Working from home is unique - many people find lines getting blurred. The bigger difference is in what your downtime is like. Working from home, you can eat or listen to music or go out of the house to the doctor's office. Take a shower, lounge about, talk to the kids or wife or friends or simply goof off.
In the office, you still have to be in the office and looking like you are being productive. Maybe you have to be available for the sporadic work or customer, and you still have to make peace with the annoying coworker. Some places, non-job internet use (even through your phone) is prohibited, so you are sneaking about doing it, always trying to be aware.The whole point is that your time isn't really yours. You are stuck. There. Waiting and passing the time.
Pretending to work often ends up as long term low level stress which is surprisingly bad for you.
Stress is there to deal with physical lions; think long term sacrifice for short term survival not superpowers. The extreme version might be combat, but hyper awareness around threats can apply for much longer periods. Sure, a few hours a week is no big deal, but that's not 4-10 hours a day for decades.
You're describing some things you don't like about being at work, but how do we know which of all these things are actually detrimental to brain function?
Why is programming, being in a meeting, making peace with the annoying coworker or having to be sneaky about reading HN more damaging to our brains than playing a shooter game at home for five hours, having a heated debate with a friend, bingeing on some TV show or contributing to an open source project in your spare time?
Maybe the only thing that really matters is whether we are forced to keep doing something once we get tired of it and would rather do something else.
Maybe all this study reveals is for how many hours the average worker likes doing what they are forced to do at work. That wouldn't tell us very about what work does to the brain function of someone who is exceptionally motivated and loves to keep doing what they do for 16 hours per day.
I don't necessarily mind all of that, save the sneaking around with tech when it seems a bit harsh.
We don't know which things are actually detrimental to brain function. If I were to speculate, I'm going to guess the differences lie in some combination of low-level stress and the actual effort involved.
The effort bit might explain more of the differences. Some folks have better genetics for long-distance running and can do so for much of their lives while others develop issues from overuse and/or become more prone to injuries. I'm hoping we sort some of this stuff out in the future as we get better ways to gain insight.
In the office, you still have to be in the office and looking like you are being productive. Maybe you have to be available for the sporadic work or customer, and you still have to make peace with the annoying coworker. Some places, non-job internet use (even through your phone) is prohibited, so you are sneaking about doing it, always trying to be aware.The whole point is that your time isn't really yours. You are stuck. There. Waiting and passing the time.