Wanna get some real work done? Don't GO to work.

Along with countless other American workers in the era of COVID-19, my wife has made a clean break from the confines of her traditional office culture.

For months now, she’s been working from home on her financial services job, sitting at the dining room table as she handles her phone calls and online meetings.

And — guess what? — her company recently made an astounding discovery: Workers like her were actually more productive at home.

Now her firm, along with numerous others, such as Facebook, Twitter and Google, are weighing whether to allow many employees to work at home full-time, even after the repeal of the shelter-at-home guidelines.

The move signals a tectonic shift in the psychology of the U.S. workplace, altering the way many Americans approach their jobs. 

But I have just one question:

What took so long?

As a newspaper reporter and freelance writer, I have spent the last 12 years working from home, sometimes on far-flung continents, many time-zones away from my handlers. And I can tell you this: The gig has made me more productive than ever, allowing me the freedom to avoid the tiresome distractions of office life.

With what I know now, I could never go back to that flock, any more than an ex-con would walk willingly back behind those iron bars.

Ever since 1894, when Daniel M. Cooper, of Rochester, N.Y., received a patent for his “Workman’s Time Recorder” — which used a punch card to monitor an employee’s time on the job — U.S. workers have been under lockdown, treated more like children than colleagues.

I once had an editor who monitored when I showed up for work. As I walked past his desk, he would raise his right hand as though consulting his watch.

It didn’t matter that I’d worked late into the previous night on some breaking story. The message: I’m watching you. I don’t trust you.

It was all about control. To be sure that I was performing, he had to actually see me.

Man, am I glad those days are gone, this Culture of the Time Clock.

I once worked at a paper where a reporter hung a sign on his desk.

“Gossip Central,” it said.

Want to hear the latest scuttlebutt? He knew it all.

Thinking back, he wasted not only his own time, but mine is well.

At home, my approach to office gossip is like that Clark Cable line from Gone with the Wind: “Frankly, my dear, I don’t give a damn.”

Because like it or not, a change is coming.

U.S. Census figures show that 5.2% of the U.S. labor force, or 8 million people,  worked at home in 2017 — up from 5% in 2016, and 3.3% in 2000.

Now, 43% of full-time U.S. employees say they would prefer to work remotely, even after the economy reopens, studies show. One-in-five say their employer is weighing how they can move employees from the corporate office to the home office.

When I began working from home, friends asked whether I got lonely, (Never) whether I found myself taking midday naps (Hardly) or watching Barney Miller reruns instead of working. (Now, that’s funny).

Fact is, I found myself working even harder from home than I did at the office. I worked later, often started earlier, concentrated more, and all because at home I had the feeling that I was working for myself, not somebody else.

Did I lose that creative spark by not having a regular tete-a-tete with my cubicle mate?

Not on your life.

Working from home was like wearing an electronic leash rather than sitting behind bars — it made doing your time on the 9-to-5 chain gang emotionally easier.

The other night, on a walk, my wife said she was surprised how much more she accomplished and how much she enjoyed working at home.

She can sleep later. She didn’t have to make that daily commute, saving both time and money. She was also doing her part to combat global warming, taking one more vehicle off the road.

Working from her dining room table also allowed her to multi-task, to throw a load of clothes into the washer or get dinner started early — thankless chores that once awaited her when she walked through the door after a long day at the office.

Working from home is not for everyone — far from it.

Without kids, we don’t have the distraction of child-rearing that might tear us away from the office task at hand.

But I think U.S. workers should be given the option of working outside the office — if the arrangement works for both them and their companies.

It’s time that corporate America stops treating its employees like teenagers.