8 Effective Ways to Combat Work-from-Home Burnout
When people think about working from home, they usually believe that it’s a blessing and easy. Although working from home certainly has its benefits, it doesn’t mean that it’s all unicorns and rainbows. If you take things for granted when working from home, you can easily find yourself burning out.
This article highlights eight practical ways to combat work from home burnout.
#1. Establish a daily routine that works for you
One of the most frustrating issues you’re going to encounter when working from home is that there are too many distractions. You’ll often find yourself getting sidetracked, and the next thing you know, a day has passed.
Not everyone thrives when they don’t have a routine set up in place. To help you stay on track more often, you should establish a daily routine that works for you.
If you’re more of a night person, you can spend your morning doing household chores. Otherwise, you can schedule your most important tasks at the time of day that you are most productive.
The key is to personalize a daily routine. Not everyone is the same, so you shouldn’t create a daily routine that works best for others more than for you.
#2. Set up a dedicated workspace
Another common mistake that people make when they start working from home is getting into the habit of working on their bed. There are also some people who tend to lay down on their sofas to do their work.
Trying to be productive and professional in a space that you usually dedicate to relaxation and leisure is not the best course of action. Setting up a dedicated workspace, even if it’s just a corner of a room, will profoundly help you.
When you set up that workspace, make sure that you don’t put it in a place that gets a lot of foot traffic. You want to get a semblance of privacy so that other people in your home won’t end up distracting you.
#3. Set clear boundaries and limits
Working from home has given people a lot more opportunities to hang out and bond with their families. However, when it comes to your work, you need to set clear boundaries and limits. Otherwise, people will think that you’re always free to come and go as they please while you’re trying to focus on your work.
Creating a dedicated workspace, as mentioned before, is one way to set a clear boundary for the members of your family. You shouldn’t only establish boundaries between the people living with you and your self. It would be best if you also made your working hours clear with your family. Doing so can ensure that you still have work-life balance.
#4. Start with the most critical tasks
Creating a primary goal for each workday will help you prioritize the most critical tasks. If you think about your work from a broad sense, it’s going to feel very overwhelming. Your to-do list may end up being longer than the Lord of the Rings franchise.
To help you feel accomplished for each workday, you should at least finish every vital task of the day.
#5. Dress up for work
Too many virtual meetings have people wearing their pyjama bottoms with semi-formal tops. If you want to feel as professional as possible, you have to dress for it. You don’t need to go all out, but you need to dress appropriately, at the very least.
Try not to dress in loungewear so that your body doesn’t feel like lounging around instead of doing work.
#3. Try to stay healthy and fit
You should also try to stay healthy and fit even while you’re stuck at home. Your physical well-being will affect your mental health and vice versa. It will help your body move around and not stay stagnant while bringing your energy up.
#5. Cut down on distractions
As much as possible, try and remove many of the distractions near your dedicated workspace. You might want to try and place your phone somewhere out of your reach. Doing so can stop your urge to scroll through social media mindlessly.
Avoid having entertainment systems nearby while you’re working because those are huge distractions. Limit your interactions with the people in your home when you are working too.
#6. Take breaks throughout the day
Ensure that you also take the time to rest and recuperate in the middle of each workday. Not to mention that taking breaks will allow your mind to have a rest.
#7. Learn to say no when overwhelmed
Many employers might think that working from home means you have no excuse to decline workload because you’re freer than ever. However, you should learn the art of saying no when you’re overwhelmed with your workload. It would help if you can manage people’s expectations of your ability to work while at home.
It would be best if you also allotted time to manage your household. So you need to learn to say no to work engagements.
#8. Don’t forget to socialize
Try and connect with your colleagues while working from home so that you have people to bounce ideas off while working. It doesn’t have to be all the time. It just has to be enough to feel like you are getting enough socialization to get you going.
Over to You
Work from home burnout is a genuine issue that not a lot of people are able to handle. However, taking a proactive approach towards preventing burnout is going to help you be aware of your mental health.
Apply these suggestions to your everyday work life so that you prevent work-from-home burnout. Remember that you can provide quality work without sacrificing your mental health for it.
- 8 Effective Ways to Combat Work-from-Home Burnout - July 21, 2020
