Now more than ever, the lines between work and home life are blurred. With work from home, hybrid offices, and flexible scheduling, people have more options to choose when, where, and how they work. In theory, this plethora of possibilities sounds fantastic. In practice, unstructured work time and environment often mean that your home turns into a satellite workplace with rocky start and end times. You can create a more balanced work and home life with careful planning. Learn the top tips to take control of your work and life division.
Set Clear Start and End Times
It is essential to keep your home life precious and protected. The best way to do that is to schedule it just like you would a critical meeting for your job. You would never arrive late to an appointment and never leave early; protect your home time just as you would a vital meeting time.
Setting an alarm will help you begin and end your work day and your home life. If alarms make you feel more stressed, keep a clock in your work space to keep an eye on the time.
Schedule Screentime Breaks
If you were in an office environment, you would have opportunities to talk to colleagues, get up and make copies, break to the water cooler, head outside to the post, run to the front desk, or a host of other activities that place you somewhere else rather than in front of the blue screen. Make a conscious decision to make the same visual breaks for yourself.
Every few hours, stand and stretch and look at a non-blue screen. Natural sunlight and even closing your eyes will help you feel more energized by the time you leave by the end of the workday. The same advice keeps your teenagers from burning out on the blue screen. Regular breaks and multivitamins for teens help maintain their general health.
Be Sure To Squeeze-In Movement
Sitting in a chair for hours is the best way to suck the life out of the rest of your day. Not only are your more tired from less movement, but often, your muscles ache, and your posture creates sore back muscles. To beat the sore back blues, movement and especially stretching is a great way to keep you agile enough to stay awake for the rest of your evening.
Your friends and family deserve an authentic version of you that they recognize and love. In order to keep that person in the whole form, movement is the best way to preserve your stamina. If you want to add to the likelihood that you are more energized at the end of the workday, exercising in your free time and stretching midday on your lunch break is a fantastic way to keep the momentum going.
Communicate When You Need Help
Working from home can be isolating. At first, many people loved working from home. They loved the idea of fewer distractions and less travel time. As the situation developed, people learned that the distractions were still there but different. The travel time was less, but the time was allotted elsewhere. The process and format are still new, but expectations remained high as if people were still in the office and performing as a tight team in close quarters.
In order to perform to the expectations required of you, you have to communicate honestly with your colleagues, team, and management. If you do not ask for help, your workdays are more extended, and your energy is lower.
Remember Tomorrow Is Another Day
Keep your priorities in order. You will not be able to perform your best at home or work. Make a realistic list that you can complete in a day. Prioritize what is essential and what can wait. If you can adequately protect your time, you will also preserve your energy and efficacy at home and work.
Preserving an even balance is challenging. Small steps can return harmony to the way that your life operates.