I’ve pretty much always run my own businesses or worked as a specialist (non technical) consultant.

A few years back I was offered an interesting sounding fixed term contract working for an EU company that had acquired a US company and wanted me to help integrate the two businesses and establish their presence in my market. Basically having a bunch of zoom meetings, and having some external meetings.

The acquiring company had an office in my city. I worked remotely most of the time but would go in maybe two consecutive days each month for politics.

This was truly my first experience working in a large-ish office with around 80 people in one big open plan space.

If I was going in I’d arrive around 8.15am as I get up early and I could drive door to door in 20 minutes if I left before 8.05am. If I left after 8.05am I hit school traffic and it would take me 90 minutes to drive.

The parent company has set working hours of 9.30am to 5.30pm.

At 9.25 people would start drifting in. By 9.45 most people were in. People would chat, make a coffee, make breakfast. By 10.30 things had pretty much settled down and everyone would be at a desk reading email. Around 11.30 most people would have a coffee, either from the kitchen or they would go out to the coffee place five minutes away. By midday everyone would be back at their desks. At 12.30 the lunch guy would come with his trolley and people would pick sandwiches, salads and soups. You could pre order or buy from him there and then. This always caused lots of hilarity and excitement. Most people broke for lunch between 1pm and 1.30pm so would either go out or go eat in the kitchen or breakout area. 2pm to 2.30pm was a constant stream of people coming back, making another coffee, settling back to their desks. By 3pm everyone would be diligently working and it remained like that till about 4.45pm when you could see people looking at the clock and beginning to slow down. By 5pm most people were beginning to tidy their desks, put coffee cups into the dishwasher, unplugging headphones and chatting to their neighbours. By 5.35 the office would be deserted apart from me and a couple of other people working deadlines or on late calls. I would normally leave around 6pm to avoid traffic - or later if I had something I wanted to finish. I didn’t care if I was going in early and staying late because I didn’t have set working hours: I was hired on the basis stuff would get done, and I reported into an EVP in a completely different time zone on a call once a week.

It was a real eye opener. I never thought I worked particularly hard but I got five times as much done in a day when I wasn’t in that office. Most people were doing at most 3.5 hours of sustained work each day and the rest was just time wasting. Often they’d spend two of those hours in chaotic 10 to 15 person meetings. I sat in on a couple of those once. No agenda. No minutes. No action points. They were insanely messy and unproductive.

On a normal day I get 8 or 9 hours of productive meaningful work done from home without feeling at all overloaded - because I get up at 6am, make a coffee, have a shower, do some exercise, get a couple of hours done, take my dog for a walk, call my assistant while I’m out, get a coffee, after maybe an hour and a half go back, do another three hours or so, take the dog out to the park, play with him for an hour, call a friend while we are walking back or dictate documents for my assistant to pick up, do some stuff in the house for an hour or so, then another three or four hours. Some days I only need to do a couple of hours of “transactional stuff” like replying to emails or assigning tasks or writing stuff up which means I have lots of time to do proper work.

People focus on “40 hour weeks” but I feel like most people in offices do way less than 40 hours work in a week.