Since the pandemic, work from home has become a hot trendy topic, but Stanford economist Nick Bloom has been studying work from home for more than 20 years.

Back in the 1990s when it was called telecommuting, he was studying this topic. He looked at 9-11 and how events like 9-11 shaped attitudes about remote work.

And so he has the benefit of historical knowledge, and he shares that with us today.

Welcome to the Affordable Care Podcast to show that understands you can afford anything but not everything.

And that applies not just to your money but to your time, your focus, your energy, your attention to any limited resource that you need to manage.

And that opens up to questions first, what matters most, and second, how does that impact your decision making?

This show is dedicated to answering those two questions. My name is Paula Pat. I am the host of Afford Anything.

Today, Stanford economist Nick Bloom shares with us the surprising numbers behind work from home data, and a deep discussion about productivity, collaboration, organizational dynamics, employee wellbeing, all of the challenges and the advantages of remote work.

We talk about the way that remote work impacts you at the individual level, the way it impacts your team, your company, or organization, the way it impacts your city, your home values.

We talk about how it impacts different types of jobs and different sizes and locations of cities.

We discuss that the far ranging ramifications, again, with an economist who has been studying this since before 9-11, since before it became a trending topic.

Back when the word for it was telecommuting, and Zoom hadn't been invented yet.

Today's episode is an economics lesson, it's a history lesson, and it's food for thought in terms of how you want to think about your own career, your own path, company, trajectory.

We dive into all of that with Stanford economist Professor Nick Bloom right now.

Hi, Nick.

Hey, thanks very much for having me on the show, Paula.

Thank you so much for coming on the show. Before we get into your work from home research, I'd first like you to introduce yourself and talk about the wide array of research that you've done.

I was looking at some of your papers that you've published and they span quite a number of topics.

Yeah, I mean, I don't want to bore people talking about it too much, but yes, I've been an academic for 25 years.

I worked a lot on uncertainty, measuring how much it is, which you can imagine during the pandemic was a big issue, actually after 9-11, the financial crisis.

I also done a lot of work on management, long ago I worked in McKinsey, the consulting firm, and kind of out of that spun this interest on work from home, which I've been working on for 20 years.

Now, how does it work? What's the future?

...