You may have been thinking about working from home for a while. With the coronavirus outbreak, the option to work from home has become mandatory for many who have jobs that can be done from a remote location. As someone who has operated my business from a home office for the last 25 years, I’ll share some tips to help you create healthy and supportive habits while working from home.
Although the initial thrill of foregoing a daily commute and wearing business attire makes working from home all the more alluring, it poses its own unique set of challenges, particularly when it comes to your well-being.
On the one hand, staying home protects against the spread of the caronavirus and other infections. At the same time, however, working from the comfort of your own home can create a myriad of pitfalls pertaining to your health and sanity. For example, working from home may reduce your physical activity, eating regular meals, and enjoying social interaction.
Here are some things you can do to create a working environment that supports healthy habits.
1. Create some structure that separates work and home activities.
Establishing a designated workspace is essential for achieving a healthy balance between home life and work life. Whether you have an official home office or not, you need
to ensure that you have a desk or table so you don’t succumb to the urge to work from your bed. Not only will this help ease any physical discomfort like back or neck strain, but it also helps you distinguish a working mindset from a resting mindset. When you bring your work into bed, it can affect your productivity and even your quality of sleep. It becomes more challenging for your mind to differentiate the places it associates with rest and work, so your brain will think it’s time to sleep when it’s really time to work and vice versa.
Likewise, it helps to keep a similar—if not better—structure to your workday routine as you would if you were in the office. You may think that working from home will make you more productive because of the opportunity to take care of housework simultaneously. In reality, however, that five-minute break to throw in a load of laundry or check Pinterest for a dinner recipe can end up setting you back an hour without even realizing it.
When it comes to household chores, learn to say no or delegate them to another family member during your work time. Explain to others in your household that just because you are physically at home does not mean you’re available all day. Communicate with your family, set up expectations, and create some agreements. As far as other distractions are concerned — such as the temptation to check your phone — it can help to install apps that temporarily block social media to keep you focused on work that needs to be done.
2. Implement parameters and set boundaries.
The transition to a home work environment extends beyond ourselves—it’s an adjustment for everyone who lives with you. Now more than ever, it’s crucial to establish boundaries and seek out solutions that accommodate this “new normal” to reduce home life distractions and stay on task. Don’t expect to have a foolproof plan right off the bat; expect some trial-and-error that may require tweaking along the way.
Begin by setting a clear start and end time for your workday, and communicate that with others who live with you to reduce interruptions. From there, establish quiet hours with those who are home while you are working. Make arrangements for family members to do things that don’t involve you. Don’t forget that pets can be a distraction, as well. Think outside the box with pick-up and drop-off services that will transport your four-legged friends to a doggy daycare.
If you have kids, mom and home-based business owner Angela Bickford suggests having something such as stoplight signs with red, yellow, and green on them to indicate when you will be available and when you will not be available:
- Red means stop; don’t interrupt unless it’s an emergency (like the house is on fire).
- Yellow means caution; I’m busy—please only interrupt if it’s important and cannot wait.
- Green means yes; I’m working, but it’s okay to interrupt me.
3. Make time for yourself and build in social time (virtually).
Working from home may create feelings of loneliness, isolation, anxiety, and depression, which is why it’s important to develop healthy habits. Part of a well-structured and productive day involves self-care, which consists of making time for yourself and for some virtual social interaction. A great way to incorporate both is through physical activity. Something as 
simple as strolling down the driveway to get the mail or using the bathroom furthest away in your house can increase activity, similar to everyday movements like getting up from your desk at work to walk to a conference room.
During this time of social isolation, take a virtual coffee break and connect with a friend by phone or text. If the weather is nice, you might even go for a walk while you’re talking.
Find creative ways that encourage others to join you, such as turning video conference calls into walking meetings. You can even kick it up a notch by wearing a fitness tracker and aim to walk at least 10,000 steps a day. You may also recruit your colleagues or friends who also work from home to join a health challenge using an app-based weight-loss program. Aside from acquiring some much-needed connection with others, you will be able to track your physical activity and food consumption to help combat the mindless munching and sedentary lifestyle that working from home often generates.
4. Repurpose newfound time in a meaningful way.
It may come as a surprise to hear that working from home can cause burnout. This is because many workers are eager to get a head-start on their workday since they can spend less time getting ready for work and commuting. Part of instilling healthy habits at home includes repurposing this time for self-renewal or family time, not starting work earlier.
