Why Remote Work Isn't Always Better

You fought for remote work. You made the case to your manager, proved you could be productive, maybe even changed jobs to get it. No commute, flexible schedule, work from anywhere. It sounded perfect.

Then six months in, you’re answering Slack messages at 10pm, you haven’t left your apartment in three days, and you can’t remember the last time you had a conversation that wasn’t transactional.

Remote work isn’t inherently good or bad—it’s a different set of trade-offs that doesn’t work for everyone, despite what productivity influencers want you to believe.

The Problem

You were sold a vision of remote work that looked like laptop-on-the-beach productivity, morning walks instead of commutes, and the freedom to structure your day around peak energy. What you got was blurred boundaries, Zoom fatigue, and a nagging sense that you’re either working or feeling guilty about not working.

The physical separation from the office was supposed to reduce stress. Instead, you’ve discovered new forms of it. The anxiety of wondering if people think you’re actually working. The exhaustion of performing productivity in Slack channels. The loneliness of spending entire days where your only human interaction is through screens.

Your home has become your office, which means neither feels quite right anymore. The couch where you used to relax is now where you take afternoon calls. Your bedroom, previously a sanctuary, is within eyeline of your laptop. The psychological boundaries that came from physical separation have dissolved, and you’re left in a space that’s always somewhat work-adjacent.

You can’t complain about it because everyone assumes remote work is a privilege. When you mention feeling isolated, people remind you that you don’t have to commute. When you talk about working late, they point out you have flexibility. When you express missing the office, colleagues act like you’re being contrarian. The problems feel illegitimate, like you’re ungrateful for something others would want.

The productivity narrative doesn’t help. You read articles about people who are more productive at home, who get more done without office distractions, who have achieved perfect work-life balance through remote work. Either these people have figured out something you haven’t, or they’re leaving out the difficult parts. Either way, you feel like you’re failing at something you’re supposed to find easy.

There’s also the weird exhaustion of video calls. Somehow, six hours of Zoom meetings feels more draining than six hours of in-person meetings. You’re performing engagement—nodding, reacting, maintaining eye contact with a camera—in ways that feel less natural than actual conversation. By the end of the day, you’re depleted in a way that’s hard to explain to people who don’t experience it.

What makes this particularly confusing is that remote work genuinely solves some problems. You do save commute time. You can attend a midday dentist appointment without elaborate explanations. You have more control over your immediate environment. You can work in comfortable clothes without judgment. These benefits are real, but they don’t automatically outweigh the costs.

The disconnect is that remote work was presented as universally better, when really it’s just different. Different problems, different benefits, different requirements for making it sustainable. And whether it’s actually better for you depends on factors that have nothing to do with productivity optimization—your personality, your living situation, your social needs, your relationship to structure.

Why this happens to remote workers

Remote work removes structure that most people don’t appreciate until it’s gone. The commute was a transition ritual between work and home. The office provided ambient social interaction without requiring effort. The physical separation created natural boundaries around when work happened and when it didn’t. Lunch breaks happened at specific times because that’s when people went to lunch. Work ended when you left the building.

Without these structures, you’re responsible for creating them yourself. You need to decide when work starts and ends. You need to manufacture social connection. You need to engineer transitions between work mode and life mode when they’re happening in the same physical space. For some people, this autonomy is energizing. They thrive on designing their own systems and prefer intentional connection over ambient socialization. For others, it’s exhausting. They want work to be clearly defined rather than something they have to constantly negotiate with themselves.

Research suggests that remote work satisfaction correlates heavily with personality traits like self-direction, comfort with solitude, and proactive communication style. Introverts often report higher satisfaction with remote work, but not universally—some introverts miss the structured social interaction that happened naturally in offices without requiring them to initiate it. Extroverts often struggle more, but some thrive when they intentionally build their social structures.

Life circumstances matter enormously and are rarely discussed in remote work discourse. Do you live alone or with family? Do you have young children at home? Do you have a dedicated office space or are you working from your bedroom? Do you live in a walkable neighborhood with cafes and third spaces, or do you need to drive everywhere? Is your home environment calm or chaotic? These factors affect remote work viability more than your job function.

The problem is that remote work culture often treats it as a moral issue rather than a preference question. Wanting to work in an office is seen as conformist or lacking self-discipline. Struggling with remote work is framed as a skill issue rather than a legitimate compatibility mismatch. This makes it hard to honestly assess whether it’s working for you without feeling like you’re admitting personal failure.

Remote work also changes your relationship to boundaries in ways that aren’t immediately obvious. When your bedroom is twenty feet from your desk, every room in your home becomes potentially work-adjacent. The laptop on the coffee table is both a convenience and a constant temptation. The flexibility to work anytime becomes the pressure to be available all the time. You can respond to that late-night message, so should you?

