Many companies have now opted to offer remote work options for their staff in response to the global pandemic. With no commute, this arrangement can at first seem like a great way to put more time back in your day, but when you’re only just getting into the remote working lifestyle, it can be challenging to figure out a proper work-life balance. Working from home, especially, tends to encroach upon your daily personal life, making it hard to set boundaries and stick to them.
Below are seven suggestions to achieve a better work-life balance:
1. Have an Amazing Morning Routine
The best habit for maintaining work-life balance is to have an amazing morning routine that serves as the foundation for your day. With a combination of reflection, prioritization, exercise and other rituals, you start your day with a sense of purpose, confidence and focus that will help you establish what’s important both personally and professionally.
2. Create a Specific Workspace
It’s really important to have a specific workspace when working from home. It helps to separate work from your life. For example, when you sit down at your desk in your office, you’re in work mode. And when you sit on the couch at the end of the day, it’s time to relax. If you work from the couch or your bed, it’s difficult to separate work from life.
3. Schedule with Your Spouse
Use a Google Calendar to keep each other in the loop of when you have important meetings that will require extreme focus, versus when we can have family time.
4. Have a Game Plan
When you don’t have a plan for managing life, it will feel like life is pushing you around. The only way to have balance is to work toward it. This means planning your day, and even the week, and assigning time for home and work tasks. Then stick to this routine. Although it can seem tedious, having a plan makes life ordered and balanced.
5. Add Leisure Activities to your Schedule
Achieving an ideal balance while working from home can be extra challenging. Add leisure activities to your schedule in the same way you would with professional tasks. No matter how busy you are, always count on that time away to help clear your head.
6. Give Yourself a Time Limit
Give yourself a time limit each day. When you work from home, it’s not uncommon to see a small break turn into one or two hours. You’ll end up working all night if you keep that pace. Track your time off the clock and make sure that you have done with everything for the day by 6 p.m.
7. Take Multiple Walks
Do lots of walking out of the house. Take at least three walks a day. One may be with your partner. Another may be with your dog, as well as do walking meetings. It’s a great way to improve your mental and physical health, and you can get work done at the same time.