Digital technology, especially email and smartphones, has vastly improved the ability of workers to be productive outside of a traditional office. Even so, most of the administrative work is still done in an office. In practice, modern communications technology is used both to link physical workplaces, such as at Slate, which maintains two offices, one in New York and one in DC, and to disperse them. One reason is that, according to a new survey of office workers by Wakefield Research for IT consulting firm Citrix, most bosses have doubts about telecommuting. Half of workers say their boss disapproves of remote work and only 35 percent say it is tolerated.

Skeptical bosses are likely to have their doubts reinforced by the same survey, which shows that 43 percent of workers say they have watched TV or a movie while “working” remotely, while 35 percent have done homework. from home and 28 percent have cooked. Dinner.

Physical proximity may not be necessary for a lot of work, but it’s still a tough deterrent to replace against the right price while on the watch.

My experience working primarily from home for an extended period several years ago was that it is a surprisingly efficient way to go crazy. The need to make petty decisions – where to work, which chair to sit in, whether I bothered getting out of bed, whether I need to wear shoes right now – became overwhelming. I spent a completely unreasonable amount of time wondering what to do for lunch, and while working on a book I spent a surprising amount of energy meeting my self-imposed daily word quota in time to watch morning movies.

But there is also a compelling case for saying that working at home makes people much more efficient, because it allows workers to take on small and annoying tasks while still doing their jobs. Remote work, at least occasional remote work, can be great precisely because of the opportunity it provides to do a number of non-work things. It’s much quicker to shop for groceries at a quarter to three than to stand in line during the rush after work. Too many people work similar hours and want to eat dinner for dinner. My neighborhood grocery store turns into a nightmare from 6pm to 8pm on Sunday afternoon, another popular shopping time, it’s even worse, with aisles often short of Soviet-style staples. If you start work a little earlier (you don’t commute to work after all) and stop by the store during a lull when lines are short, you can work harder and shop more in a set amount of time. Even better, if more people did that, then shift workers with genuinely inflexible schedules could save themselves some trouble on the line, too.

And telecommuting allows you to tackle household tasks that are time consuming but don’t really involve a lot of work. Watching your clothes spin in your washer or dryer is perfectly compatible with productive work. But between the washing step and the drying step comes a time sensitive phase of “putting the wet clothes in the driest phase”. Taking just a few minutes off from work to make the switch allows you to do your homework efficiently and leaves your real free time free for exciting activities like getting out of the house. Similarly, many recipes involve considerable periods of simmering or broiling during which it’s nice to be in the house, but you don’t really have to do anything. In a “work-then-shop-then-cook-then-eat” paradigm, it is challenging to eat anything that cannot be prepared quickly. But if you can simmer while you work, then a great deal of housework can be done with minimal reduction in professional production.

The fact that such practices remain officially taboo reflects how far we have not come as a society since the days when we expected every full-time professional to be supported by a full-time homemaker.

More broadly, the Wakefield survey suggests that employers may be missing out on a low-cost way to give workers something of value. Sixty-four percent of respondents who have not worked remotely “identify at least one extremely popular benefit or pleasure that they would be willing to give up in order to work from home just one day a week.” The fundamental fact of the modern economy is that no matter how much technology advances or the wealth of society improves, we do not add more hours to the day and we still need to sleep. In the circumstances, tactics that help people save time are not only valuable, but increasingly so over the years. Smart companies must find ways to recognize that and allow their employees enough flexibility to manage their time effectively.