The alarm rings on your phone. It’s 7 am. You swipe up to shut the alarm and unlock your phone to check your messages. The first message is from a client in Europe requesting an urgent video conference call for 7:30 am your time. You roll out of bed, freshen up, put on a crisp shirt over your shorts and flip flops, fix yourself a cup of coffee, and you’re ready to roll.

Remote working, working-at-home, telecommuting, and any other similar variations of terms that describe working outside the walls of a traditional office, are getting increased popularity in recent years. Before Covid 19 working from home was a luxury that many of us dreamed of. Seeing pictures of remote workers in some distant places was something that we all wished for (at least I know I did). But let’s be real. Not all that glitters is gold. Working from home has some pitfalls as well.

Productivity isn’t everything, but in the long run it is almost everything. A country’s ability to improve its standard of living over time depends almost entirely on its ability to raise its output per worker. Paul Krugman, The Age of Diminishing Expectations There are different definitions when it comes to productivity. Wikipedia would say that “productivity describes various measures of the efficiency of production”.