Blurred Lines – Tips To Avoid Burnout Working At Home

Here are some tips to avoid burnout when working from home, and to avoid blurring the lines between your work and home life.

Have you been working from home while overseeing remote school or an in-home Mom/Dad daycare setting over the past umpteen weeks? How is THAT going? 🙂 I am here to remind you to turn work off at the end of the day and give yourself a giant pat on the back for juggling all of it. We may be in this for the long game so paying attention to boundaries between remote work and home life are important. Avoiding the blurred boundary lines that can occur when you work from home are crucial if you want to stay clear of burnout and be your best self for work and family. 

You can’t burn the candle at both ends forever

I speak from experience. I have been fortunate to work remotely on and off over the past 10 years. I’ve played the game of getting up at 4:00 am before my girls woke up so I could sneak in work tasks followed by blocks of work throughout the day while the girls were napping or busy with activities. I would wrap up after dinner when my husband got home from work. I’m here to remind you that burning the candle at both ends is not ideal especially over a prolonged period of time. Keeping this schedule made my home life feel the same as my work life. This led me down a path of taking care of everyone else but me and never really feeling like I could shut my brain off. 

You may have no other choice but to grind through it like I did, based on the age of your kids and spouse’s work schedule (or quarantine 2020!). I completely understand where you are coming from. However, I implore you to make small changes in your schedule to help support you. Putting on your own oxygen mask first is crucial (we wrote an entire blog post about the concept here) because if you run out of oxygen yourself, you can’t help those around you. Even those small changes in your routine will help you. 

Here are just a few things that have helped me keep the boundary lines clear between remote work and home life. I hope they help you as well.

Keep your work space separate from your home space

Ideally you have a space in your home where you can shut the door and focus on your work. This could be an office set up in your bedroom! If that isn’t possible and you find yourself at your kitchen table then set up a mini-office that you can shut down and put away at the end of the day so it’s out of sight out of mind.

Take the time you need to decompress

Make sure you clear your head after a long remote work day, before you dive into spending time with your family. Perhaps add in some pseudo commute time. Do something that YOU enjoy; take a short walk outside, use a meditation app like Headspace, stretch, get creative. 

Ask for help

Leveraging others for help with childcare may be tough for a while given our current world crisis. If you need some ideas on how to keep your kids busy while you focus on your work, I suggest reading a blog post written by my colleague, Ashley Rousseau, about using blocked time. Some kids thrive on knowing exactly what is ahead of them for the day. Blocked time will be especially helpful for some kiddos who will not be able to attend camp this summer.

At the end of the remote work- remote school- remote Mom/Dad daycare – remind yourself that you left it all on the field. You are doing the best you can with what we have been dealt. Remember to take care of yourself first, that is the only way you can be present for everyone around you.

If you need help with your business, finances, or anything else during this time, just let us know. We’re here to help.