> > I had a stronger work/life separation. I rarely turned on my work laptop at home.
> To be fair, that's a personal disciple issue.
That's true, and in my case I have absolutely no issue with not working at random hours, even though I use the same exact computer for both work and personal projects. I work from 8 AM to 6 PM, with a break from 12 to 2. Absent an emergency, at 6:01 I'm done for the day and unreachable.
But in other domains, I've found that having to enforce this discipline can take an emotional / energy toll. In my case, I have this issue with food. I've found that if I have snacks and / or other easy to eat, calorie-laden food around the house I will absolutely have a terrible time trying to control myself and not eat them all. Even though I'm not actually hungry, I keep thinking about them and keep feeling like I need to eat them. This absolutely has an effect on my ability to focus, and the only way to have that go away is to eat. I'm not a smoker, but I suppose it's a similar kind of itch.
But by not buying them at all and not having them in the house, it's much, much easier for me. I don't actually miss them when I don't have them and never think about them. Every once in a while I may think about having an ice-cream or something, but I don't crave it to the point of going to the store and buying it (even though the round trip is like 10 minutes, and I'm a fairly active person). Just eating an apple or whatever makes the craving go away. But if the ice cream was there, 9/10 times I would have eaten that instead of the apple. And "just a scoop" is never just a scoop.
So I completely sympathize with people who've found that having this clear separation between work and home makes a difference for them. Having to catch a train / avoid sitting in a car during a commute / picking up the kids from school / whatever can really put an end to the possible tendency of "just five more minutes, and I'm done".
But there's also the fact, as others have said, that there are other ways to not work from home than going to an office. While I love working from my own house, what I hate the most with the office is the commute, and it's not even that bad by local standards. But advocating for a remote culture would allow people to combine these advantages (having both a separation and no / short commute). Of course, the social aspect of the office some people talk about wouldn't be completely solved.