Does working remotely make you feel as if you’re torn in between living to work and working to live? Modern workplaces can make you feel that way, especially if you find your work eating into your evenings and weekends – a time when you are supposed to be unwinding. Not having a healthy work-life balance can affect your mental health, social life as well as productivity. Whether you are a freelancer or employed, your clients or employers alone cannot be responsible for your work-life balance. Hence, you should take responsibility to incorporate habits, practices, attitudes and tips that will help save you from work burnout while working from home.
Moreover, working from home can get a bit lonely as you are unable to interact with others in person or engage in the usual corporate team building activities to strengthen work relationships. Since working remotely can take even more of a toll, it is crucial that you prioritize a healthy work-life balance and look for alternative ways of building relationships with your colleagues through virtual team building.
Therefore, take the initiative and follow the mentioned tips which will help you achieve a healthy work-life balance:
1. Set Boundaries and Create a Schedule
Working from home can feel quite glorious. After all you can work from anywhere, wear anything and even concentrate better at your own pace. However, if you do not have a clear schedule as well as healthy boundaries set for yourself, you may find yourself working even longer hours than usual and accumulating stress and even experiencing burnout in the long haul. Not only this, having a schedule can make it easy to slot time and plan with colleagues to enjoy some few moments of non-work bonding such as by playing online team building games during one of your breaks.
However, if you stick to your schedule, for example an 8.00am to 5.00pm routine, you will not only maintain your productivity but also ease some of the stress by logging off at the end of your schedule so you can focus on unwinding. The unwinding period at the end of your workday whether to spend time with family, play games, watch something interesting, read, create or just do nothing is imperative to help your brain recharge
2. Connect with Your Colleagues
Connecting with your colleagues can take place regardless of whether you are sharing an office space. Maintaining a strong relationship with your team will help with collaboration, thus helping you have a more fulfilling work life. You can engage in virtual team building by participating in games such as “Pictionary”, board games, icebreaker quizzes and “Words with friends”, as well as other virtual team building activities such as movie nights.
Furthermore, your team can engage in corporate virtual team building activities that can have the entire company competing against each other on one platform! Such activities have proved to be a way to re-ignite your team spirits and provide a boost in morale as your company gets a chance to pause all worries and enjoy some time simply bonding with each other on a new level.
3. Give Yourself Breaks
When working from home, it can be easy to lose track of time and forget to take a break. You can even find yourself spending your lunch break at your computer! To work optimally, you need to take breaks to reflect and regroup, stretch, take water, go for a walk, chat with a friend, play online team building games or practice your hobbies. These ten to fifteen-minute breaks are important in helping you feel refreshed and take care of your mental and physical well-being.
According to an article in HBR, in order to stay creative and motivated, individuals must take breaks. These breaks don’t necessarily mean being un-productive but much rather doing a task that is different to the current one you are executing. This method not only helps complete a mammoth task without hitting a block, but it also helps to get smaller tasks done and you will stay productive throughout your day. Even using a quick fifteen-minute break to play a quick virtual team building game with your colleagues during the lunch hour can re-set your brain and boost your creative juices!
4. Have a Separate Workspace
It can be rather tempting to work from your couch or from the warmth of your bed, however, avoid this! Have a separate workspace from where you can work with minimal distractions. It should be separate from your bed or living areas to help you only start working when you get to your workspace. This will help you have a morning and evening routine doing things that make you feel relaxed and is not centred around work. For example, waking up to go for a walk, gym, virtual yoga, coffee, and a morning shower before reading for some time and then planning out your day, can be quite healing.
It is clear that the COVID-19 crisis has redefined what “normal” is and remote working has become a part of most of our daily lives. In order to stay productive and motivated while working from home it is imperative to preserve healthy boundaries between our professional and personal lives and the above tips will surely make the experience easier. So, plan a schedule around your work timings, create a workspace within your living space and reconnect with your colleagues in a fun virtual team building environment and watch as your productivity soars!
