Top Tips to a Better Work/Life Balance When Working From Home

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Whilst working from home has provided excellent opportunities for increased productivity and flexibility, it has the potential to blur the lines between your work hours and your personal life. When you leave the office at 5pm and commute home, your brain has the opportunity to unwind and ease out of work mode. When you don’t need to leave the desk at 5pm, five more minutes can quickly become two hours and a lost evening. To help you avoid this, we’ve compiled a list of the top three tips we recommend to help you balance your work and personal life effectively. 

Top Tip #1 – Add a break between work and your evening

It’s important to schedule an activity for the end of your work day. This could be a phone call with friends, a walk outside, reading a chapter of your book or getting changed into comfier clothes. If you have a goal to work towards at the end of your working day, you’re mentally preparing to finish at that dedicated time, as the rest of your evening time slots are allocated for other activities. 

Whether you’re pulling on your fluffy socks before jumping onto the sofa for your latest Netflix binge, or heading for an evening walk with your best friend, it’s important to replace your daily commute with a similar time break that’s just for you. By making a commitment to yourself or someone else, you’ll be less likely to accidentally overwork yourself when you’re working from home. 

Top Tip #2 – Make social plans

When you’re working from home, you’re missing out on the small social interactions that we used to take for granted in the workplace. The brief morning chats about the weather, or checking if it’s too late for another coffee all provide social stimulation for your brain. If you’re sitting at home staring at a screen all day, you’re missing out on critical socialisation. 

So to combat this, make sure you’re scheduling social plans into your week. This could be a cinema trip with friends, a date night, or heading to a family member’s home for dinner. By scheduling these throughout your week, including the weekend, this ensures that your brain is switching from work mode to socialising mode frequently. This will allow you to switch off after work, and maintain a work-life balance. 

It’s important to make these plans in advance where possible, as it’s easy to let the week slip by without any plans when you don’t arrange activities in advance. Plus, this will give your mental wellbeing a boost, and will likely do the same for your friends and family. 

Top Tip #3 – Make time for a morning routine

It can be tempting to snooze your alarm and skip the usual morning routine when your office is five steps away. The problem with this, is that you don’t have any time to enjoy your day before you’re met with an onslaught of emails and task lists. 

So, make sure you’re taking time for yourself in the mornings. Get up a little bit earlier, and take the time to make yourself breakfast and have a drink. You can’t have a productive day without fueling your body. Then, enjoy a walk outside or catch up on some morning television before shifting into work mode, feeling refreshed and prepared. 

Life is too short to waste your mornings, so giving yourself an extra hour in the morning will undoubtedly improve your work/life balance along with your overall attitude and mental wellbeing. 

So there you have it. Three simple tips that you can easily implement into your daily routine to ensure a better work/life balance whilst working from home. If you’re looking to implement further healthy habits for remote working, visit our dedicated blog article to help you remain happy and healthy whilst working from home. 

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