How To Balance Work & Self-Care When You Work From Home
Working from home means the same place where you eat, relax, and socialize becomes associated with work.
If you’re on regular Zoom calls, your work meetings are now in your sacred space. It’s almost like inviting your co-workers into your living room for a meeting.
To add to this, your typical forms of escape from work might not be available with quarantine limitations still in effect. For example, the yoga studio, the gym, your local pool, and the coffee shop where you would catch up with a friend.
Here are a few tips that can help you to set boundaries so you can better balance work and rest from home:
1. Create a ritual to bookmark the start and end of the day
When working in an office, your commute might have been your signal that the workday was starting or ending. Working from home makes it a little harder to keep a similar structure.
Be intentional with how you want to start and end your day. Think of the time before and after work like your wind-up and wind-down time.
At the end of the day, do whatever you can to get out of the work mentality. Turn off your computer screen, close your laptop, and get away from your desk. I also find that going for a walk around the block at the end of the workday helps to decompress, and it almost feels like a mini-commute (but much more enjoyable)..
2. Set a time to stop working and checking notifications
When you’re spending most of your time at home, it’s tempting to check your phone or computer after hours. Since they’re always in close proximity, you might find it hard to resist checking in if you find yourself with nothing to do.
Create a boundary to help you maintain this separation between work and rest time. That might look like not checking emails before 8am or after 5pm, or setting app limits from 6pm until 8am the next day.
On the weekends, it can be tempting to work when you have the resources right in front of you. If you want a work-free weekend, try putting your laptop out of sight, keep your office door closed (if you have an office), and delete your email app from your phone until Monday.
The thing is that you have to set these boundaries for yourself because no one else is going to do it for you.
3. Separate your spaces for work and self-care
Try to create separate spaces, even if they’re small, to separate your work and self-care areas. For example, I have a corner in my living room that I’ve dedicated as my workout spot (which just means it’s where I put my workout mat). It’s not very big, but it’s enough space to do what I need to do.
Another example is sticking to doing work from a dedicated area. If you’ve been using your couch or bed for both work and relaxation, it might be sending confusing signals to your brain. I find that when I work on the couch, I’m less productive and it’s harder to concentrate (even if I’m not watching anything on TV). My back and legs also tend to hurt more because my coffee table isn’t tall enough to work from. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with working from these spots sometimes, but it’s better to have a desk and chair set-up that you use exclusively for work.
If you don’t have the space to separate your work and non-work life, try to create different moods in your home.
The places and activities that you associate with self-care aren’t available right now. This can make it hard to disengage from work while simultaneously making you feel like you’re resting too much.
If you would like to discover more about what mindfulness is and to cultivate more of it in your life or in your workplace, join our online courses. The course offers both background information and practical strategies for bringing mindfulness into your personal, and/or professional life.
Reference:
https://tinybuddha.com/blog/12-habits-to-adopt-to-make-this-your-best-year-yet/