Now that work from home is becoming more and more feasible for many of us even after the pandemic, we are trying to prepare for this new lifestyle. There are still many challenges to it, and we are still adjusting to the new normal. One of the biggest things we have to figure out is how to maintain a good work-life balance while working in the comfort of our home.
Create a Dedicated Working Space
Your house is supposed to be a place where you feel most comfortable, where you can feel at ease and be able to rest. Having to work in such a place can be quite challenging because your body and mind might be in rest mode, especially if you’re working close to your bed or couch. And while space can be a major issue because you didn’t think ahead of time to create a home office, strategically placing your work table away from your bed can make a big difference. This way, you’ll be forced to get up off your bed, walk to your workspace, and change your mindset to work mode.
Allot Time for House Chores Too
Since working from home, we’ve eliminated two factors in our lives that used to eat up most of our time: commuting and preparing. Because of this, we now have more time to do things we couldn’t pre-pandemic. Now, instead of calling the day off to have your garage door repaired or your kitchen plumbing fixed, you can accomplish still that while attending to your job.
However, it is difficult to get everything done at once. To prevent dirt and mess from accumulating, you can do your chores incrementally. This way you’re not overworking yourself, and you’re maintaining the cleanliness of your house- all while still getting your job done.
Make Sure to Get Your Rest
When working at home, we often feel like we can simply blitz through our work. We’re at home after all, and our sense of tiredness is different. This results in going on long stretches of work without actually taking a break, which is obviously bad for us. Make it a point to take consistent breaks. Resting is important as it refreshes our mind, and gives us the energy to keep our performance quality.
If you find that you’re having trouble following a schedule for breaks, try the Pomodoro technique. It involves working for 25 minutes and then resting for 5 minutes. The short interval works great for a burst of efficiency and then the following five minutes of rest enables you to immediately recover that energy.
Dress Up For Work
For some people, working from home means there is no longer any need to wear work clothes because our coworkers won’t see us anyway. It saves us time in the morning, and it also saves us from a growing pile of laundry. But resist the urge to just wear your pajamas while working, because dressing up can actually help you create the proper mindset for work.
The pandemic has coined the term “new normal” because of how we are living our lives now, and it has caused some of us to feel like we’ve lost a sense of normalcy. Dressing up for work can help give us back this sense of familiarity that we miss. This also helps in creating a routine for you to separate your professional and personal life at home. Not only that, but changing back to your house clothes after work also puts us back into “home mode”.
Avoid Zoom Fatigue By Having fewer Meetings
The new normal setup has introduced videoconferencing to be a common schedule item for many of us. At first, it was quite interesting, and learning how to use new platforms for us to communicate with our colleagues seemed like a novelty. But the novelty wears off, and we somehow end up more and more tired after each video meeting. This tiredness is what we now call “Zoom fatigue”, and it’s very much real. The way online meetings are set up, it’s just not how we’re used to having meetings.
Seeing other people’s faces a bit closer than what’s comfortable, constantly seeing our own faces the whole time, exaggerating our facial and body movements to make sure we are conveying our intentions clearly, these things are not natural for us. So if you lessen the frequency of your meetings, you’ll be able to control your fatigue better.
While working from home isn’t a new concept, it’s new for many of us. Some people find it easier, some find it more difficult. What’s necessary is we understand that it comes with its own difficulties and adapt to better tackle them.