Emma Goldberg, Working 9 to 2, and Again After Dinner, NYTimes, April 29, 2022.
For many remote workers, 9 to 5 has changed to something more fragmented. A typical schedule might look more like 9 to 2, and then 7 to 10. Then sometimes another five minutes, wherever you can squeeze them in.
When the coronavirus upended the workplace in 2020, leaving roughly 50 million people working from home by that May, the workday as we knew it went through radical changes, too. Mornings became less harried. Afternoons became child care time. Some added a third shift to their evenings, what Microsoft researchers call the “third peak” of productivity, following the midmorning and after-lunch crunches. With 10 percent of Americans still working from home and some businesses embracing remote work permanently, companies are scrambling to adjust to a new understanding of working hours.
“What we used to think of as traditional work — very specific location, very specific ways of working together, very well-defined work metrics — those are changing,” said Javier Hernandez, a researcher in Microsoft’s human understanding and empathy group. “There’s the opportunity for flexibility. There’s also the opportunity to make us miserable.”
The more scattered approach to work scheduling has created enormous upsides for parents, along with some new sources of stress. What’s clear is the shift: The workday, when charted out, has started to look less like a single mountain to scale, and more like a mountain range.
There's more at the link, including examples days from several people.
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