until they sold the building and made us all permanently work from home. I was eventually able to find that coffee shops filled a similar function for me, and now spend a majority of my productive workday at one. (Same disclaimer as parent - everyone works differently)
- coldpie 3y ago
  > they sold the building and made us all permanently work from home I do think about this. I think my current workplace office has enough people that this isn't likely, but if they did get rid of it, I guess I'd try to find some co-working facility and see how that feels. More likely though, I'd quit and find some other job that does have a local office.

stronglikedan 3y ago

> How could remote work not be more productive? I live 10 minutes from my office, and there are much, much fewer distractions there. Anecdotal of course, but it's one way to answer your question.

steveBK123 3y ago
To me this is almost like internal vs external locus of control stuff. I can control my focus at home because I am in full control. In an open floor plan office environment, I have the added challenge of needing to shield my attention from others. For me the open floorpan office is like trying to do work in the middle of an airport terminal (not the lounge, sorry).

arendtio 3y ago

Due to concepts like 'trust-based working hours' employees learn to monitor how much time they spend working. So when you get more time as an employee, you don't spend it on the company, which doesn't pay you more. Instead, you spend it somewhere else, like on your family. I think the productivity gains of remote work depend on personality and type of task. Some things work better, others don't. But as the study shows, the net effect is neutral.