13 tricks to achieve work-life balance in a work-from-home world.
Close your eyes. The year is 2019.
Every morning you bust your butt to get out the door to your office on time, clocking in at 8 am, and waiting to head home at 5 pm sharp. You’re careful not to go over your lunch break. Sometimes you even eat lunch at your desk in order to justify leaving work a little early or to take an appointment. Back then, even the most relaxed jobs were still run on a low-grade sense of shame and guilt, even if it wasn’t explicit. Working from home was that special thing that you did when you should have been taking a sick day or a vacation. For most of us, it wasn’t something that we could imagine long-term or permanent.
Then came 2020.
Covid challenged all of our work norms and challenged all of us to adopt more remote work options. Overnight, our bedroom became our office, and Zoom became our conference table. It suddenly became a lot harder for our supervisors to keep tabs on us, or to monitor how we spent our work time. The focus shifted solely to our responsiveness and the quality and speed of our output – arguably, the only metrics that ever really mattered before.
Years later, many of us have started going back into the office again and have begun to revert back to the good ol’ days of lunch-hour shame and cubicle surveillance. But the truth is, we’ll never be able to fully go back. The world is forever changed, and (for good or bad) the world passed the WFH test: it works. Most white-collar jobs have accepted that a hybrid of office and WFH is a new reality. As an employer, I can attest to the fact that “Is this job remote?” is one of the first questions asked on job postings. And, like it or not, the answer needs to be a resounding yes.
In the olden times, employers were afraid of their employees working from home, for fear that they would play hooky, wasting their time screwing around. However, quite the opposite has happened. Work is now in our homes, in our pockets, on our walks, on our wrists – the allure of being full-time workaholics has never been so real. Where does my work life end and my home life begin?
Here are 13 tips for helping achieve better work/life balance in this post-covid world.
1. Take physical and mental breaks.
Athletic trainers will tell you, recovery is just as important as exercise. It’s crucial to let our muscles rest and recuperate after intense training. In the same way, our minds need occasional breaks in order to operate at top performance levels. Standing up, chatting with coworkers. Staring out a window. Getting a fresh cup of coffee or water. Watering the office plants. A 5-10 minute break every hour can help avoid many of the creative ruts that folks fall into.
2. Go for a walk.
Most creatives say that their best ideas come to them, not when they’re working, but when they’re doing something else—taking a shower, doing the dishes, mowing the lawn. Getting your mind away from the task at hand, and doing something monotonous, can be the key to tapping into that childlike imagination that activates when we’re bored. Going for a walk in the middle of the workday can be a great way to get our minds in this coveted state – as well as get some much-needed exercise. The unexpected sights and sounds that we encounter (not to mention the fresh air and sunshine) can collide with unique ideas and perspectives that can be hard to see from behind our desks.
3. Know when its time switch off work .
Let’s face it: we’re addicted to our devices. Chances are, you’re reading this right now on your smartphone when you should be doing something else. After spending our entire work days behind the glow of multiple blue light screens filled with tons of different stimulation and information, it can be hard to wean ourselves off this level of distraction when we enter our home lives in the evening. Might I suggest setting aside a designated spot for all your devices to rest/recharge in your home, that is away from tempting you? If your job is primarily screen-oriented, try to offset the effects by filling your evenings with more tactile/physical stimulation. Chopping vegetables for dinner. Reading a paper book. Writing with a pen. Playing a physical instrument. Talking to a friend or family member face to face. Playing catch with a kid in the backyard. 8 hours per day is enough for screens to hold a grip on our lives.
4. Have regular WFH days.
Most co-workers and supervisors don’t like surprises. If you get in the habit of always saying you have to work from home the day of, because of such and such excuse, your announcements will likely begin to be met with suspicion and annoyance. Planning certain days every month to work from home, and communicating them clearly with your team via a shared calendar, etc. is the best way to manage expectations.
5. Make your office space as physically separate from your living space as possible.
Although the pandemic brought a lot of terrible things into our lives, one good by-product has been a new appreciation for hybrid and work-from-home options. Most organizations were forced to adjust to a WFH reality in a short amount of time. Many invested in new technologies and better home-office setups. However, many of us did so very reactively, not taking the time to plan out the ideal location and setup for our home workstation. Setting up shop at the kitchen table? In your bedroom? In the basement/entertainment room? The homefront, just like the office, is rife with distractions. Making sure you have a private space, and that you’re able to control noise and traffic, is essential to still be able to achieve focus and productivity. Being able to take a break and have lunch with your spouse, or to be able to wrestle your kids is an awesome side-benefit, but your WFH setup needs to be clearly designated as a WFH setup.
