When your work and life start to mix up a whole lot, your life will become chaotic and unproductive. This is why it’s essential for you to have a healthy work-life balance.
To achieve that, you need to have a designated time throughout the day that is dedicated to working and a designated time throughout the day that is dedicated to your life, family, and friends.
But, with the more and more demanding working environments that we see today, achieving a fine work-life balance can be difficult, especially when working from home.
If you’re struggling with achieving that, below, you can find out how you can get your life back in order.
Have a Morning Routine That Does Not Revolve Around Work
When working from home, you may have noticed that work is all you can think of. Taking time for yourself and doing something you enjoy prior to the start of your workday is one of the best ways to achieve a good work-life balance.
The time you would have used to commute to work can now be used in other ways. Such as going for a morning walk with your dog or doing a workout on your front porch, being active, and allowing yourself to take time for yourself is important when working from home.
Nothing productive ever came from starting your day with emails and ending it with emails. We may all be guilty of it but being conscious and strict with your boundaries will help you create the balance you are wanting to achieve.
Set Yourself a Work-From-Home Schedule
Working from home can have many perks, including the freedom and flexibility to work from any location in the world. With this, employees have the opportunity to create a flexible schedule that meets both their work and personal responsibilities.
But often with this newfound freedom, comes increased pressure. Working non-traditional hours means time management is pivotal in maintaining a work-life balance. It is easy to forget to take lunch breaks or respond to emails after the workday has ended. That's why creating a set schedule is important.
Having a set time where work begins and ends is one of the first steps to creating an optimal work-life balance. It gives you structure and a plan, keeping your personal life separate from work. It is also giving yourself a timeframe in which things need to get done and if they aren't done within those scheduled hours, they will have to be completed the next day.
Have a Designated Workspace
When your home becomes your office space too, it is easy to lose track and try to balance everything at the same time. Setting a designated area to work at every day will help you be more productive and free of distractions.
Invest in a good height-adjustable desk and a chair. Having one area where all your work tools are is a good way to separate it from the rest of the house. That way you and your family know when you are sitting at your desk it is solely for work purposes and nothing else.
With that said, your office space should be for workdays only. Your workspace should be out of bounds on weekends and holidays. If you wouldn't go to work on weekends, why would you go to your home office?
Keeping the two separate will help you to mentally split your weekdays and weekends from each other and how they are meant to feel.
Learn to Unplug
Although technology has improved our lives in many ways, it becomes easy for it to have control over our lives too. Not only has it created the expectation of constantly being accessible, but it has also created this idea that you should be productive or work on something.
This should not be the case. After your workday has finished, close the laptop, log out of your emails on your phone and set it on silent.
Our phones and laptops make it easy for us to believe that we are in the moment, even when watching a movie with the family. Oftentime, this is not the case. It is actually the complete opposite.
When it is your time off, let your phone be off too. Don't text at your child's baseball game and don't “quickly” check emails when spending time with your family. Make quality time a priority, because not only will this lead as an example to your family but it will also help you create stronger resilience and help create that fine line between work and life even clearer.
Conclusion
Adapting to working from home is a process and being patient and sticking to your boundaries is important in the beginning. Be kind to yourself and eventually you will have a routine that is perfect for you.
Taking the time to do things you love and allowing yourself to relax, will help increase your productivity levels, boost your energy, and decrease your chances of burnout, whilst having a happy home environment.
