I made the decision to go back to higher education back in January, turns out it was rather a good time to make that decision!
It's not the same as when I had a real 9-5 (more like a 5-9 in my case!), but my productivity shot up once the uni library re-opened for business. Having a physical location to go to really helps kill the allure of opening up the incognito tab every 5 minutes!
Not sure if i'd class myself as a successful WFH-er, but I find that embracing the more flexible schedule that comes with the territory and taking regular breaks can do wonders for your long-term output. Conversely trying to draw a hard line in the sand, turning off your phone and shutting the curtains for hours on end in an effort to block out the world and work uninterrupted for hours on end rarely leads to a productive period.
You are right about WFH becoming more prominent in future, this months edition of New Scientist had several articles that mentioned this thinking and highlighted the ecological good it could do (fewer CO2 emissions as less traffic) as well as the impact it could have on house prices and regional planning (less of a need for people to be clustered around one spatial point for work).
Just as an aside, I used to work in education and some of my old colleagues have been delivering virtual lessons via webcam, they thought it was weird that early into the covid response the press started speculating that this could be the future of delivering education, completely ignoring how unfeasible it would be for many students living near or below the poverty line (and indeed a significant number of those considered well above it), as well as those with special educational needs. Now they seem to have done an about face and are critical of suggestions by some that maybe a team whose job is to write virtual code don't need to be physically present in a building every day.
Overall, fingers crossed that industry big-wigs do take a serious look at whether all of their workers need to be commuting in for every scheduled work-day, and the concept of commuting into work transitions from being assumed to more of an industry/job specific action. One that isn't expected of every worker and even then, not a constant expectation for those that do need to be physically present at work. If nothing else, these same big-wigs should be chomping at the bit for such action as it'll significantly reduce running costs (less office space required = less rent/land costs) and could go some way to closing the gap in competition between smaller-mid sized businesses and giant companies.
