When I say I’ve been working 100% remotely for five years, people usually react in one of two ways. Either they look at me with a hint of envy (“You’re so lucky”), or they frown skeptically (“But… how do you stay focused?”). Very few ask me the only question that matters: Does it work?
Spoiler: Yes. And the data has been telling us this for years. The problem is that it isn't always in companies' best interest to listen to it..
It all started in Scotland. Writing a thesis, making a decision.
In 2021, I was in Dundee finishing my Ph.D. in molecular biology. The last six months were devoted entirely to writing—my dissertation—and I decided to do it from my family’s home in Spain. It wasn’t a romantic decision. It was a practical one: I needed an environment I could control in order to do work that required real, sustained concentration. It worked. And without realizing it at the time, that decision would completely change what I would do next.
With my thesis almost finished, it was time to make a choice. The logical choice was to return to Scotland and continue at the academy as a postdoctoral researcher. It was the expected path—the one you follow when you have a Ph.D. in science and have been in the system for years. But I didn't want to go back. I wanted to stay in Spain. And I refused to accept that those two things were incompatible.
I started looking at the job market from a different angle: Which sectors had a high volume of fully remote job openings? The data clearly pointed to everything related to data — data analysis, business intelligence, research management. It was 2021, the very moment when COVID had forced companies to prove that remote work was feasible, and many didn't want to go back. That's when I saw an opportunity. Why not work for a company abroad without having to move from where I want to live?
I applied for several positions in different European countries. I was offered the position of Research Manager at RetailX, based in London. I accepted without a second thought—without even leaving home.
What RetailX taught me—and what no MBA program teaches you with the same clarity— is that when an organization measures performance based on results rather than presence, the dynamics of the workplace change completely. If your pipeline was working, your dashboards were accurate, and your team was making progress, no one asked where you’d been working from or how many hours you’d spent sitting in front of the screen. Accountability for output replaces monitoring of time. And that frees up a huge amount of cognitive energy that, in the office, is spent on other things: on appearing available, on managing perceptions, on being visible.
Then there was time. Everyone has the same 24 hours. But on-site workers spend between 2 and 3 hours a day commuting —Hours that aren’t counted as work, but aren’t really rest either. They’re hours of transition, of wear and tear, of invisible cost. I don’t give them away. I use them. As I was growing into the role of Research Manager at RetailX, those reclaimed hours were exactly the breathing room I needed to start building Veltis Digital Consulting on the side. Two projects running simultaneously, both 100% remote, without sacrificing either one. It’s not that I have more hours than anyone else. It’s just that mine don’t get wasted on the subway.
And there's another fact that almost never comes up in discussions about remote work but that, in my case, is absolutely true: Since I've been working remotely, I haven't taken a single sick day for the flu or a minor illness. Not because I haven’t gotten sick—I do, just like everyone else—but because when you’re operating at 50% capacity but not at 0%, you can work at 50%. Without spreading the virus around the office, without the cost of commuting when you’re feeling under the weather, and without the social pressure to “show up” even when you’re not up to it. You work as much as you can that day, and that’s it. The data confirms that I’m not the only one: 50% of remote workers report taking fewer sick days than when they worked in person, and reduced absenteeism is one of the most consistent findings in research on remote work.
From Scotland to a small town in Barcelona: the same hours, put to better use
When people find out that I left a career in science after earning a Ph.D. abroad to start a digital consulting firm from a small village in Catalonia, the usual reaction is one of polite bewilderment. “Isn't it really limiting to be there?” The question assumes that geography still determines one's professional scope. By 2026, that assumption will be obsolete.
My clients aren't just in my area. They're spread throughout Spain and beyond. The work gets done, it's done well, and it's delivered on time. What matters isn't the zip code where I work, but the high standards I hold myself to.
But there's something else I want to point out here, because it's the aspect that comes up the least in discussions about remote work: the impact not only on the amount of work you produce, but also on the quality of your thinking as you do it. My profile—which today we would call neurodivergent—functions fundamentally differently in an environment that I control. Without unplanned interruptions. Without the constant cognitive load of the social dynamics of an open-plan office. Without the obligation to pretend I’m available when I’m in a state of deep work.