6. Don’t have an email app on your phone.
Our phones already provide so many distractions to our focus and life – email does not need to be one of them. Email is most effective when limited to a specific device, a specific app, and even a specific time frame. Setting aside certain times during the workday to check emails (might I suggest: At the beginning of the day, after lunch, and before you leave your desk). Bonus points if you can delete other communication apps from your phone, or at least shut-off notifications. FB Messenger, WhatsApp, Slack, and many others, can easily take us out of our workday groove, and enslave us in the tyranny of the urgent. Remember: just because it’s urgent doesn’t mean it’s important.
7. Confront the Sunday Scaries.
We love our weekends. We never want them to end. But the sad truth is they inevitably will end. As we drift off to sleep on Sunday nights our minds can be filled with half-baked to-do lists and possible calendar appointments for the week ahead. “Am I meeting with Susan on Tuesday morning, or is that next week?” “I wonder if Jeff emailed me back over the weekend.” The best way to deal with the Sunday Scaries, is to confront them head-on. Forcing ourselves to catch up on our inbox, look over our upcoming calendar week, and jot down a quick to-do list, can help us get the rest we need, and help us wake up on Monday full of confidence and joy.
8. Give yourself a daily and/or weekly limit to meetings
The pandemic allowed everyone to stack up Zoom meetings one after the other, without needing time for commutes, breaks, or even meals. My business partner, Raj, put his life on the line and allowed his schedule to be filled with up to 8 zoom meetings per workday. He often didn’t even schedule time for himself to eat lunch. Needless to say, this resulted in a certain level of burnout the following year. This kind of meeting exhaustion, regardless of your role, is not healthy. Especially if these meetings are primarily disembodied, digital meetups. It’s important to analyze your own personal daily and/or weekly meeting limit. Maybe it’s two meetings a day. Maybe it’s 5. Everyone’s capacity and personality are different but no one benefits from 8+ zoom meetings a day.
9. Spend time in the mornings and/or evenings doing reflective writing.
As modern business people, we’re used to working at a break-neck speed and tackling whatever comes our way. In this kind of environment, it can be hard to develop the self-awareness necessary to know where we’re actually headed in our careers and personal lives. Taking time to jot out our thoughts when we first wake up, or perhaps as we’re about to sign off to sleep, can be a valuable time to reflect on thoughts being stirred up in our work.
10. Protect focus time.
We’re all used to having to get work done while having to multi-task and being interrupted/distracted by multiple things every hour. However, for those of us who have been blessed with the experience, we all long for the magic of getting “in the zone”. That amazing, coveted place of deep, uninterrupted focus. This is where the greatest work comes from. Even 90 minutes of focus time a day can help us bust through our weekly task lists and sprints at a breathtaking pace. Protecting this kind of time can be hard. Maybe you need to put it on your shared calendar, and give special instructions to co-workers to protect it. Maybe you need to go to a private office or space, with a door you can close (and possibly lock?). Maybe you need to leave the office and go to a coffee shop. Whatever you need to do, if it’s important, it’s important to protect.
11. Stretch throughout the day
Even if you’ve invested in a standing desk, better shoes, and an ergonomic chair – chances are, you’re still sitting hunched over most of the day. Although it may not be feasible to swing a kettlebell around every couple of hours, or to rip off 20 push-ups in the conference room – it can be just as effective to break up your day with some simple stretches. Reaching for the sky, touching your toes (or, as I like to call it, touching my shins), and neck rolls can all help to get your blood flowing right, and avoid possible trips to the chiropractor.
12. Make an inventory of the things you love to do at work and the things that drag you down.
If you’re like most people, you work in a reactive way. You take the work that’s thrown at you, and try to do your best to get it done the right way and on time. Most of us don’t feel like we have the luxury of being picky about the work that we do. However, if you were to ask most project managers and executives – they would tell you that they are very interested in their employees doing work that they actually enjoy. Setting aside some time to think about the kinds of work that actually bring us life, and the ones that suck our joy – can be very eye-opening. There may be other employees that are better suited to doing the kind of work that you hate – or perhaps there are some processes that need to be refined in order to eliminate that kind of work altogether. Your self-awareness in this area is not selfish – you could be keeping your organization from growing and innovating.
13. Put some PTO on your calendar.
Studies show that companies with unlimited PTO actually take less time off than companies with limited policies. When something is scarce – we feel like we need to use it or lose it. But when there’s no limitation, it’s easy to revert to workaholism. Look ahead in your calendar, and mark off some days to actually take some time off. Don’t feel guilty about blocking off a couple of weeks on the calendar in advance. The average amount of PTO companies give every year is 10 days, so that should be a good starting point. Let this sobering statistic scare you into taking time off:
55% of Americans don't use all of their paid time off. American workers failed to use 768 million days of PTO in 2018.
Covid was bad, but it brought some much-needed change to the status quo.
Let’s not rush back too quickly to old unhealthy patterns, or inadvertently create new unhealthy ones. With some strategic planning and a few small changes, we can live more balanced, restful, and productive lives.
