Out of Office: The Big Problem and Bigger Promise of Working from Home

“This book will challenge you to rethink what it takes to make remote work work—not just for companies, but for people.” —Adam Grant, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Think Again and host of the TED podcast WorkLife

The future isn’t about where we will work, but how. For years we have struggled to balance work and life, with most of us feeling overwhelmed and burned out because our relationship to work is broken.

This “isn't just a book about remote work. It's a book that helps us imagine a future where our lives—at the office and home—are happier, more productive, and genuinely meaningful” (Charles Duhigg, best-selling author of The Power of Habit).

Out of Office is a book for every office worker – from employees to managers – currently facing the decision about whether, and how, to return to the office. The past two years have shown us that there may be a new path forward, one that doesn’t involve hellish daily commutes and the demands of jam-packed work schedules that no longer make sense. But how can we realize that future in a way that benefits workers and companies alike?

Based on groundbreaking reporting and interviews with workers and managers around the world, Out of Office illuminates the key values and questions that should be driving this conversation: trust, fairness, flexibility, inclusive workplaces, equity, and work-life balance. Above all, they argue that companies need to listen to their employees – and that this will promote, rather than impede, productivity and profitability. As a society, we have talked for decades about flexible work arrangements; this book makes clear that we are at an inflection point where this is actually possible for many employees and their companies. Out of Office is about so much more than zoom meetings and hybrid schedules: it aims to reshape our entire relationship to the office.

CHARLIE WARZEL writes the newsletter, Galaxy Brain for The Atlantic, where he is a Contributing Writer. Before that he was a writer-at-large for the New York Times Opinion page, and a senior technology writer at BuzzFeed News. He was the lead writer of the Times' Privacy Project and co-author of 'One Nation Tracked,' a seven-part investigative series on smartphone location tracking, for which he was named a finalist for the 2020 Livingston Award for National Reporting. Before the Times, Warzel was a senior technology writer at BuzzFeed News, covering technology's biggest platforms, disinformation, and information warfare. He was the recipient of a 2019 Mirror Award for his reporting on Facebook's privacy struggles. He lives on an island off the coast of Washington state.

ANNE HELEN PETERSEN writes the newsletter Culture Study, and is the author of four books, most recently Out of the Office: The Big Problem and Bigger Promise of Working From Home (co-written with Charlie Warzel) and Can't Even: How Millennials Became the Burnout Generation. She received her Ph.D. in media studies from the University of Texas, and was formerly a senior culture writer at BuzzFeed News. She lives on an island off the coast of Washington state.