As offices reopen and companies move toward a hybrid workplace, about half of today’s remote workers (and most of their bosses) are eager to return to the office, at least most of the time. I’ve done the remote thing, they say, and it doesn’t work for me.

To those workers I say: You only think you know what it’s like to work remotely. But remote work in normal times (remember those?) is completely different than working at home under pandemic conditions.

How...

As offices reopen and companies move toward a hybrid workplace, about half of today’s remote workers (and most of their bosses) are eager to return to the office, at least most of the time. I’ve done the remote thing, they say, and it doesn’t work for me.

To those workers I say: You only think you know what it’s like to work remotely. But remote work in normal times (remember those?) is completely different than working at home under pandemic conditions.

How different will it be once the pandemic is behind us? As somebody who has worked remotely for 18 years—and found the past 18 months more than challenging—let me count the many ways.

Less stress

The pandemic was a uniquely stressful time for individuals and organizations to try remote work. For one thing, it meant that the transition to remote work happened overnight, without any opportunity to prepare. In one sign of just how much that sudden transition strained our collective capacity to adjust, many furniture suppliers reported a desk shortage in the spring and summer of 2020, when millions of people were scrambling to set up a home workspace for the first time.

At the same time, the pandemic-induced downturn meant that employees had to adjust to working from home while worrying about whether they would soon be unemployed. Not to mention coping with personal or family health crises—or worrying about the possibility of getting sick and dying.

That isn’t to say daily life doesn’t have its own stresses. But it’s fair to say that the anxiety of Covid has tainted many people’s impressions of working remotely.

You love your kids, but…

Another plus of living outside a pandemic is this delightful child-care program known as school. So many people experienced remote work for the first time while also having their first experience of home schooling, or at least having their children to care for all day. It is much easier to work remotely when your kids leave the house during your workday, or if they are going to be at home, having the ability to arrange for off-site or on-site child care.

People need people

Remote work can be isolating—but outside of a pandemic, it doesn’t have to be. When I first worked remotely, I fell into the trap of spending day after solitary day alone in my apartment, grinding out my work. Then I realized that I was getting lonely and depressed, and rebuilt my daily schedule to ensure that I had human contact every single day. In fact, I found delight in being able to choose who I would spend time with, instead of getting my social interaction from whomever I happened to work with in an office.

Many remote workers use co-working spaces and coffee shops as alternatives to working from home all the time, or make co-working dates with other colleagues so that they aren’t so isolated—all things that were largely off-limits during Covid.

And don’t forget that business travel will resume, even if it isn’t at the same level as before the pandemic. That will give people an infusion of social interaction and a welcome break from the monotony of home, and allow them to appreciate the quiet and solitude they get during days in their home office.

People also need structure

Spending part of your workweek at a coffee shop or co-working space is just one way to bring a little more structure to your remote workday once you’re no longer stuck at home all the time. You can start or end your workday with a trip to the gym, plan a daily lunch meeting with a colleague you find energizing and inspiring, or meet up with a friend at the end of the workday—which doesn’t have to wait until 5, if you make focused, productive use of your time at home. Any of those options are more energizing (and provide more structure) than a Zoom cocktail hour.

A balanced life

It was pretty hard to get a work-life balance when you were stuck at home, or socially distanced when you ventured out. Like a lot of people, I found myself doing a lot of evening and weekend work this past year—because what else was there to do, once you had watched everything on Netflix ?

But that had nothing to do with the nature of remote work. Now that it’s possible to make dates with friends or go out again, remote workers have plenty of reasons to call an end to the workday at 5 p.m., or to keep weekends clear for other kinds of activity.

Fewer meetings

Many longtime remote workers I know talk about how much their meeting time increased over the course of the pandemic—a phenomenon I experienced myself. In part, that was because people stuck at home were starving for connection. But also, it’s just so easy to add somebody to a video call.

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That isn’t going to be what remote work is like moving forward, especially for those who choose hybrid work. Once colleagues can meet face-to-face on the day or two or three they may spend at the office, there will be every reason to keep meetings to those office days, preserving remote days as sanctuaries for quiet, focused work. That will be especially true if teams coordinate their schedules so that people who collaborate are in the office on the same days. Just imagine how much you could get done on a remote day if you had absolutely no calls or meetings!

The best of both worlds

Remember, unlike during the pandemic, working remotely isn’t an all-or-nothing proposition. If you’re lucky enough to have a choice, and you decide full-time remote work isn’t for you, you can spend two or three days a week at the office to get the benefit of collegial interaction and face-to-face collaboration, while enjoying the concentration and flexibility that come from spending the rest of your time at home or parked at your favorite coffee shop.

I’m certainly not saying remote work is for everybody. Some people need constant human interaction. Some people find it too difficult to be 10 steps from a refrigerator, a TV or a spouse all day. Some people need a commute to prepare for the day or unwind before getting home.

But for those who look at the past year and a half and say they aren’t cut out for remote work, my advice is not to throw in the towel just yet. Maybe it wasn’t remote work you hated. Maybe it was the pandemic.

Dr. Samuel is a technology researcher and co-author of “Remote, Inc.: How to Thrive at Work…Wherever You Are.” Email her at reports@wsj.com.

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