Achieving True Work-Life Balance At Home
We’ve hit the one-year anniversary of our first lockdown, it feels odd to still be asking the question – How can I work from home in a productive, healthy and happy way? Being thrown into the deep end of the remote working pool (with the lifeguard off duty), for both employees and employers has been incredibly stressful. Contributing heavily to poor WFH practice in addition to being subjected to a global pandemic and the associated fear, isolation and mental health impact on us as individuals.
Nevertheless, it’s time to accept our bumpy landing into the world of remote work and look to how we can make it work for us and for the future. The truth is, several pioneering organisations set out to build a remote workforce long before C-19 forced that hand. They had time to approach the problem with a 360* view, working out each of the kinks and finding solutions to previously unknown issues. Successfully expanding remote operations as they went.
Here are the most important lessons they learned and how their organisations thrive at home.
Set Your Hours. And Stick to Them!
Flexibility is a great feature of remote working and it should be enjoyed, but moderation is key. If you need to drop everything to drop off a school lunch in the middle of the day, do it. These things happen and it's great to be on hand to deal with them when they do.
That said, these mini breaks add up. If you take too many, you work late, fall out of your routine and your health begins to suffer. Give yourself a set 8-hour day with a lunch hour and two 10-minute coffee breaks to use throughout the day whenever you like. Stick to that routine and do not interact with anything work related past your set quitting time. You may need to hide your laptop in a drawer or wardrobe so it’s not on-hand, visible or audible - but do that if you need to. Seriously.
Get Outside:
It’s vital to get outside while working from home. Isolating yourself from what is the most interactive part of your weekdays, needs to be replaced with time spent out of the house. Use your lunch break to go for a walk, get out in the morning, get out in the evening - whenever you can. As much for your mental health as physical, your wellbeing depends on it.
Since you’re working in relative isolation, you need to actively find ways to replace that interaction with the outside world. Even if it just means slight inconveniences, like walking to your local shop instead of driving when you need to pick up milk or C-19 aside, choosing to collect takeaways instead of opting for delivery. Interaction with the outside world is important, you need to find convenient ways of adding that interaction to your daily life while working from home.
Have a Space. And Use it!
It’s simple – work requires a workspace. First and foremost, you need a good desk, a room with plenty of light, a supportive desk chair, fast Wi-Fi and any other equipment you require to perform your job, ordinarily available in your corporate office.
Next you need to make your workspace into a comfortable place to be. You’ll be spending 8 hours a day in this room, corner or some kind of hybrid so it’s important that it’s a nice place to be. Put up some posters, buy a house plant and put it nearby, pick up a throwaway chalk or whiteboard to write memos and reminders on, just make the space your own. The mental benefits are dramatic vs. a poor environment.
Finally, this workspace needs to be for work and work alone. When you’re done, walk away from it. Which means, if you already use this space for a hobby or something enjoyable, you need to find a new place to work. Mental separation from your professional life is vital and assigning it to a certain space in your home, along with a set period of hours is a guaranteed way to enable that separation.
Structure Your Personal Time:
The freedom of working from home, while wonderful, ironically offers too much freedom. Without maintaining a structured routine personally, from Monday to Friday, disorganisation will creep into your newly structured workday, the laptop will start joining you on the sofa or in bed – before long you’re burnt out, feeling overwhelmed and run down
Wake up and go to bed at relatively rigid times. Give yourself at least an hour before starting work to exercise, stretch, meditate, read or run through a morning ritual that works for you.
You should have a ritual though, we need to accept the responsibilities that come with working from home, one of which is maintaining structure, that starts from the moment we wake up every morning. It can be a wonderful time to be creative or productive.
Find Your Balance:
The truth is, we’re all different and working from home presents a unique set of challenges for us all. The advice above works and more importantly, it's easy to stick to. You may need to tweak certain elements as you go to find what truly works for you but practicing these methods outright will lead to a very happy home-office lifestyle.