Over the 3 or so years of working remotely, I have dealt with my own fair share of bad experiences that came close to ruining WFH for myself. Here, I’ll be sharing with you my top 5 of those, in the hopes that you’ll be able to avoid them for a better WFH experience.
1. Shutting others away
“I’m and introvert, so staying alone won’t affect me at all!”
Was a phrase that I hear a lot of remote workers throw around when it comes to loneliness. Indeed, as introverts – WFH is heaven-sent. It allows us individuals of the lesser-inclined in socializing to focus our 110% energy on getting work done. However, this does not mean that you should become asocial – or develop asocial tendencies, thinking it to be an advantage.
Just like junk food or mindless entertainment – socializing is great in moderation. The same goes for “going ghost” on others while WFH. Completely distancing yourself from others is the fastest way to lose yourself.
At some point, there comes a time in which being too asocial can severely impact your mental health. You may feel like burning out much faster than before, feeling fatigued from monotony of life, or becoming disillusioned to what otherwise is a pleasant working experience. Choosing to stay more confined to your own world will only exacerbate the negativity.
2. Overworking yourself
It’s easy to really lose track of time and progress when you’re WFH. There are days when you are on fire and just wants to get things done as much as you can while you’re on this hot streak. Sometimes staying on well way into the late hours of the night with occasional breaks.
While I applaud your work ethics, getting yourself to stop is just as important (and as difficult) as getting yourself started. Without a stop gap in place, you’ll build irregular patterns of being super motivated – then burning out – then going into a slump – and finally beating yourself up for losing momentum. Rinse and repeat, till you can’t rinse anymore.
It’s highly unlikely that you can sustain working at top gear for the rest of your career. You’re treating it more like a sprint rather than a marathon. A good long distance runner knows how to pace themselves to last the whole 10K and you should too!
3. Sneaking in unlawful “breaks”
Similarly to overworking, it’s also easy to underwork as well, especially when you’re more in a position that requires lesser supervision. It can start by saying that you’re just going to take a 10 minute break before devolving into a 1hr YouTubing binge post lunch! This leads to delays in finishing up your work and now, you’re forced to take over time to cover that 1hr back. Adding social media into the mix just makes it worse.
Business owners or freelancers tend to be the worse offenders – especially when you don’t really have anyone else to answer to other than yourself. Late projects or rushed deadlines is what triggers that panic monster inside of you later down the road. You just don’t know it yet…
4. Breaking boundaries between the office and home
It goes without saying that your office life and personal life tend to meld over prolonged time of WFH. However, there goes a point where these boundaries are so blended that you can hardly tell the start and end of the work day. When things like:
- Receiving work messages past 5 or 6pm,
- Submitting reports at 12am (or some cases 6am),
- Having all 3 meal-time meals at your work desk,
- Not being able to enjoy weekends away without thinking of work,
becomes too prominent or a recurring theme – you know that your boundaries have been smashed to smithereens.
Employers can be the guiltiest when it comes to pushing staff members a little too far. You may be super committed to your business, but it’s unreasonable to repeatedly ask the same from your employees. This is simply a terrible way to promote a healthy working culture.
5. Focusing too much on the negative
Whether you’re missing your office colleagues, missing cafeteria lunch or even the daily commutes – it can really bring you down if you constantly mull over things that’re greener. Instead, flip the script and then self-reflect!
You get to spend more time with those that truly matter to you (like your family or pets) but your colleagues will always be a phone call away if need be. Rather than having cafeteria food, home cooked meals are definitely a better, healthier option. And finally, on the commutes… do you really miss it that much? Like, REALLY miss the 1-2hrs drive, back and forth – while getting stuck in traffic in the hot sun? Yeah, I really doubt that mate.
The grass looks greener on the other side when you only see yellow patches over here. Not realizing that with proper watering and care, I’m sure it’ll get to grow more abundant than what you previously thought of.
Curbing ruination
Unsurprisingly, most of the key answers comes from consistency and positive interactions. Let me explain.
Having a proper routine of things – but this time, it’s dictated by you – is a great start. Decide on a work plan and stick to a reasonable schedule to keep yourself away from over/under working – just a satisfying amount each day to leave yourself feeling content at the end of the day. This is a sure fire way to start building some discipline that works well for employees, employers and the self-employed alike.
I would also argue that this next point is the most important of all – get back to connecting! It can be for 6hrs during the weekends or 30 minutes daily, get back to connecting with the people around you (apart from those you interacted on a regular basis). Reach out, plan an online activity, get back to content creation with your team 😏, anything that gets you interacting again is a plus. No need to over do it and just stop if you feel that it becomes too overwhelming.
Take some time to implement these changes and practice. I hope that with this information, you won’t be making the same mistakes I made. Let’s all be smarter at being healthily productive