Yeah, 100% agreed with this. My team is currently 1 day/week (Thursdays) in-office, and for both better and worse, there are conversations that happen which wouldn't otherwise. A lot of great things come out of those conversations, but also I can reliably write off getting work done that day.
That might also be because you're not in the office every day, people use those days to talk more (scarcity bias). I'm in-office 5 days per week and because we don't have this scarcity of time, there are lots of periods of quiet. When I wasn't in person all the time at this and other jobs it was exactly as you described.
The biggest advantage of being primarily in person is actually that we have fewer meetings. I don't have to schedule 30 minutes on Zoom with someone and if I pop over for a question (when I see the person isn't in deep focus and can contextually grab them which is fantastic as well). If it takes 5 minutes to come to a decision, great - if we need to go over to the whiteboard and take 2 hours to flesh something out; also works.
