How to Walk Away When You Work From Home
Working from home in today’s world is both a luxury and, ultimately, a real burden on your day. Work life and home life, for most of us, have never been so close, let alone overlapping. Covid has exposed so many of us to this new way of earning a living and it’s my opinion that this genie is way out of the bottle; the world as we know it has changed.
I’ve been working remotely for several years now. Prior to my days at Referential, I worked remotely for Oracle, taking occasional trips to the office for a day or two, and going further back when I was at a small startup in Albany, my team pretty much worked from home 2-3 days a week. This is background to say I’ve been familiar with the telecommuting lifestyle for quite some time, so if you’re struggling to unplug as I do on occasion, you’re not alone.
I follow a lot of news media professionals on social media; Ashley Parker is a writer for the Washington Post. I saw her post this morning – do you find yourself strongly relating?
I found myself instantly nodding in agreement, which got me thinking about the pros and cons of WFH.
Pros:
Being able to pop in laundry
Sweatpant meetings (don’t deny it – you’re guilty of this like the rest of us)
A dog camping out under your desk
No co-workers eating your lunch!
Cons:
Seeing laundry piling up (and a hundred other chores, too)
Sweatpant uniforms becoming too normal
The dog camping under you begins to do lasting damage to your posture (worth it, most would argue)
No co-workers to eat lunch with
Honestly, though, the most important part of working from home I’ve come across isn’t the ability to pop in a load of laundry or eat from your own refrigerator – it’s knowing the how and when of being done for the day.
It’s essential to your mental wellbeing to be able to shut your workday down. This is a legitimate challenge for all of us, WFH veterans and first-time remote workers alike. “Oh, I’ll just get this email sent real quick” or “let me get a jump-start on XYZ” can lead to a real shift in your work-life balance. It used to be at 5 o’clock you left the office and went home; when your office invades your home, is it ever really 5 o’clock?
The best thing you can do for yourself is to set standards and stick to them. Make sure you’re getting up to walk around every couple of hours to stretch your legs. Eat lunch away from your desk. But most important – when 5 pm rolls around, treat it like you would when the actual office was the norm: walk away. The best way to continue WFH productivity? Ensure that you're Not Always Working!