And here, neuroscience tells us something that many companies prefer to ignore: The most valuable ideas rarely come to mind during strict working hours, while sitting in front of a computer screen. Research on the default mode network—the brain system that activates when we aren’t focused on a specific task—shows that it is precisely during these moments of daydreaming that the brain connects concepts that analytical thinking would not have linked. This is the origin of “shower thinking”—the solution that pops into your head while you’re cooking or out for a walk. A Stanford study showed that walking—whether outdoors or on a treadmill—increases creative output by an average of 60%, and that the effect persists even after you sit back down. It’s not magic: it’s simply that the brain needs periods of low cognitive demand to incubate the connections that intense, focused work alone cannot generate.
For someone like me, a flexible schedule isn't a luxury. It's what allows me to seize those moments instead of letting them slip away. If I have an important idea at 7 a.m. while I'm having breakfast, I can act on it. If it comes to me at 10 p.m., I can do the same. There's no boss checking in to verify my hours: There's a standard for results that I set for myself, which is more demanding than any time sheet.
The same goes for vacations: when you can work from anywhere, you don’t end up with a backlog of work waiting for you when you return. You take half-days off when you need them, make up hours when you’re traveling, and maintain a pace that doesn’t overwhelm you or leave you disconnected for weeks on end. Productivity doesn’t drop because the pressure that would cause it to drop never builds up in the first place.
50% of remote workers report taking fewer sick days, 57% feel less stressed, and 75% say they have a better work-life balance. These aren’t statistics from a Silicon Valley startup with a foosball table in the office. They’re patterns that consistently emerge in large-scale research on remote work. And in my case, they’re completely true.
It's not that we work fewer hours. It's just that we make better use of every hour we have.
What Science Says (Not What You'd Like to Believe)
Companies that advocate for a return to the office rarely cite data. And when they do, they cherry-pick the data that suits their agenda. So here’s an honest summary.
On productivity: Remote workers are between 13% and 47% more productive than their office-based counterparts, according to various well-established studies. The 2022 Owl Labs survey shows that 62% of employees feel more productive when working from home. Only 11% report lower productivity, mainly due to distractions at home. The 2025 Gallup report goes even further: 100% remote workers have the highest level of workplace engagement (31%), compared to 23% for hybrid workers and 19% for in-office workers. And the statistic I like best: 85% of the time saved by eliminating commuting is redistributed between productive work and personal well-being—it isn’t “wasted.”
On Reclaimed Free Time: The numbers here are staggering. The global average time saved by eliminating commuting is 72 minutes a day. Over a full work year, that amounts to more than 300 hours. Almost nine weeks of work, that's the time that on-site employees literally give away every year to the roads, the subway, and traffic jams. The average American worker spends 223 hours a year commuting—the equivalent of nearly six weeks of unpaid work. It's not free time. It's an invisible tax.
About Burnout: Employees required to go to the office five days a week report burnout rates that are 43% higher than those of hybrid workers and 31% higher than those of remote workers, According to Gallup 2024, workers with commutes longer than 45 minutes are 40% more likely to experience chronic stress and 33% more likely to actively look for another job.
The data is compelling. So why does corporate rhetoric go in the opposite direction?
The Uncomfortable Truth Behind the “Hybrid” model
In 2025, 37% of companies were requiring employees to come into the office, compared to 17% the previous year. The official line is always the same: collaboration, culture, innovation. It sounds good. There’s just one problem: This is not supported by evidence.
When executives are asked in private, the data changes dramatically. In a Resume.org survey of 900 business leaders, 40% admitted that a real reason for returning to the office is to recoup the cost of office space that has already been paid for. 43% of current lease agreements were signed before 2020, when no one foresaw the changes that were coming. Now those companies are stuck with multimillion-dollar leases for partially occupied buildings, and the simplest solution is to fill the seats.
There's another reason that few people dare to mention out loud: 25% of executives explicitly acknowledged that they expected the return-to-office mandates to lead to voluntary resignations, thus avoiding the costs of formal layoffs. In other words: the “mandatory hybrid” as a covert tool for downsizing. 18% of HR professionals confirmed this same strategy. This isn’t collaboration. It’s financial engineering with a fancy name.
