Working from home can be a nightmare. If you’ve ever sat down at the laptop in the living room, you can be distracted by the TV. Move to the breakfast bar and you see the pile of washing up out of the corner of your eye. Move to the bedroom and you pass the pile of washing that needs putting in the machine. There can be so many distractions when you work from the place where you live. Let’s have a look at how to juggle working from home with life!
A dedicated space
One of the best ways to ensure you can juggle working from home with life responsibilities, is to create a dedicated space for your work. This means somewhere you can call work. When you walk into it you are in work mode. When you leave that space you are back in home life. It’s drawing a line between work and home and if you can put a door between these zones, that is a huge plus point. Even better if that door can have a lock on it! That way, at the end of the work day, you can close the door on work and lock it away until the next day. Maybe even leave your work phone in there so you don’t check it.
Proper work hours
Give yourself proper work hours and stick to them. Detail them on your website and email signature. When you start replying to people outside of those work hours, they will expect you to every time. You are not paid to be on call 24 hours a day and people can wait for a reply to things. By having proper work hours in place you know your schedule, as does your family. This means you can juggle working from home with other responsibilities like taking your kids to football games.
You should also ensure that you spend time looking after yourself, because your happiness is essential. If you don’t, you may find that you burn out. Here are 10 simple self care activities that you can try.
Get out of the house
Make sure you find time to get out of the house. If we work from home and live our lives at home, we are within the same four walls for a lot of our time. Making time to get out of the house is important. Fresh air, sunshine on our skin, human contact, it’s all integral to our health. It’s easy to feel like we should be either working or sorting out things at home. However we all need down time. It’s amazing how refreshed you can feel after a walk around the block!
Enjoy the flexibility
You need to be flexible when you juggle working from home with life. However that flexibility can work in your way and you can actually enjoy it. Set hours so you can take the kids to school and pick them up. Be sure to take a proper lunch hour to allow you to meet a friend for coffee. If you want a run before work, you have no commute, so you should be able to pencil in that time. The working from home flexibility works both ways.
When you juggle working from home with life, it can be extremely different. It’s a new situation to be faced with, however having proper boundaries will absolutely help you navigate this new road.
