Quite often than before, balancing your personal and professional life has become challenging or ought to be, especially when you are working remotely and there are no boundaries. Managing the remote work-life balance and productivity becomes essential. Therefore, here in this post, I am going to give you some very common and must-needed remote work tips to attain work-life balance while working remotely.
Often, work takes priority over everything else whether you are an in-office employee or remote. Our desire to succeed in our careers pushes us to set our own well-being aside, gradually which can result in burnout. Hence, creating a harmonious work-life balance is critical though, to improve not only your emotional, physical, and mental well-being. But also be productive and better in your career. It helps to create the boundaries needed to separate your personal and work life.
Now, Let’s get into the comprehensive article about what is work-life balance and how to achieve better work-life balance while working remotely.
What is Work-Life Balance?
The term Work-life balance makes intuitive sense to many of us but can be evasive to achieve. It is not typically something that revolves around managing your time but is more about making tough choices and changing your mindset.
We all know the feeling of constant work and demands dominating our days. On the other hand, the feeling of unfulfilled dreams. Such situations slowly drag people into a vague feeling of withdrawal and discontentment. Having said that, work-life balance is really about feeling content with the decisions you’ve made and who you are. It’s creating choices that do not lead to discontentment and exhaustion.
Work-life balance is a state of equilibrium or describe as a trade-off. A person has to balance the time spent on one’s professional life and the demands of one’s personal life. It also refers to the flexibility employees/ team members feel they have. A work-life balance surrounds everything that goes into a well-lived life.
Impact of remote working on work-life balance
You might have an inclination of what impact remote working can cause on work-life integration. Based on various articles on the internet, it is known that the rise of remote working has though many benefits but also comes with certain limitations or impacts. Many remote workers faced issues related to their mental and physical health because of an increase in their screen time, meetings/e-mails, and no specific break or healthy routine to follow.
Unlike in-office, remote jobs many of the times don’t have specific work hours and set schedules. This results in, an increase in responsibilities, and obscure professional and personal time. Ultimately, that increases stress and burnout. Employers also face the impact of remote working on their work-life balance with less productive workflow, high cases of unhappy, unsatisfied employees, and more.
Reasons Why Better Work-Life Balance Is Important?
If you want to create a more balanced life then, you must understand the importance of why remote work-life balance is important. Because it’s difficult to create something that you don’t understand. And mind you, creating a balanced lifestyle is quite difficult but not impossible. Attaining a good work-life balance is crucial for everyone whether women, men, remote workers, in-office employees, and employers.
Here are the 6 importance of having a better work-life balance:
- A better work-life balance ‘Reduces Stress’
- Balance aims to ‘Higher Productivity’
- Work-Life balance enhances the ‘Ability to be More Mindful’
- Balance brings ‘Happiness and Fulfillment”
- It brings ‘Higher Levels of Success’
- The remote work-life balance increases creative thinking
There are various other reasons why remote work-life balance is necessary but I hope you got an idea through these above benefits.
How To Ensure Work-Life Balance and Productivity While Working Remotely?
In remote work ‘greater flexibility’ comes as the biggest asset and liability for workers. Poor remote jobs’ work-life balance results in, increased responsibilities at work & home, no personal and social life, less productivity, and an impact on individuals’ health.
Work-life balance means different to every individual, however here are basic tips that everyone must follow to attain work-life balance while working remotely.
1. Set Realistic Goals & Priorities
The first tip I will recommend to you and that goes without saying to take toward remote work-life balance is to prioritize your goals – whether it is on a day-to-day or a monthly basis. Setting up realistic goals and priorities and working towards them is how you can start managing work-life balancing while working remotely.
It’s important to set up achievable goals by implementing time-management strategies, analyzing your to-do list of the day, and cutting out tasks that are of no value at a potential time. For instance, when you are in your work mode then prioritize your job tasks, unless other immediate work arises (either from your job or personal). Conversely, when with your loved ones, don’t check your emails or think about the next day’s task, close out all workloads at the end of your job.
Structuring your day can increase productivity at work, which can result in more relaxed time outside your job. You can use tools or software that help you to set up, manage, and track your goals and priorities like Google Calendar, ClickUp, Ally, etc. Not only that but must communicate your priorities to your team members so that you all are on the same page.
2. Set Boundaries and Schedule
If you are a freelancer or have your own business to run remotely then you know the frustration of no-personal space, fixed schedule, or set boundaries. It’s quite overwhelming right!? I feel you, many times a remote worker with 9-5 type job timing also don’t have a strict schedule or boundaries followed.
To improve work-life balance while working remotely, to avoid physical and mental exhaustion is by setting specific work hours and creating boundaries for yourself and your colleagues. You can start with setting work hours and sticking to them and communicating the same to your team(don’t go overboard with it, stick to 7-8hours of work time).
