The remote-days proposal, in one page
A proposal that argues for remote work loses. Write the coverage guarantee instead, with an override, a review date and a stated way to end it.
A proposal that argues for remote work loses. Productivity claims about yourself are unfalsifiable, and asking a manager to accept one leaves them either agreeing with something they cannot verify or saying no. Most people spend three quarters of the page there.
What a manager needs instead is a defense. At some point somebody will ask where you are on Thursdays, and they need a sentence to say back. The page below is written to be that sentence, in a form they can repeat without having to defend it.
Keep it under a page, and keep commute time and focus out of it. What goes in: a schedule, a set of guarantees, an override, a way to tell whether it worked, and a date.
Name the days, not the number
The proposal goes in the first two lines, because a skim gets the shape or it gets nothing.
"Proposing: Tuesdays and Thursdays worked from home, starting the first week of next month, on a trial through the end of the quarter. Monday, Wednesday and Friday in the office, unchanged."
"Two days a week" creates a negotiation every Monday. Named days go onto a team calendar once and are then ignored, which is the outcome you are after. If your team has a fixed day everyone is in, keep it and say so in the same sentence.
What does not change
The objection this answers is the unspoken one: that you will be harder to reach. So availability has to be stated in operational terms rather than promised.
"Unchanged on remote days: core hours 9 to 5, camera on for any meeting where others have cameras on, response under 30 minutes on chat and email during core hours, phone number below for anything urgent. All standing meetings stay at their current times. I will be in the office on any day with an on-site customer, a new hire's first week, or an all-hands."
Write the response time as a number. "Reachable" is a mood; "under 30 minutes" is a commitment, and a commitment is what gets repeated when somebody asks where you are.
Hand over the override before anyone asks for it
A proposal with no override clause reads as a request for a permanent right, and permanent rights get refused. Giving it away costs you very little and makes the page easy to approve: "This is subject to coverage. If the team is short, if a project needs on-site work, or if you need me in on a remote day, that takes priority and I will come in. I would ask for a day's notice where the situation allows it."
The last clause is the only thing being protected there. Notice, not the day. That is a much smaller ask, and one a reasonable manager grants without having to think about it.
Let the existing dashboard decide
Pick two or three measures the team already tracks. Do not invent a metric, and do not offer to write a weekly report on yourself; both signal that you expect to be doubted.
"Reviewable against: ticket close rate and time-to-close, on-time delivery for the two projects I own, and meeting attendance. All three are already in the dashboard. If any of them moves the wrong way, this ends."
Offering to end it yourself is not weakness. It is what makes approving it low-risk, and low-risk is the only kind of yes available to a manager who has to justify the decision upward.
Written for someone who has never met you
Your manager may not be the decision-maker, and whoever is will read the page cold. Put your name, role and team at the top, avoid inside references, and keep every guarantee in numbers. If a sentence only makes sense to someone who already knows your work, cut it.
The date, and what happens at it
"Proposed review date: the second week of January. If it is working, we make it standing. If it is not, we stop, and I will not re-raise it this year."
A trial with no end date is a permanent change nobody agreed to, and managers know it. Naming the date, and naming what you do if the answer is no, is what separates this from an open-ended ask.
A trial that cannot end is not a trial, and nobody approves one. Name the date you would stop.
Sending it
Send it as the body of an email, not an attachment, and copy nobody. Subject line: your name, "remote days," and the proposed start month.
One line above the page: "Short proposal below. Happy to talk it through when we next meet, but I wanted you to have it in writing first." Then leave it for a few days. A follow-up the next morning reads as pressure.
The routes that outrank this page
This is written for US salaried office work where remote arrangements sit with manager discretion inside a company policy. If your employer has a formal hybrid policy, an HR-owned request form, or a union contract covering work location, use that route first; an informal approval that contradicts written policy rarely survives a change of manager.
Two things need someone qualified rather than a proposal. If you are asking because of a medical condition or a disability, that is an accommodation request with its own legal process and should not be filed as a preference. And if remote means working from a different state for any meaningful stretch, there are payroll and tax consequences that vary by state. Raise it with HR before you propose dates, and get your own advice from a qualified tax professional.
General information about work in the United States, not legal, tax, immigration, medical or financial advice. Pay, hours, leave and licensing rules differ by state, by city and by contract, and change over time. Check anything here against your own documents and, for anything you would act on, take advice from a qualified professional in your state. Get in touch with any questions about this post.