Many people find that remote work reveals their actual work habits in uncomfortable ways. In an office, you could look busy even during low-energy afternoons. You could take a long lunch and no one noticed as long as you were back by 2pm. At home, the gaps in your productivity are more visible to you, even if they’re not visible to others. This can create anxiety that drives you to overwork to prove—mostly to yourself—that you’re actually doing something.

There’s also the invisible labor of managing perception. In an office, people see you at your desk, in meetings, collaborating in hallways. Your presence is assumed and visible. Remote, you have to actively signal your presence and productivity. This can feel performative—commenting in Slack channels you don’t care about, being visible on calls even when you have nothing to contribute, responding quickly to messages to prove you’re online. The work of appearing to work becomes its own burden, separate from the actual work you’re supposed to be doing.

What Most People Try

The standard response to remote work struggles is to optimize your setup. You invest in a better desk, a proper monitor, noise-canceling headphones. You read articles about the perfect home office arrangement. Maybe you buy a plant, improve your lighting, upgrade your chair. These improvements help, but they don’t address the core challenges.

Some people try to recreate office structure at home. They get dressed in work clothes, set strict hours, create elaborate morning routines. They designate a specific room as their office and never work elsewhere. For some, this discipline helps. For others, it feels like theater—performing work rituals that don’t actually solve the underlying issues of isolation or boundary erosion.

Others lean into the flexibility, working at all hours, taking breaks whenever, mixing work and life completely. The idea is that if you abandon traditional structure entirely, you’ll find a natural rhythm. Sometimes this works. More often, it leads to working more hours than before while feeling less accomplished because the work is fragmented across the entire day.

Many people try to manufacture social connection through excessive meetings. If you’re feeling isolated, schedule more video calls. Do virtual coffee chats, happy hours, team-building exercises. These can help momentarily, but Zoom socialization is fundamentally different from in-person interaction. It’s more effortful, more draining, and less spontaneous. You can’t have the casual hallway conversation that leads somewhere unexpected.

A common approach is to work from cafes or coworking spaces. This solves the environmental monotony and provides ambient human presence. But it’s also expensive, logistically complicated, and doesn’t actually solve the deeper question of whether remote work suits your working style. You’re still remote, just in a different location.

Some people try to fix remote work struggles by working harder. If you’re feeling unproductive, put in more hours. If boundaries are blurring, just be more disciplined about it. This rarely works because the problem isn’t lack of effort—it’s that the structure doesn’t fit your needs. More discipline doesn’t change whether you thrive in autonomy or need external structure.

Others compare themselves to remote work success stories. They follow productivity influencers who seem to have it figured out, who post about their perfect morning routines and boundary-setting techniques. This usually makes things worse. You feel like you’re failing at something others make look easy, when really they might be struggling too or working in very different circumstances.

The most damaging approach is to ignore the struggles entirely and assume something is wrong with you. Remote work is supposed to be better, so if you’re not thriving, you must be doing it wrong. This prevents honest assessment of whether remote work is actually compatible with how you work best, your social needs, and your life circumstances.

None of these approaches are wrong, but they all assume the problem is execution rather than fit. They treat remote work as a skill to master rather than a working arrangement that might not suit everyone. Sometimes the issue isn’t that you’re bad at remote work—it’s that remote work is bad for you.

What Actually Helps

1. Get honest about what you actually need from work

Remote work exposes what you rely on from your work environment beyond just doing tasks. Some people discover they need ambient social presence to feel energized. Others realize they depend on physical separation to mentally disengage. Understanding your actual needs lets you make informed decisions rather than chasing an idealized version of remote work.

For two weeks, track not just your productivity but your energy and emotional state. Note when you feel most engaged, most drained, most lonely, most focused. Pay attention to what you miss from office work and what you genuinely appreciate about being remote. This isn’t about judging yourself—it’s about collecting honest data.

Many people discover they need more structure than they thought. Not because they lack discipline, but because their brain works better with external scaffolding. The office provided natural start and end times, forced breaks between meetings, social interaction that happened without planning. If you need these things, that’s legitimate information, not a character flaw.

Others realize they need human connection that isn’t transactional. In an office, you chat with colleagues about non-work topics naturally. Remote, every conversation requires a reason—you schedule a call, you have an agenda, you’re taking someone’s time. If you’re energized by casual social interaction, remote work removes this without replacing it with anything comparable.

Some people find they need physical movement throughout the day. Walking to meetings, going to lunch, moving between spaces. At home, you can sit in the same chair for eight hours straight. If your body and mind need movement to function well, remote work requires intentional engineering of what used to happen automatically.

The goal is to identify your non-negotiable needs. Maybe you need separation between work and home spaces. Maybe you need in-person collaboration to think well. Maybe you need external accountability. These aren’t preferences you can overcome with better habits—they’re requirements for sustainable work. Once you know them, you can decide if remote work can actually provide them.

How to start: Each evening, write down three things: one moment when you felt energized today, one when you felt drained, and one thing you miss from either office work or pre-remote life. After two weeks, look for patterns. Your answers reveal what you actually need, not what you think you should need.

