How to Stay Sane While Working From Home
Avoiding burnout and maintaining a healthy work-life balance
Working from home full time inevitably blurs the lines between your personal life and work life. Unmanaged, it leads to stress, burnout, frustration, and all sorts of other yucky stuff.
The good news is that managing this is pretty approachable (no matter where you live). You have to be deliberate about separating these two modes of your life.
Mental Separation
Think Pavlov’s dogs, except you’re cueing yourself to either get into work mode, or to get out of work mode.
Have an “in” routine and an “out” routine. One in the morning to go “in” to work, and one in the afternoon to get “out” of work. They can be simple and short, it’s the repetition and consistency that make them work. Think Pavlov’s dogs, except you’re cueing yourself to either get into work mode, or to get out of work mode.
My “in” routine
Shower, brush teeth, etc
Put on clean, comfortable, work appropriate clothes. I’ve heard of some folks even getting “dressed up” for work as an additional mental cue.
Grab a seltzer from the fridge, head to my desk. When I get there I immediately turn on my desk light, crack open that seltzer, and dive into work.
That’s it. Nothing special. What I don’t do is shower, then surf the internet for 30 minutes, then get dressed, then unload the dishwasher, then go grab my seltzer. It’s imperative that you keep the routine together, consistently.
My “out” routine
Button up any ongoing Slack or email conversations
Take mental stock of my day..what I accomplished, etc, review tomorrow’s calendar, and write down tasks for the next day.
Shut my laptop, turn off the lights in my office, and leave work behind
If you don’t have dedicated working space, make sure you stand up and walk away from your work area before returning to it. Avoid the urge to swap from your work laptop straight to a video game at your desk. Do *something* in between.
Your routines can be anything you like. As long as they’re easy and repeatable for you in your environment.
Physical Separation
Find some way to hide your work materials from sight when you’re not working.
This part can be more difficult depending on your living situation. The ideal is a dedicate office space behind a door, but that’s not realistic for everyone. If you already have this, you can largely skip this section.
If you don’t have dedicated office space, you can still emulate it.
Find the best space in your home for you to work at, and only work from this space. Build an “opening” and “closing” process that physically changes this space depending on whether it’s working hours or not.
In particular, find some way to hide your work materials from sight when you’re not working. This can be as simple as a drawer that you put your things in at the end of the day, and get them back out at the start of your workday.
You’re going for an “out of sight, out of mind” effect here, so the more dramatic the transformation, the better.
Try these ideas for 30 days, and see how you feel
Bonus
Bonus tip: Get outside. Schedule a 30 minute walk somewhere in your day. So much has been said about the benefits of this that I won’t add any more words.