[blueatlas]

This is absolutely true, and I believe why many companies that understand this are averse to remote working. Yes, commute time is a waste, but getting into an environment and mindset to do serious work requires you to get into your "routine groove".

[ronaldx]

There's a whole layer of difficulty between remote working-from-home and remote working-while-travelling.

A good office provides a suitable environment for almost anyone to work in. This will cover a lot of seemingly minor stuff - a desk, an ergonomic setup, sufficient clean bathrooms, a coffee machine, a place dedicated just to work, a dedicated telephone line, comfortable temperature/atmosphere, a motivational working culture, etc.

If you're working-from-home you need to set all that up yourself and do it properly. It will take some time to set this up and get it right, but you just need to do it once. You might end up with a situation that's better for you and benefits everybody - but if you don't do a thorough job or if you can't motivate yourself to work then you're simply not going to be as productive as you would be in an office. (Worth it? It depends)

If you're working-while-travelling - this is now a whole different level of difficulty - you need to set this up in every place that you stop. A fancy hotel normally has most of this covered for you, but a mate's floor probably has none.

To manage working-while-travelling, you need to learn exactly what is important to your work environment and how to find it - so that you can set it up each time that you move. (Worth it? It depends but it's hard)

[VLM]

Group projects at university are an interesting learning lab for this problem. Did you prefer to work in a conference room/lab/unused classroom, or were you the guy who preferred to sit on the lawn? Aside from personal preference, how did it feel when the other group members "forced" you to work somewhere uncomfortable?

My experience is .edu is not any different than .com. The main problem is in .edu everyone logically works/studies/thinks in complete silence at libraries and study tank rooms, but in .com everyone is supposed to do their best, most important work in open plan offices where its so noisy you can't think.

[joonix]

The people who actually ended up doing the work never wanted to be on the lawn. Those who saw the meeting as another chance to hang out did.