2. Design real boundaries, not aspirational ones

The biggest remote work mistake is creating boundaries based on what you think you should do rather than what you’ll actually maintain. You tell yourself you’ll stop working at 6pm, never check email after hours, keep weekends sacred. Then reality hits—a deadline, a question from your boss, a nagging feeling that you should be available.

Real boundaries work with your psychology, not against it. If you’re someone who can’t resist checking Slack when it’s on your phone, delete the app during off-hours. If you can’t stop working when your laptop is visible, put it in a drawer at the end of the day. If you struggle with guilt about being unavailable, set an auto-responder that explains when you’ll be back rather than trying to will yourself not to care.

Many people find that time-based boundaries don’t work as well as activity-based ones. Instead of “I stop at 6pm,” try “I stop after completing this specific task.” Instead of “I don’t work on weekends,” try “I don’t work on weekends except for this one clear exception.” Fuzzy boundaries invite constant negotiation. Clear boundaries reduce decision fatigue.

Physical boundaries matter more than most people expect. If possible, work in a separate room and close the door when done. If that’s not possible, create visual boundaries—a curtain, a room divider, a dedicated desk that you can turn away from. The brain needs environmental cues to shift modes. When your bedroom is your office, you need to manufacture these cues deliberately.

Consider boundary enforcement mechanisms that don’t rely on your willpower. Website blockers that activate automatically. Scheduled computer shutdowns. Accountability partners who check whether you’ve actually stopped working. Calendar blocks marked as unavailable so others can’t schedule you. These external systems work better than internal discipline for most people.

The key is to treat boundaries as design problems, not discipline problems. You’re not failing if you can’t maintain aspirational boundaries. You’re just using boundaries that don’t match how you actually function. Design for your real behavior patterns, not your ideal ones.

How to start: Identify your weakest boundary—the one you violate most often. Now design a system that removes the decision entirely. If you work too late, set your computer to auto-shutdown at a specific time. If you check email compulsively, remove it from your phone during off-hours. Pick one boundary and make it automatic before trying to add more.

3. Acknowledge if remote work isn’t working—and that’s okay

The hardest truth is that remote work might not be right for you, regardless of how well you optimize it. This isn’t failure. It’s compatibility. Some people thrive in autonomy and solitude. Others need structure and ambient social presence. Neither is better; they’re just different.

If you’ve tried optimizing your setup, setting boundaries, and engineering social connection, and you’re still struggling after six months, that’s information. Maybe you need the physical separation of an office to mentally disconnect. Maybe you need in-person collaboration to do your best work. Maybe you need the external structure of a workplace to stay focused. These are legitimate needs.

The cultural pressure around remote work makes it hard to admit when it’s not working. You’re supposed to love the flexibility, appreciate not commuting, feel grateful for the autonomy. Saying you want to return to an office can feel like admitting you can’t handle freedom or independence. But working style isn’t a moral issue—it’s a practical one.

Some people realize they need a hybrid arrangement. Remote for focused work, office for collaboration. This gives you some benefits of both without the full costs of either. Others discover they specifically need the physical separation—they work better when work happens in a different location than life. Some find that remote work is fine for the job itself but terrible for their mental health.

The economic reality is that fully remote jobs often pay less or have fewer options than office or hybrid roles. This is a real trade-off. You might have to choose between remote work and other career goals. Neither choice is wrong, but pretending the trade-off doesn’t exist makes it harder to decide consciously.

If remote work isn’t working, you have options. Negotiate for hybrid arrangements. Look for roles that offer office space even if it’s not required. Consider whether your current job is right if remote work is non-negotiable. These conversations are hard, especially if you fought for remote work initially, but staying in an arrangement that’s making you miserable isn’t sustainable.

How to start: Write down this prompt and answer it honestly: “If I could design my ideal working arrangement without worrying about what I’m supposed to want, it would look like…” Your answer might reveal that what you actually want is different from remote work. That’s okay. Better to know now than to spend years trying to make something work that fundamentally doesn’t fit.

The Takeaway

Remote work isn’t a universal upgrade—it’s a different operating system that runs better for some people than others. The flexibility and autonomy that energize one person create decision fatigue and isolation for someone else. If you’re struggling with remote work, that doesn’t mean you’re doing it wrong. It might mean it’s wrong for you.

The solution isn’t necessarily to quit your remote job or force yourself back to an office. It’s to get honest about what you actually need to do sustainable work and whether your current arrangement provides it. Sometimes small adjustments—real boundaries, better social scaffolding, hybrid arrangements—make remote work viable. Sometimes the honest answer is that you need something different entirely.

What matters is making decisions based on your actual experience rather than the idealized narrative of what remote work is supposed to be. The best working arrangement is the one that lets you do good work without destroying your mental health, regardless of whether that’s remote, office, or something in between.