The Coronavirus pandemic has disrupted human life in many aspects. It has changed the way professionals and businesses function. Due to the pandemic, companies have allowed their employees to work remotely from their homes. And since then, millions of working professionals have been working remotely.
There are many benefits of working remotely, such as you don’t have to spend hours commuting to work and spending more time with your family. Despite that, after months of working remotely, many working professionals find it hard to balance their work and personal life, mainly because there isn’t a distinction between the two while working remotely.
As your home and office are in the same place, you are more likely to spend more time on office work than you used to do when working from the office. It has severely affected people’s personal lives. Thankfully, there are ways to separate work and personal life and achieve the right balance between the two.
Even the simple steps of setting up a home office or buying groceries from Instamart online can help you save time that you can dedicate to your family, hobbies, and interests. If you struggle to distinguish between work and personal life, consider these four tips to improve your work-life balance while working remotely.
Setup your home office
If you are currently working remotely, where do you set up your computer? You should change your answer to couch or bed. When working from home, you need a dedicated space to set up your home office where you can work and organise things you need. You don’t want to look for your essential files in your home. It’s best to keep them organised in one place.
If you live in a city apartment with limited space, you may not have sufficient space to set up a home office. You don’t need an entire room to set up your office. You can set up a desk for your computer, laptop, and other things and a chair to sit on.
Investing in an ergonomic chair with lumbar support is also advised, as you spend a lot of time sitting in that chair. The ergonomic chair will support your back and help avoid back pain. This setup will also help you separate your work from your personal life. That means you don’t have to work in your bedroom or at the dinner table.
Simplify your household chores
Many working professionals often face a lot of challenges in balancing their work and doing household chores. If you live on your own, you must know that you must wash your clothes, clean the house, wash utensils, buy groceries and even cook food. You may be unable to do all these chores and still have enough energy to work 8 hours a day for 5 to 6 days a week.
It can lead to stress and burnout. To avoid that, it’s best to organise and simplify your household chores. Have a dedicated laundry day, preferably on the weekend, so you don’t have to worry about laundry during your working days.
Try not to pile up the utensils; it would be very tiresome to wash the pile of your dirty utensils after your work. Try cleaning the utensils as soon as you are done cooking or eating your food. As you only get the weekend to relax, you don’t want to spend the entire day grocery shopping.
You can order your groceries from Instamart online to avoid commuting to the supermarket through traffic, searching for groceries for hours, waiting in the checkout queue, and carrying those heavy grocery shopping bags home. With online grocery shopping, you get all the essential grocery items delivered to your home, so you can relax and enjoy your weekend peacefully.
Create a work schedule and follow it
When working remotely, you are more likely to work day and night without any fixed work schedule, which is not healthy and professional. If you don’t want to get burnout due to overwork and have more time for yourself and your family, you need to have a work schedule. Try to allocate fixed hours to your work and follow that schedule.
Avoid working before and after those hours so you can fully engage in whatever you are doing without disturbing office emails and calls. Inform your colleagues, seniors, or clients about your working hours and ask them to contact you within those hours only. Try to be fully present and productive during these working hours, so you won’t have to extend the working hours due to low productivity. Stay away from social media and other distractions during these working hours.
Indulge in physical exercises and meditate every day
Desk jobs have already made our lifestyle sedentary. On top of that, remorse work has removed the aspect of physical activities from your day. You are more likely to spend your entire day in front of the computer, which can adversely affect your health and well-being in the long run, causing obesity and back pain. To avoid that, you should be more physically active throughout the day. You can go for a short walk before or after your working hours.
If that isn’t possible, try incorporating stretching sessions throughout the day to stretch your body and remove stiffness. Take a few minutes to rest your eyes which get tired by constantly staring at the computer screen. Indulge in simple stretching techniques that free up your stiff back, shoulders, and neck. Align with physical exercise; you should meditate every day. Before starting, sit comfortably, close your eyes, and take deep breaths.
Let your thoughts wander, and don’t try to analyse or control them. Just breathe in and breathe out. You will feel more stress-free and relaxed throughout the day. It’s important to understand that your work is essential for survival, but you cannot enjoy your rewards without a healthy body and mind.
Many working professionals often get engulfed in their work and let their personal life take a back seat. Use these simple techniques to strike the right balance in your work and personal life and be happier and more content. Remember, your life isn’t all about your work; you should take care of your physical and mental health and spend more time with your loved ones, and remote work allows you to do that. So let’s make the best of it.
Read More-: 4 Reasons to Ditch Offline Grocery Shopping and Switch to Online Groceries
