The New York Times reports that people who work at home are taking off lots of time in the afternoon. Golf has boomed:
A new study from Stanford shines a light on the rise of afternoon leisure. Using geolocation data near golf courses in the United States, the study found there was 278 percent more people playing golf at 4 p.m. on a Wednesday in August 2022 than in August 2019. And there were 83 percent more golf games being played on a weekday in August 2022 than in August 2019, according to the researchers, Nick Bloom and Alex Finan, who studied data, from the company Inrix, at more than 3,400 golf courses.
According to the Times, this trend means that workers "can now extend their leisure time into the afternoon, and tack on extra hours of work after dark."
Sure, you betcha. That's what they're doing.
But there's an interesting macroeconomic angle to all this. Golf is part of the service sector, and in normal times golf courses were fairly inefficient. There was lots of golf in the late afternoon and weekends, but the rest of the time things were slow. In other words, productivity was fairly low.
But now, with golf spread more evenly throughout the week, golf courses are more productive. Nick Bloom, one of the authors of the Stanford study, points out that when you multiply this by millions of service industry jobs the entire sector is more productive:
“This is an amazing potential reversal,” Mr. Bloom added. “You can have a huge increase in productivity using leisure resources throughout the week. It’s an odd unexpected boost from post-pandemic working from home.”
How about that?
Eh, as long as they're keeping up with the needed work - no harm, no foul. They're probably on salary anyways, so the company is already paying them for work rather than time.
Maybe I'm getting old, but I'd probably do something similar if I could. Start work in the morning, try to get it all done by 3 PM, catch a late lunch, then do something fun like golf.
Interesting that more is being played on Sunday too.
Sans golf, this was my WFH pandemic pattern as a software engineer: late morning/early afternoon meetings, a few hour break with dinner, then late evenings doing real work. No interruptions then.
My reaction to most of this is: Duh.
Cramming every non-work activity into weekdays after 5-6PM or on weekends is extremely inefficient. It's one of the great boons of work from home, and of alternate/flexible work schedules more generally. Being able to do the thing when it makes the most sense to do it eliminates a ton of stress or provides a lot of potential benefits. I don't have kids but know lots of people who basically work between 9 and 2 or 3, then have to deal with their kids until the evening, and then I'll see work product from them at 9-10PM after their kids have gone to bed and they're able to finish up on some things again. And if they don't have any work to do that night, then that's great too.
And as others have and will point out: as long as someone's work is getting done satisfactorily, who flippin' cares if they're cutting their day short to peace out and go play golf? Whether or not they work more in the evening isn't necessarily relevant.
There are people who put in a few hours in the evening. There are also people that get started very early in the morning (not me). If you're one of those people who is up with the birds and at your computer by 6:00 am, hitting the links at 2:00 pm is entirely reasonable.
Best thing about working from home!
Isn't golf one of the most environmentally destructive leisure activities?
Of course. If you work from 7 - 4 and you're working from home, you can skip lunch and get off at 3:30. Since you don't have a commute, you can be on the course by 4:00, easy peasy! It just points out how much time we wasted sitting and sweating in our cars before we worked from home.
I used to call up friends and we'd meet at the harbor and go sailing in the afternoons!