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More people than ever have been working from home recently. It can seem great at first, and it has its benefits. However, it also comes with its own set of challenges. One of the things that can be tough is separating your work from your home life. It’s hard to switch off and to stop being “on duty” when you live and work in the same place.
But there are ways to address this problem and create more of a barrier between your work and your personal life. Here’s how you can prevent your work from taking over the rest of your life when you work from home.
Have Separate Work/Personal Contact Details
Creating a physical separation between work and home will help you to separate them in your mind too. Having separate points of contact is one way to do this. For example, you can have a separate business phone and personal phone. This allows you to use each one when it’s appropriate and put your work phone away after hours. You could even visit http://physicaladdress.com/ to get a virtual address. Send all of your business mail to your new address, and you can check it online when you need to instead of receiving it at your home.
Have Set Working Hours
It can be easy to get carried away with your work when you work at home. There’s no one there to tell you to stop, and you can find yourself at the beck and call of your boss or customers. It’s important to set working hours that you follow so that you have clear times when you’re “at work” and clear times when it’s your personal time. You need to set boundaries for yourself and with the people that you work with. Everyone needs to have downtime and pay attention to their other commitments.
Set Up a Workspace (and Set Boundaries)
When you work from home, you should have a dedicated workspace. You don’t have to have a whole room that’s dedicated to work only. Not everyone is able to have a full home office. However, you should have a little corner that you can use without anyone else disturbing you and without distractions. The second part of this is that you need to set boundaries with your family (or whoever else you live with). You need to make them aware that your workspace is off-limits when you’re working unless there’s an emergency.
Get Out of the House
When you work at home, relaxing at home can be less fun. You should make sure you get out of the house too so that you’re not at home all of the time. You might not miss having to commute daily, but working from home often means that you get outside less. Try taking a walk before you start work for the day or at lunchtime to get some fresh air and stretch your legs.
You can make working from home healthier by separating work and personal stuff. You’ll find it much easier to manage working from home.
Category: Working From HomeTags: work at home mom
