tracked my productive hours for 60 days – remote vs office numbers were not close
I work in project management and I'm a data person so when the RTO debate started at my company last fall I decided to actually measure it instead of arguing about feelings
set up a simple spreadsheet. every 30 minutes I logged what I was doing and categorized it: deep work, meetings, admin (emails/slack), break, commute/prep, or unproductive (scrolling, watercooler chat, just staring at nothing). did this for 30 days in the office (october) and 30 days remote (november, after I negotiated a trial)
office (30 days):
- deep work: 3.8 hrs/day avg
- meetings: 1.6 hrs
- admin: 1.1 hrs
- breaks: 0.7 hrs
- commute + getting ready: 1.9 hrs (not counted in 8hr workday but still my time)
- unproductive: 0.8 hrs (hallway conversations that went nowhere, waiting for conference rooms, desk drop-ins)
remote (30 days):
- deep work: 5.6 hrs/day avg
- meetings: 1.4 hrs (same meetings, just shorter somehow)
- admin: 1.0 hrs
- breaks: 0.9 hrs (longer breaks but fewer)
- commute: 0 hrs
- unproductive: 0.4 hrs
so 5.6 vs 3.8 hours of actual deep work per day. that's 47% more productive time. over a month it's like getting an extra 36 hours of real work
the wildest part: meetings were shorter remote. same agenda, same people, just less small talk at the start and less "let me just grab my laptop" delays. saved about 12 minutes per meeting on average
showed this to my boss. she was genuinely surprised. said "I assumed office was more productive because it feels more productive." which is exactly the problem – the feeling of productivity vs actual productivity
still remote. the data won that argument for me