Why We Seem to Work More When Working From Home

I’ve been thinking on this a lot lately. Like most folks, a month or so back I think people started to realize that… working from home, many of us seem to be working more than we used to.

I feel like I’ve stumbled across a reason. Maybe it’s just specific to me, but it seems to fit.

When I was working in an office, the end of the day would roll around. I’d still be busy, and work would likely still be incomplete… but I left anyways. The difference between then and now? Outside factors influencing my leaving.

At an office, I left because I needed to catch a train home. Or because Liz was expecting me to be home for dinner. Or I had to pick up dinner on the way home, because Liz was expecting me to bring dinner. All these possible things were reasons I needed to leave.

Sure, from time to time, I’d work late. But on the whole, these outside factors were what I recognized and acceded to.

Now that we’re all working from home? I no longer have any of those outside forces knocking on my door, at the end of the day. There’s no train to catch, no worry that I’d be missing seeing my wife (because we’ve both been stuck inside for months now).

In short, there is no outside thing saying: “You need to stop.” There’s just me, and the strength of my voice saying “It’s 5:00 PM.”

But here’s the tricky part. For people who have that bad tendency to put a lot of themselves into their jobs, who tend to define themselves through their work – it’s extremely difficult to say “I’ve done enough, it’s ok to stop.”

Because for me, in my head, there’s always more I could do. There’s always more to be done.

This has been my problem, I think: the lack of any exterior pressure or consequence that demands I stop work. I’m left to make that judgment on my own, and that part of me that always wants to do more is never going to say “You’ve done enough, it’s ok to stop.”

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Long Days