Does working from home make you more productive?
The answer is “Yes”, according to this RescueTime blog post:
Working from home gives folks a lot more time in front of a computer, if that’s what they are after. With commutes, associated setup/teardown time, getting coffee from starbucks, lunches, and people dropping into the office, we’re all losing hours. To be clear, all work and no play is a bad idea… The really interesting thing about working from home is that we felt like we weren’t working as hard, but were actually logging about 22% more development and design hours.
I enjoy working from home a lot more than going in to the office. The outside distractions and overhead (commute and setup) aren’t there and without the lurking feeling of wanting to go home (which are exacerbated by the shorter days of winter), I waste less time. I can take my own distractions when I don’t feel productive (like playing video games at 2pm) and make up for it when I’m ready (like wrapping up my emails at 9pm). Working from home gives me the flexibility of fitting in X units of work in the 18 or so waking hours of the day rather than trying to squeeze it in to an 8 hour work day and with that flexibility comes the increased chance that I will actually produce X+1 units of work.