Remote Workers Are Missing One Subtle But Powerful Commute Benefit

Remote workers have all the time in the world — but fewer boundaries than ever.

Zach Quinn
6 min readMay 17, 2023
Highway with time-lapsed vehicles speeding toward the city skyline.
Highway outside of Atlanta, Georgia. Photo by Joey Kyber on Unsplash.

I Would Give Anything To Do Nothing (For 5 Minutes)

It’s 6-something on a Wednesday evening and I’m working 500+ miles from my usual desk. I clock out after a particularly tough day of data engineering and play on my phone for about 5 minutes before my “office” (my wife’s childhood bedroom) door bursts open and one of my many nieces and nephews screams “Dinner time!” and walks out. I don’t fault the short (and possibly redundant) interaction because it will still be years until they learn the value of condensing the content of such a meeting into an email.

You’d think being locked in a bedroom coding for 8+ hours would make you crave at least some human interaction. But what I really wanted was 5 more minutes on my phone.

My precious decompression time.

Time that quickly evaporates as soon as someone sees my not feverishly coding or frustratingly clicking away in my office. Time I would normally get during a mindless commute.

Car On, Brain Off

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Zach Quinn
Zach Quinn

Written by Zach Quinn

Journalist—>Sr. Data Engineer; new stories weekly.

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