And here’s the clincher: when Amazon mandated a return to the office five days a week in January 2025, the employees themselves asked their executives what data supported the decision. The answer was revealing: There was no data. Just the belief that working together in person was better. Period.
“But some people take advantage of working remotely to avoid working”
It's the same old argument. And there's some truth to it: there are people who use their work-from-home days to get less done than they should. There are also those who spend three hours a day at the office coffee machine, and nobody says a word.
The problem isn't the model. It's the management.
If an employee is less productive when working remotely than when in the office, you have a management problem, not a geographical one. A company that can only guarantee productivity when its employees are physically supervised does not have a sustainable work model: It has a control based model. And that, in 2026, should be a wake-up call, not a policy.
Organizations that function well remotely have something in common: They measure results, not attendance. They have clear goals, structured asynchronous communication, and a culture of trust. Those that fail when working remotely also have something in common: they try to replicate the exact same in-person dynamics on a screen. And that never works.
At Veltis, remote work isn't a perk. It's the norm.
When I founded Veltis Digital Consulting, I made a deliberate decision: to work remotely whenever possible—not as an exception, but as the rule. Not because it’s more convenient (though it is), but because it yields better results. Less time wasted, greater focus, more autonomy, and the real possibility of attracting talent without geographical restrictions.
In practice, this has specific implications for how everything works. Communication with clients is primarily asynchronous: clear documentation, structured updates, and meetings only when necessary—not as a substitute for good project management. Deliverables have deadlines and quality criteria defined from the outset. “Availability” is not a metric. Results are the metric. That distinction seems obvious, but in many companies it remains revolutionary.
I've also learned—and no one tells you this before you start your own business—that working remotely requires you to be much more explicit about your boundaries. When your office is your home, work can take over everything if you don't actively set boundaries. Start and end times. The moment when you shut down your computer and don’t turn it back on. The distinction between being available and being on call around the clock. These are things that, in an office, are handled automatically by default; when working remotely, you have to establish them yourself, deliberately, every day.
My profile—which combines strong pattern-recognition skills with differences in executive function—benefits greatly from an environment that I control: no unplanned interruptions, no cognitive noise from office social dynamics, and the freedom to structure my day around my peak performance times. Mornings are for deep work: development, analysis, and technical writing. Afternoons are for communication: calls, reviews, and responses. I couldn’t maintain that rhythm in an open-plan office even if I wanted to. And I don’t think I should have to want to.
I'm no exception. There are millions of people who work better in environments they've been able to set up themselves, and the working world is taking far too long to recognize this because acknowledging it would force us to rethink many things that are easier not to rethink.
Are there situations in which in-person interaction adds value?
Yes. Certain co-creation sessions, the first meeting with a new client when the relationship is still fragile, moments that require a depth of human connection that a screen simply can’t replicate. I’m not dogmatic. But that doesn’t justify five days in the office by default. It justifies, at most, the intentional physical presence: when there is a specific reason, a clear objective, and no one could argue that the meeting would have worked just as well via video call. Not because the lease requires it, nor because the CEO feels that this is a more productive way to work.
The True Luxury of the 21st Century
Reclaim your time—the time spent commuting, the time spent in meetings that shouldn’t exist, and the time spent being seen but not actually accomplishing anything. Use that time to work more effectively, live more mindfully, and make decisions from a different state of mind.
That's not a pipe dream. I've spent the last five years proving that it's entirely possible.
The myth isn't remote work. The myth is that you need to see someone sitting in a chair to know they're working.
Sources:
- Gallup State of the Global Workplace Report (2025)
- Owl Labs State of Remote Work Report (2022)
- Apollo Technical: Working From Home Productivity Statistics (2026)
- Resume.org Survey of 900 Business Leaders
- The Hill / Gleb Tsipursky: "Why the office mandates? For many companies, it's all about real estate" (2025)
- SoftwareSeni: "Why Companies Are Forcing Return to Office" (2025)
- National Bureau of Economic Research / Stanford WFH Research
- Global Workplace Analytics
- McKinsey & Co. Future of the Office Report