Working from home saves commuting time and brings calm, but it blurs the line between work and free time. The laptop stays on the kitchen table, and the workday never quite ends.
Two randomized trials at the same Chinese company paint a nuanced picture. Call center staff who worked from home performed better and were less likely to quit, but they were promoted less often relative to their performance. When given the choice, about half of them went back to the office, most often because they felt lonely. In the second trial, employees worked from home two days a week. They were more satisfied and fewer quit, with no effect on performance or promotions.
Choose your path based on what's bothering you:
- End the day if work follows you into the evening.
- A place of its own if work has taken over your whole home.
- Stay visible from a distance if you're worried about your career.
- Plan your office days if you want to take it further.
A first step today: decide on a time when your workday ends, and one thing you do at that time to show it's over.
Working from home saves commuting time, brings calm and makes everyday life easier to manage. But it blurs the line between work and free time. The laptop stays on the kitchen table, email pings in the evening, and the workday never quite ends when there's no door to walk out of. This article looks at what two randomized trials say about remote work and gives you four ways to keep work and home apart.
The first trial: fully at home
In 2015, Bloom and colleagues took employees at a Chinese travel company's call center who wanted to try working from home and randomly assigned them to work either at home or in the office for nine months. Those working from home performed better. This was mostly because they took fewer breaks and had fewer sick days, but also because they handled more calls in a quieter environment. They were more satisfied, and about half as many of them quit.
But there was a downside. Those who worked from home were promoted less often relative to how well they performed. And when the trial ended and everyone got to choose again, about half of those who had worked from home chose to go back to the office. The most common reason they gave was that they felt lonely.
The second trial: two days at home
Several years later, Bloom ran a new trial, published in 2024 in Nature. For six months, 1,612 employees at a Chinese tech company were randomly assigned either to work in the office every day or to work from home two days a week.
Those who worked from home two days a week were more satisfied with their jobs, and about a third fewer of them quit. This was especially true for women, for non-managers and for people with long commutes. Over the following two years, there was no difference in how they were evaluated or how often they were promoted. The company's managers had expected remote work to lower productivity. After the trial, they believed the opposite.
- Fully at home Better performance and fewer quit, but fewer promotions and more loneliness.
- Home two days a week More satisfied, fewer quit, same evaluations and promotions.
For many people, a mix seems to deliver most of the benefits.
Both trials were done in China, at two companies and with certain kinds of jobs. They don't tell you what suits you or your job. But they say two things that match what many people notice: working from home can mean getting more done and feeling calmer, and with no office time at all, you risk being less visible.
Four ways to keep work and home apart
End the day. For you if work follows you into the evening. Without the commute home, the natural boundary is gone. Create your own: write down tomorrow's first task, close the laptop and put it out of sight, then take a short walk. You can read why a clear end to the workday makes a difference in the guide to work and career. First step: decide today on the time and what you'll do then.
A place of its own. For you if work has taken over your whole home. Work in one and the same spot, even if it's just one end of the kitchen table, and put your work things away when the day is done. That way the rest of your home gets to stay home. First step: choose the spot and a drawer or bag where your work things live in the evening.
Stay visible from a distance. For you if you're worried about your career. When people don't see you in the hallway, you need to be visible in other ways: share what you've done, ask for feedback, and have a short check-in with your manager every week. First step: on Friday, send your manager a quick note about the week's most important result.
Plan your office days. For you if you want to take it further. This is the most demanding path, since it takes planning every week. Put work that needs focus on your home days and work that needs other people on your office days: meetings, collaboration, lunch with colleagues. That makes both kinds of days better. First step: go through next week's calendar and move one thing to the right kind of day.
At home it's also easier to get caught up in email and chat between tasks, and that's what focus at work is about.
When home gets too quiet
Remote work doesn't suit everyone, and not all the time. If you notice that you're seeing too few people, that the days blur together or that you're feeling worse, it's worth raising with your manager and trying more days in the office. Feeling lonely is not a sign of weakness, and you can read more about it in feeling lonely.
A first step today: decide on a time when your workday ends, and one thing you do at that time to show it's over.
This is the understanding and a first step. Atlas is where it becomes a habit. Under Work & career you'll find The shutdown, which properly ends your workday so it doesn't follow you into the evening, Today's three, and Email can wait, where you count the times you hold off on checking email in the middle of a task. You log every day and see, week by week, how well the boundary holds. Try Atlas free for 7 days, and cancel whenever you like.