Develop a great Work-From-Home life balance that helps keep you sane

My 10 tried-tested tips to help claim back your mindfulness and focus, with time for yourself that could help you stay sane when working remotely full-time.

Whether you’re starting WFH as an impact of COVID19 or not, is actually irrelevant.

Yet It IS COVID-19 induced WFH times, whether we like it or not. It’s been 10 months of working from home. And this world-order as a norm, just like for so many of you just took some getting used to.

Remember the office, the coffee machine & free fruit perks? Those were the days… 

I never realised that adapting to working remotely for long periods can be filled with any cognitive overload or ironically, loss of focus. By the time this pandemic blows over, we may not be the same people on a psychological level, that we were, before lockdown. Sleepless anxiety is a real thing. And all this remote work will reduce the only, and the main benefit of WFH — Having More of your Personal Time, and that much desired work-life balance that gets talked about.

I run through my own experience adapting to work remotely on a full-time basis, with a curated list of my recommended tips to help you organise your remote working day and retain (good portion of) your sanity.

The WFH

You may know what WFH is typically like. Take some days off here and there, and work at the convenience of your own home. No commute. Bliss. Time saved meant more time spent on oneself — or that was the intent, which largely worked out well enough.

Now, W.F.H. is mandatory.

Back in early 2019, getting used to Working from Home was easy at first.

Then, not so easy.

Surprising moments of anxiety and loneliness - of people. A very odd dawned sensation and not everyone admits it, - but I really missed my colleagues, - the lot of them, in person.

I missed the office coffee - really. Honest-to-god freaking office coffee-making-social interaction moments! which suddenly meant so much. :o

It became surprisingly, hard - yet not as we used to know it. I never thought I would be writing this, but adjusting to working at home was harder for those not-so-obvious reasons.

In the beginning, I counted the WFH days to keep myself sane while adjusting my organization to the remote working tooling was well accustomed to. But I found, like many, that the lack of set working-hours distinction somehow can easily morph into those "long hours at the laptop" as the best apt way to describe that.

It was time to figure out priorities, set sensible boundaries and I was keen to get back that focus time.

Learning The Focus vs The Me Time

I have begun to structure my day in such a day to try to ensure my lunch-slot - were just that, lunches - with family. This means physically leaving my home-office, and I do mean treating it like a “meeting” — in terms of conversations or yet-another-overrunning-meeting, ought to be ended as appropriate to prevent overrunning into those lunch meetings.

Over time the slow-developing routines have helped me mentally disconnect from work when time is appropriate, but also to ensure you Can Focus when you do need to work.

There were many things tried and tested that I found useful, while other methods, less so.

Over time I have developed the following list of pointers which have known to help my peers with dealing with prolonged remote-working arrangements.

Ten Tips to Improve Work-Life Balance and sanity when WFH

1. Visualise and Mentally Prepare for the day with Positive Outlook. I do mean consider the 3 great and positive states you wish to achieve on the day. You can do it over your morning cup of tea or coffee. Try to be creative, and it helps if you say it out loud to yourself. Sounds silly, but it works with positive reinforcement. This sets your mind for the micro mission of routine day ahead. "Today, is going to be a magical day".
2. Book off Focus Work Hours in your calendar. You will thank me later. If your team/organization uses a productivity suite — one of those would be that shared calendar in particular. Book time off in that public calendar for yourself. Your organization colleagues would naturally avoid booking you for a meeting when you have 0 availability — I would hope. Claw that time to Focus on work, and actually working. Having this pre-booked means you’re geared and set for that work slot.
3. Try to book all those “quick chats” in the calendar booking. If you are booked in the calendar, it literally tells others that you’re “busy” or better-yet “on-call” and this will foster your better time-keeping and others to follow suit. It may be counter-intuitive to the previous points, but it’s all about using The Calendar, in full.
4. Get a Hobby to fill “spare time”. You’re at home 99% of the time at this rate. You need a hobby to take your mind off (no, not Netflix). So first thing in the morning it’s not the work phone you’re checking. And after spending time with your kids — it's not just a TV couch potato routine being set. A Guitar, Ukulele to learn playing will keep you “diversified” and those creative juices flowing. A must. Build a train track or a model plane. Literally, pick anything non-work related. Read a fantasy book.
5. Structure your day to include a fitness regime. As the saying goes - Mind, Body, Soul. You’re commuting less, you probably walk less, and with food deliveries that can arrive at your doorstep, you barely need to ever leave the house, right? Get a fitness watch. You may hate running but go for that 30-minute walk, light jog around the block — better yet explore the parkland nearby. Book a calendar slot for that. It does NOT need to be over the lunch slot. You run your day. You pick the slot that works for you. We’re talking for half an hour. Try a cold shower. (Wim Hoff would approve)
6. Book calendar slots to catch up with close colleagues. The somewhat a contrary recommendation here, but having an Effective Team is a team that gels well. Working from home has taken away the convenient model of interpersonal relationship building. The slack or team chats can only go that far. Book a catch-up call. A coffee call. A check-up call. Whatever you call it, A quick quality social interaction with your work buddy would work wonders for both of you.
7. Have a hard stop to your working day. You may not commute while home, but you may work overtime. That’s great and all but that comes at an expense. This is when you are not in control of your time. You catch that late train, right? You catch up with pals after work, right? This means you must have a hard stop to wrap things up. Six PM works for me. My family appreciates that. And I hope yours does too, even for yet-another catch-up over zoom with them. Now revisit that point 4 and 5.
8. Get a whiteboard. How un-digital of me, right? But Jotting down ideas, notes, comments, and a full-blown mind-map helped pay homage to your own actual office. This helped me focus, and even remind myself of my TODO list for the week ahead. You don't need a huge whiteboard (but I did get a 1.5m long one) but a whiteboard nonetheless helped me focus — during my Focus & Work calendar slots, point 2.
9. Learn to politely decline meetings. The simple one, The awkward and even controversial one, and often overlooked. I'm sure it's great to be a fountain of all knowledge there is, but when working remotely that coffee-walk downtime is no-more. You are typically booked into meeting-after-meeting — “Just in case”. It is quite OK to say No, —and unless you're critical to that discussion - decline that "spare" meeting. You can always catch up on the minutes or meeting recording (at x1.5 speed) if you wish later. Also, you can't possibly ingest THIS much information to retain it AND remain productive.
10. Have a Noon Nap - you are working from home. Make use of it. Take 20 minutes off for your mind to go silent, and switch off. It's well documented that a good nap (and meditation if you are' better at it) helps reduce stress and anxiety, by reducing cortisol levels. But put 20 minute alarm on, so you don't obsess checking your clock.

All the above helped me achieve what I was after, — Focus (p2) to Deliver - with a positive outlook (p1). I felt I knew what needed to be done and when (p8), by saying No (p9) to the one-too-many vague meetings, retaining time for what mattered most. Such as regular daily jogs, that left me refreshed and revitalized (p5) which has become a routine. And I shared and listened to my colleagues' (p6) progress with the same challenges of WFH. If I was overcome with mental fatigues, I recognised it and opted for a mindful distraction - without much cognitive overload — by attempting-and-failing playing the only tune I though I. learned on my uke (p4). I pushed on with work after such mindful rest (p10). But I always called an end of the day (p7) but not before leaving any notes that I wanted to remind myself on my whiteboard for tomorrow.

I really hope this helps on your own journey working remotely. But also, urge you to capitalise on working-from-home conveniences that we all thought and planned-to enjoy, during the more "normal times".

Hope you found this helpful. Let me know how you adapted to home working.

So what worked for you? What didn't?