So, many of you here in the Rockford area found yourself among the millions of Americans who were forced to make a change during the pandemic lockdowns and closings, and you started working from home.

Doing that caused problems galore for a lot of folks who had never practiced their vocation anywhere but in the office or workplace. You had to contend with technical problems and glitches, trying to do your job in an unfamiliar environment that wasn't set up to be a home workplace, tossing dress codes to the curb, and for many, you had to also deal with kids who weren't going to school.

We saw story after story in the media about how hard this was, and continues to be for the at-home dynamic American homes had worked with for decades.

However, it seems as though there were some benefits to not making that daily commute to work. Benefits in the form of saving time by not being in the car for a portion of your day.

A new study, recently released by MakeALivingWriting.com, has determined that the average American saved nearly 10 days (8.6) by not hopping into the car and heading into work. With the amount of Americans going toward the work-from-home model last year, that's a whole lot of time savings.

The MakeALivingWriting.com study went with data from the U.S. Census that said the average American worker is on the job about 243 days per year, if you count vacation days and time off for being sick

Speaking of working from home, in December, the Pew Research Center released a study that showed before the coronavirus pandemic, roughly 20 percent of workers were doing it from home. After the pandemic kicked in, that number rose to 71 percent, with 54 percent saying that they wanted to keep doing their job from their home after the pandemic is well behind us.

As for the amount of days saved by Rockford area residents who stopped commuting and started working from home, the study says that we saved 7.65 days, based upon a daily commute time of 45.40 minutes.

For guys like Joe Dredge and me, foolishly labeled "essential" by the powers that be, we didn't get to save any days. So, we've made up for it by stealing office supplies from an unguarded supply room. You've gotta take what you can get.

 

READ MORE: Here are 50 ways you can improve your work from home lifestyle

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