One of the most important parts of working from home is maintaining a healthy work-life balance. Unfortunately, balance can be hard to come by, especially if you’re juggling multiple roles. This blog post will discuss how to create smooth transitions in and out of your workday and explore ways we can maintain a healthy at-home workflow.
Create Boundaries Between your Personal Life and Your Professional Life
The first step to creating a successful work-life balance is to set boundaries. Setting boundaries is not only important for work, but it’s also crucial in maintaining personal relationships.
When you’re working from home, it can be challenging to separate your professional life and your personal life, because, many times, they overlap. The flexibility of working from home can become problematic when our inboxes creep into our personal time, and our personal responsibilities get sandwiched between stressful work projects. As a result, we struggle to show up well in either space consistently. We suddenly have the ability to address our work responsibilities at all hours and feel the pressure of success 24 hours a day. When we’re not used to this type of blurred boundary, it’s easy for our personal life to take the hit.
To combat this, try setting some boundaries during your workday. For example, make it a rule that you will not check your email after dinner. Or commit to stop working at a specific time to allow yourself time to relax before bed. You may also want to designate particular days or times of the week where you will only do personal tasks. Schedule times to handle your personal responsibilities, such as grocery shopping or laundry. And be sure to make space on the weekends for time devoted entirely for family and friends.
Creating these boundaries can be tricky in the beginning. But over time they will help create consistency in both your professional and personal life, establish an efficient workflow, and make the transition between your roles much easier!
Set Expectations and Keep A Schedule
One of the most important things to do when transitioning into a new at-home job is to set expectations with your family, clients, and coworkers. Set your schedule based on your goals and incorporate the expectations of those around you. Be sure to communicate your expectations and schedule well, so everyone is clear about what they can expect from you.
This may seem obvious, but it’s essential to make sure that family members know what hours are work-hours and which ones are personal time. Communicating your schedule will help create boundaries between your home life and your professional one. Creating a support system and clear communication channels with the people you live with is one of the best tools you have for establishing and maintaining healthy home/work transitions.
Create Routines To Start and End Your Day
A good transition into your daily workflow should help you reduce overwhelm, increase productivity, and make you feel successful. When it’s time for work, you want to make the switch mentally, physically, and emotionally so you can show up as your best self and do your best work. On the other hand, showing up well at home is just as important to many of us. So how do we create a routine to set us up for success and leave us feeling purposeful and proud at work and at home consistently throughout our week?
Try this simple 3 step routine to transform your work/home transitions in 30 minutes or less:
Step 1: Transform your space.
Schedule 5 minutes at the beginning and end of your workday to create intention around “life” space and “work” space. This step makes more of a difference than you may think. Do you have an area where you exclusively work? If not, how can you differentiate a shared space during work time? Include ways to physically transform your workspace into your start-up and breakdown routine.
Step 2: Get Organized.
Schedule 10 minutes to start your day by organizing what you need and end your day by tidying up. Of course, organization looks slightly different for everyone. But creating a routine to declutter your space and mind is super important to everyone.
Step 3: Assess and Address.
Create space in your schedule at the beginning and end of your day to assess the day and tie up loose ends. Having a designated time to tidy up the little things will increase your productivity and prevent odds and ends from spilling over into your personal time.
Becoming aware of the different roles you fill and setting goals for what you want to accomplish personally and professionally is the first step in transforming your at-home workflow. Then, with a bit of effort and some self-discipline, you can create a smooth transition into your workday that works for everyone in your family!