Further not engage in your personal matters during work hours and vice versa, until necessary. In which ask people to contact you only when an emergency.
3. Create a Dedicated Work Space
To feel like an office in your home, you must create a dedicated workspace. A well-balanced lifestyle starts from our mind and if you have an environment where you can stay focused and work then you’ll be able to attain work-life balance and productivity. From personal experience, having a dedicated workspace mentally helps you to move from home to work mode.
A home office space should be free of distraction and comfortable enough to work long hours. You must also consider that the home workspace should only be used for work and as a place to focus on your career. To achieve a healthy work-life balance while working remotely avoid using your workspace during your leisure time. It’s all mind
4. Plan Post-Workday Activities
We all feel overwhelmed and exhausted after a long day at work. Therefore, you must plan post-workday activities that rejuvenate you and make you feel happy and calm again. To not get stuck at work for longer than needed, you must get your activities in even if you’ve to finish a project during evening hours.
For me, the end of the workday balanced solutions look like this:
- An evening walk or after-work run
- A good call with a friend or meet them, even an amazing family time
- Some exercise or stretches at home, you can hit a gym
- Meditation (I love to meditate, it helps to calm your mind and lower stress).
Planning post-work activities and making it a daily habit, is one of the most effective tips I can recommend to you for a better remote work-life balance.
5. Make Time For Yourself & Your Loved Ones
While your career is very important, it should not be your whole life. The ultimate rule of work-life balance is to manage your lifestyle in a way that you can make time for yourself and your loved ones. This is ‘YOUR’ choice and if you don’t make a firm plan for personal time, you won’t have any time to do outside of work. We don’t want that, right!?
Plan a self-care routine (daily or weekly) and stick to it. Further, plan weekly dinners with your family or facetime if you’re away religiously. Take romantic dates with your partner, or socialize with your friends. But stick to this routine, socialize and enjoy the time away from work with yourself and your loved ones.
6. Prioritize Your Health (your body & mind)
The reason behind feeling burnout is because of constant workload, stress, and no balance in your life. Your overall physical, mental, and emotional well-being should be your main priority. It is important that in the span of 24-hours you carve out time for fitness and commit to it as you commit to your career goals. Further, you must also prioritize your mental health, and give yourself consistent check-in to avoid mental exhaustion.
Consistent rest physically and mentally away from your work life is also crucial which we all forget to take part in. As a leader, it is also a duty of an employer or head of the company, to push their employees to prioritize their health consistently. Prioritizing your health doesn’t need to have extreme or radical activities, it can be along the lines of:
- A daily walk outside, at-home exercises, or yoga,
- Healthy nutritious eating food habits
- Meditation or journaling for better mental health and emotional well-being will work just wonders. Trust me.
7. Use Productivity Tools to Stay Focused and Productive
As I have mentioned before, with remote working there are no boundaries. Hence, in order to not overwork yourself or work too much, even not work enough. You must stay productive with the help of all types of productivity tools or apps you can come across.
Technology for sure can bring profit to you if you know how to use it for your benefit. So, when it comes to being productive and focused on anything you do, then productive apps, and software are of great use. Whether you use it for project management, managing to-do lists, scheduling, or focusing (with music).
It’s incredibly easy to get distracted in your own home, so the more productive you’re, the better work-life balance while working remotely you can create.
8. Take In-between Breaks (especially lunch breaks)
No matter how dedicated or productive you are during your work hours, taking in-between breaks is very essential. It rejuvenates your mood, freshens up your mind, and improves concentration (speaking from personal experience). In-office you have in-between breaks and lunch breaks, however, in a remote environment you tend to skip it.
The monotone and solitude of remote work can get lonely and irritating. To help you balance your work-life while working remotely, take that in-between (even for 5 mins) break and do something away from your laptop and workspace. Moreover, it’s also important to take a proper lunch break and eat healthy, properly cooked lunch that gives you energy and does not makes you feel lethargic. Take this time to enjoy mindful eating or resting.
9. Don’t Be Afraid To Unplug (take vacations)
From time to time, it’s okay to unplug yourself from the world. To enjoy your time away from all the chaos and recover from weekly stress. Give yourself the space to let out your creativity, new ideas, and other thoughts.
Unplugging can mean something like practicing transit meditation on daily basis. Sometimes, truly unplugging means taking on that spontaneous trip to your favorite destination (for me it will be anywhere where there are mountains) or somewhere amongst nature (like Hawaii, Switzerland). To unplug or take a vacation is physically and mentally needed to recharge yourself, connect with your people, and shut off the work completely.