When you work remotely, it’s easy for your personal life to bleed into your professional one. Certain household demands on your time may start to encroach, harming your productivity. Additionally, regardless of whether you telecommute, hardships in your personal life may impact your mentality, creating a negative attitude that hinders you professionally.
As a result, it’s wise to embrace strategies that allow you to separate your home life from your work life. If you aren’t sure where to begin, here are five tips that can help.
1. Silence Notifications on Your Personal Devices
While personal devices like smartphones are incredibly helpful in many cases, they can be a hindrance when you need to focus on work. Repeated text messages, frequent social media notifications, and similar activities can draw your attention away from the task at hand. Plus, if the communications are related to a current hardship, they can alter your mentality, increasing stress or anxiety that impacts your work quality.
When you’re working, silence all notifications on your personal devices. Additionally, disable any popups or light indicators that may catch your attention. That way, you aren’t disrupted when you need to focus.
It’s also wise to notify family members and friends that you’re unavailable during work hours. While you can provide a mechanism to reach you during legitimate emergencies, ensure that they know casual conversation won’t occur until you’re on a break or are done for the day.
2. Use a Mock Commute to Your Advantage
If you’re working remotely, the lack of a commute is often viewed as a benefit. However, commutes are a classic transitionary time, one that lets you shift your mindset from home to work at the start of each day.
By introducing a mock commute, you can get the benefits of an activity that signals that transition. One easy option is to go for a walk before your workday begins and when it ends. Along with getting some exercise outdoors, it lets you put your personal life aside in the morning. Then, you can release work stress when you’re done for the day before focusing on your household responsibilities.
3. Have a Separate Home Office
Sitting at a kitchen table or other main living area in your home during the workday can invite disruptions. Other household members may try to engage with you if you’re that accessible. Additionally, household responsibilities may catch your attention, leaving you distracted or causing you to handle personal tasks during work time.
With a home office, you get more separation. It prevents work from encroaching on your personal life and vice versa, making it the better approach.
4. Avoid Oversharing
While connecting with your boss and colleagues is beneficial, it’s wise to have boundaries about what you discuss at work. Generally, the details of your personal life are better left out of the workplace.
If you’re experiencing difficulties outside of your workplace, use other resources for support. Family members, friends, employee assistance programs, professional counselors, and a range of coaches can potentially meet that need better, so see what’s available outside of the office instead.
5. Set Boundaries Regarding Your Personal Time
In some cases, your personal life bleeds into your professional life because of a lack of work-related boundaries. If you are answering emails at all hours of the night, accepting calls from your boss on weekends, or otherwise engaging in work activities when you should be off the clock, you won’t have time for your personal responsibilities.
Speak with your manager about reasonable work-related boundaries. Make sure to create opportunities to fully disconnect if you don’t genuinely need to be on call. That allows you to have the time you need outside of work to keep your personal life in order.
Find A Better Work-Life Balance
Ultimately, using the tips above to separate your home life from your work life is essential. If you’d like to find a contract role that better suits your lifestyle, the staff at Alpha Consulting wants to hear from you. Contact us today.
