Not just that, but there's also the other side: Easy to procrastinate, easy to give false reports which then leads to regular overwork in the days just before a hard deadline.

I know these issues from remote workers I worked with, but also know this personally while working on my Diploma theses.

While we are at it: Working on Diploma/Master thesis is in many ways very similar to remote work: One works mostly from home, maybe in the library but even there mostly alone, i.e. not in an office, meeting one's mentor at most once per week. I met with other students which were in the same situation - just to get into a group feeling. That worked quite well, even though we had no overlaps in our topics and hence not much to talk about.

The situation is a bit different if you write your PhD thesis, as that usually means you have a job at the university during that time, and at least have an office and collegues.

This isn't a remote problem. I see this _all_ the time with people at work now and I don't work remotely.

This is more of a personal issue -- some people do it consistently, others don't. I never had that problem working remotely, and I don't pretend to be somewhere else in my regular reports in the office either.

One solution that usually works for me is to get a standing workstation and use it. Not one of those fancy ones that go up and down. Just one that is permanently up, like the Ikea standing desk hack. For a break, you can move and sit somewhere else. Standing takes a lot more energy, so, it is my belief, that you focus better because if you are standing and goofing off, you are wasting precious energy. There are times where you don't have the energy to stand but need to work - so just sit. Standing and sitting is not a either/or thing. You don't have to be faithful to your standup desk, go slouch in a couch for a break.

The biggest difference between standing and sitting is that walking away from your workstation is friction-free. You just move your feet.

Then what's the point of not getting a table that can go up and down?

That doesn't seem a problem unique to remote work. It's more about when tangible outputs are required from you.

This is so, so true for me. I used to work in a place which had an office, but you wouldn't be expected to be there most of the time, just come in at least once a week, maybe for meetings, etc.

I used to procrastinate and report progress to my manager when there was much less. But since the work was deadline-based, I'd just grind through the weekend with little sleep and catch up with what I've reported. I've never missed a deadline, but I'm still feeling bad about doing it that way and misleading them.

Just to be clear, this was a long time ago, when I was just starting my professional career, and didn't yet have stronger ethics.

(Throwaway for obvious reasons, the employer I worked for at the time browse HN)

Working from home for three years now as a software project contributor, this is my biggest problem. I always get my shit done, but it gets majorly stressful since daily family life goes on the same regardless of my self-inflicted work crunches. Pretty sure the tradeoffs are still worth it, though.

Being the IT guy, I have to be in the office a lot of the time, but having 1 or 2 days to focus on projects at home and have no walk-up interruptions is very helpful.

Besides, if I really don't want to work, it doesn't matter if I'm home or at the office. I am a champion at slacking in the office. I can stealthily alt-tab like a motherfucker, and I see you coming long before you can see my screen.

However I must confess that the downsides of working from the office majority outweighs the other.

I can no longer focus. I am constantly pulled into meetings. I have 120 minutes of commute everyday.

When I get home I am too tired and can no longer spend quality time with my partner like I did when I was working from home. And above all my sleeping schedule has to fit the 9-5 schedule and it is very hard to adjust.

I also have to deal with the heavy Canadian storms during winter.

In the future I'm choosing remote work at a heartbeat and might even consider a salary cut to get it.

YMMV.

I think this is often an environment and culture problem. When I'm setting something up, I work hard to create spaces that minimize noise and distractions. And I think it's important to limit meetings, because they'll definitely expand to fill all time available. But most places don't bother with either of these, throwing people into noisy open offices and having a "meetings first" culture.

> I have 120 minutes of commute everyday. [...] When I get home I am too tired

This is the true killer for me. 15-30 minutes each way by foot, bike, or public transit? A pleasant part of my day, a useful demarcation between work and home. But an hour each way in a car and I begin to despair for my life.

In addition we have some of the harshest winters with freeing black ice falling from sky :)

If this behavior changes solely because you start working remotely it may not necessarily be to your advantage. Yes, in the short term you may maintain the ability to focus. However, in the long term you may find yourself being excluded and and diminished within the organization. These meetings, etc. don't stop when you work remotely, only those attending them do.

On the flip side, when your entire company works from offices, you develop a culture of acting like there is no better choice, and the resistance to change outweighs its obsoletence, causing people to not fight very hard to evolve the workplace, and to accept offices longer than they should.

The commute? 10 minutes on the bicycle. There's a song by Tripod about the distances between home, work and shops being your triangle of hapiness. Not that serious, but it has some substance of truth https://3pod.bandcamp.com/track/triangle-of-happiness

Since the purpose of going to the office is not to do actual work being able to work from home has not removed the need for the office.

  The vast majority of time spent by office employees is socializing and non-productive ritual work.

Source: https://www.vouchercloud.com/blog/office-worker-productivity...

The last time I worked in an office, I got most of my work done in the morning or after 6pm when no one was in the office.

1) I get out of the house and I just seem to focus much more there at the office.

2) I feel like a normal human going to an office and talking to others. (Maybe I don't always talk to others, but I can if I want.)

3) When I want to be lazy and just stay home, I just do.

4) Co-working space or cafe is just a 2-15 minute walk away. No commute in a car.

I worked from home full time for about 3 years then moved to a job that had about 1.5 hour commute each way. One of the reasons I took the job was the fact that I did feel like a hermit. I then started to resent the commute. I'm lucky that I have been able to work out a deal with my current employer where I work from home 2 days a week and come in to the office 3 days a week. This gives me a nice break from the commute but I also don't end up feeling like a hermit.

> if you have personal discipline, good co-workers, and great leadership

I agree this is true, and have seen a couple of high-functioning distributed teams. But a question for me: if we have those things, do we want to spend them on working from home? Personally, I'd rather have a modest commute and spend our discipline and leadership points on solving a problem in the world.

Working from home can make a manager feel less control. It takes a different type of leadership. But requires less leadership points.

I also think the sexual assaults thing is a terrible red herring. Remote teams still should get together regularly, and abusers will happily abuse then. For that matter, abusers are perfectly capable of being abusive remotely. (Exhibit A: the internet.)