On this day in 2020 - March 9th - I got a one hour notice from my company to leave my office and work from home for now. I live in one of the German districts where SARS-CoV-2 hit first and hard around February 24th. My planned OOP 2020 visit was cancelled for safety reasons subsequently and I was wondering why I was still allowed to set foot on the premises while commuting from a high-risk area every day.

So two weeks later I was told to pack my things and go. And today it’s been a year! 🎉

But I don’t want to talk about my transition from 20 % remote to 100 % remote (yet …). I’m just here to give you the statistics.

Some rough estimates and assumptions

• Days working: 220 d (so without weekends, vacations and holidays)
• Billed working hours per day: 7,6 h (isnt’t that just wonderful?)
• Distance: 2 x 40 km
• Time on the road: 2 x 45 minutes
• Fuel consumption: 7,6 l/100 km (gas)
• Fuel price: 1,45 EUR/l
• CO₂: 2,3 kg/l

This gives me …

• 17.600 km not travelled
• 1.340 l of gas not consumed
• 2.000 EUR not spent on gas
• 3.100 kg of CO₂ not released
• 19.800 minutes not wasted in traffic

The last one really struck me: 19.800 minutes = 330 hours = 13,75 days or 43,5 work days.

That means that per year I’d spend the equivalent of another two months of billed work in a car just to get to the office.

What am I doing with all the spare time and money?

First for the money part: I don’t know where it is. It’s gone 🤷‍♂️

Now for the time part: I used to get up at 5:50 AM to beat the traffic and get out before 4 PM to beat the traffic again and have some time left for my family. Now I usually get up when I get up and take a break when I feel like it. I punch out later than I’d usually do but I’m still home earlier than before.

All in all everything is better (except for the pandemic obviously)