The 8 hours alone is already too much for me, even if I had all the normal stuff open. I actually had close to the ideal remote existence, complete with month long vacations and all that, and had come back to the office pre-COVID because it just was not healthy for me to spend so much of the average week alone.
I think the other part of the dynamic is that with no one around employees become inboxes that you can dump infinite work into. Some of the finer grained feedback like the grimace when an overworked person is assigned yet another task is lost.
My hope for the future is we rediscover the value of human contact, just any human contact, but that feels unlikely.
I've been working remotely for the last 8 years. I completely agree with you about 8 hours alone being too much. I very rarely tolerate that, even during covid, but that doesn't mean I want to be required to go to my company's office. The alternatives are to work from a co-working space of your choice, a coffee shop, a friend's house, or a park (if you have mobile internet). There are many advantages to these choices: no excessive commute, the ability to spend your days around people you like rather than people who just happen to be your coworkers, the ability to have some variety in your environment, the flexibility to work from wherever is convenient on any given day, being judged by your output rather than how long your ass is in a chair, it's easier to schedule exercise or naps during the day, etc.
During normal times I have a co-working group chat made up of people who have similar interests to me and we meet at different co-working spaces or coffee shops every day to work. The pandemic has made this risky, so now I do work from home for half a day usually and then charge up my laptop and either meet some people at an outdoor coffee shop or grab my bike and go sit under a tree at my favorite park with my hotspot.
Granted, working from home can be isolating without intention, and the pandemic makes it harder, it doesn't have to be that way.
I think the other part of the dynamic is that with no one around employees become inboxes that you can dump infinite work into. Some of the finer grained feedback like the grimace when an overworked person is assigned yet another task is lost.
My hope for the future is we rediscover the value of human contact, just any human contact, but that feels unlikely.