Do Remote Workers Have More Time Than Office Workers?
All workers have the exact same 1,440 minutes per day. But judging by the blog posts and articles comparing remote work to office work, the perception is often that remote workers have more free time than office workers in identical roles.
What if remote vs. office isn’t a helpful comparative lens? Instead, what if the way time is managed more accurately framed the comparison?
While many remote workers do eliminate a commute from the bookends of their daylight hours, the massive growth of remote working spaces has re-introduced a commute for even some remote workers who value human proximity to isolation.
Sure, as a remote worker who often works from a home office, my commute can be measured in feet and moments instead of miles and hours. Chalk up a win for reducing commute times, but how I choose to spend those extra minutes says more about how I prioritize and value my time than it does about living in some parallel dimension devoid of meetings, emails, Slack, projects, Zoom calls, and tasks. This assumption that remote work is distraction-free is why office workers often view remote workers as ‘other’ or ‘them’; the lack of visibility in a culture of limited (or lacking) trust is ripe for assuming out-of-sight means out-of-mind. For remote workers in these cultures, the actual work hours can easily be longer, not shorter, because there’s no physical boundary between ‘work’ and ‘home.’
As a remote worker, people often assume I have unlimited freedom and believe my working from a home office must be like Hermoine from the Harry Potter series using a Time-Turner (a device which lets you, in effect, add time to your day). But, I gotta ask: did anyone else notice that Hermoine actually had more work precisely because she had, literally, more time available?
That is the easy trap of remote work, where the lack of physical or cognitive boundaries between ‘work’ and ‘home’ can so easily overlap and ‘more time’ seems available.
Time is a tension to be managed, not a problem to be solved. I’ve come to believe and understand that remote work and corporate office work have the same common constraints: work volume and work deadlines. The difference is a mental exercise more than physical proximity, for the remote worker and office worker have the exact same 1,440 minutes per day. It’s all in how those minutes are used.
Because I manage my time visually (combo of a calendar and a Kanban board), I am able to manage the tension of work requests with Work In Progress (WIP) limits. I work on one thing at a time. Period. Multitasking is inefficient at best and results in mediocre work at worst, so the way I structure my time is based on the agreed-upon expectations of the job/client and myself.
The most significant difference between a remote worker and an on-site office worker is not time, but availability.
I can spend focus time on projects and recharge time on personal growth. In the office, this might include going for a walk or listening to a podcast or reading part of a book. At home, I have the availability to do those same things, plus the added benefit of proximity to a garden, or a poolside chair, or for making a meal in the kitchen instead of heating up leftovers in the office break room. The most significant difference between a remote worker and an on-site office worker is not time, but availability.
Remote workers have the same hours and the same ability to set expectations and manage their time as office workers; the difference is the proximity to things not found in an office. But, make no mistake: effort divided by time still yields value (or not). The remote worker who manages their time well and the office worker who does the same only really have one big difference: the freedom of proximity.
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