Consider this extra time as a gift and use it wisely. Reflect on aspects of your life that are being neglected. During a particularly strenuous week, you may use your “bonus” time in the morning to catch up on sleep. It’s important to take care of yourself.
Think of ways you can take advantage of this time to connect with your family and loved ones. Perhaps you spend the extra hour in the morning enjoying a home-cooked, sit-down family breakfast together. Or utilize the time you would spend sitting in rush-hour traffic to call a friend or relative and catch up. This is your opportunity to make the most of working from home.
When I used to work in an office, I considered it a good day when I could get five hours of solid work done. The rest of the time was chewed up with meetings and interruptions. If you live alone and can work completely uninterrupted, you may find that you get more done in less time and don’t need to work a full eight hours to accomplish your goals for the day. Focus on quality results rather than on how much time you are spending to get the job done.
5. Plan your work day ahead of time.
If you’ve followed this blog for long, you know that I am a big fan of weekly planning. I also love the 80/20 Rule – also known as the Pareto Principle. The 80/20 Rule means that with anything — time, resources, space, etc. — a few (20%) are vital and many (80%) are trivial. It’s uncanny how accurate this is!
Did you know that 20% of an eight-hour workday is only 96 minutes? What if you were to be consistently focused on doing your most important activities for the first 96 minutes of each day? Even if you wasted much of the remaining 6.5 hours of your workday, you’d probably still yield a better outcome than if you assigned the same value to all activities in your workday.
I’m not suggesting that you waste the rest of the day … just saying that consistent focus on the top 20% of your most important activities will lead to dramatically improved productivity. While the rule is not an absolute, you can use it as a guide and reference point to ask whether or not you are truly focusing on the 20% (the vital few), or the 80% (the trivial many).
Once you’re clear about what your top 20% of activities are that will yield 80% of the results you desire, that enables you to work much more effectively. In other words, instead of focusing on doing more things faster (being efficient), you’re focused on doing the right things (being effective and productive).
For a deeper dive on this topic, you can read my blog All Work and No Play?. My free Managing Priorities webinar teaches participants a weekly planning process that will help you keep first things first in your life.
6. Cut yourself some slack.
Let’s just acknowledge that we’ve never in our lifetime dealt with a worldwide crisis of this magnitude. During this time, you do not need to be super human. It’s okay if you are not as productive as usual. It’s okay to simply survive, look after your physical and mental health, take care of your family, and take it one day at a time.
As you’re spending more time at home and working to stay sane during the coronavirus pandemic, you might find solace in Yale University’s mega-popular “happiness” course, which is available for FREE online through Coursera.
7. Staying home saves lives.
My daughter (a Registered Nurse) and her coworkers have an important message for you: “We stay here for YOU. Please stay HOME for US.” The pandemic spread of the virus is overtaxing our medical caregivers, who are working without adequate personal protective equipment (PPE) because they’ve run out.
If you have access to masks you don’t need, please go to MaskMatch, which connects healthcare workers and people with spare masks who are willing to donate.
You may not feel like you’re doing enough, but you are actively helping by staying home and social distancing as much as you possibly can. That means ALL of us need to stay home and not socialize with anyone we don’t live with. As hard as it has been, my husband and I are not seeing our daughter and her family… including our precious new granddaughter … even though they live close by.
Some people think if they feel healthy, they can go out … and the stay-at-home rules don’t apply to them. Unfortunately, some carriers of the deadly Covid-19 virus have no symptoms and don’t even know they are spreading it to others. That’s why we all need to stay home, unless providing essential services that others cannot do without.
If you struggle to “get your act together” with support systems and structures in place to help you manage your priorities, let’s schedule a no-cost discovery call. We’ll discuss the next steps you can take to organize your entire life–-so you can enjoy being focused and productive for work, while also being fully present with family and friends.
As we navigate COVID-19 together, I hope that you are well. Comment below and say hello. We may be physically distant but social connection is as important as ever.
Additional Resources
- Blog: All Work and No Play?
- Blog: Is Work Life Balance a Myth?
- Blog: How to Clarify Priorities
- Blog: A Gift the Coronavirus Has Given Us
- Blog: 14 Life-Changing Tips for an Intentional Approach to Productivitiy
- Free eBook: 7 Strategies to Overcome Overwhelm
- Free Webinar: Managing Priorities
- Guide: Simple Strategies to Increase Your Productivity
- Guide: Staying Organized in the Age of Distractions
