How to successfully work from home during a pandemic

Creating work-life boundaries is a key to preventing burnout, but how on earth do you keep your work and home separate in the middle of pandemic?

Are you struggling to keep it all together? We are going to be living with the impact of COVID-19 in one form or another for the foreseeable future. Coping with anxiety, psychological distress caused by COVID-19 is significant challenge.  

And then there are the more practical challenges, like trying to keep work and home separate. Are you working out of your bedroom, or your living room, or side by side with your children at the kitchen table?

At the start of the first lockdown last year caused by COVID19 pandemic,  I decided to switch permanently to working with clients online.  Like many of your, since then I've found myself at home, with my children, a lot.  On top of managing work, there's also managing changing conditions of children's education, and everybody's mental and physical health.

I threw myself into work as a coping mechanism.  Part of this was not knowing when the lockdown was going to end and making the best of not being able to do much else.  However, this was not the healthiest option; hello COVID kilos and my mind going stale.  Something had to shift.  Now my priorities are a little different.  I rely on four key strategies: acceptance, taking control, leaning into mindfulness, and active self-care.  I use the flexibility of work-life boundaries to better balance work and everything else. Because life is still there, it just looks a little different.
 
BOUNDARIES ARE A STATE OF MIND
Boundaries have always been a state of mind.  At work you have environmental cues and barriers such as an office, a time clock, and a meeting room. However, there is more to boundaries than walls and a clock. 
 
Seepage of stress between home and life is not just about bringing work home, being on call or checking work mails after hours. For working mums in particular, it’s always been about compartmentalising thoughts, and perhaps the guilt that often comes with not being able to do two roles (mother and worker) at the same time. 
 
Home thoughts at work may include: What am I making for dinner? How is Chelsea going on childcare, I hated to leave her crying? How do I let my boss know I have an appointment next Wednesday? Do we have enough money to pay the bills? Or ruminating on an argument with your partner, a personal medical problem, or daydreaming about your holiday. 
 
At home it’s wondering when you are going to be able to finish a report. Thinking about whether you should change jobs, or why you weren’t invited out to lunch with your peers.

FOUR KEYS TO KEEPING YOUR COOL WHEN WORKING AT HOME DURING A PANDEMIC
Although creating work-life boundaries is important to prevent burnout, work and life have never fitted into neat little exclusive packages. Managing the extent and intrusion of thoughts from one role to another is the key. This involves a level of awareness, self-compassion and task attention. The myth of multi-tasking has been well and truly busted. Productivity comes from concentrating on one important thing at a time.
 
The keys to maintain work-life boundaries when working at home in a pandemic is accepting your situation, controlling what you can, practicing mindfulness, and active self-care.  
 
1. ACCEPT YOUR SITUATION
Accept that it is generally impossible to ideally separate work from life in these current circumstances.

• Adjust expectations.  Accept that household members will intrude on your work time and space. (I know I’m not the only one to have a child open the door when on a work call.) When they do, unless it’s a dire emergency, keep the interaction as brief as possible and let them know when you will be available. 
• Accept delaying some of your bigger work projects. Or particular household tasks and chores being done to a lesser standard.

 
2. CONTROL WHAT YOU CAN
Identify what you can control  and what you can't control.

• Break up your day and plan when you’re going to work and not work. 
• Give everyone notice about what you’re doing.  Remind them when you will be available.
• When working remove yourself away from the rest of the home activity as best you can.
• Work in short bursts, and alternate where you give your attention.
• Don’t plan to work at times of peak household needs.
• Don’t expect to have uninterrupted chunks of 7-8 hours. Divide your work tasks into smaller chunks.
•  Work at times that suit you best.  For me, this is frequently early morning before my children are awake.  
• Increase work productivity habits.  Getting control over non-productive administration tasks is key.
• Set limits with your workplace around contactable hours.  Just because you can be flexible with your time does NOT mean you need to be available all hours of the day. 
• Develop transition routines that signal the start and end of work times and the end of work day.  This can be environmental, symbolic or a simple phrase.  One such transition may look like this: “It is now time to leave work for now and live the rest of my life”, accompanied by three deep breaths and then changing your clothes.

Just because you can be flexible with your time does NOT mean you need to be available all hours of the day. ​

 
3. PRACTICE MINDFULNESS
Cultivate a mindfulness mindset  

• Whether you are doing work tasks or life tasks be fully present  
• Strategies such as using the Pomodoro method, whereby you choose one task and just do that for 25 minutes, can be helpful in controlling productivity that is lost in admin tasks such as frequently checking emails, or other habits such as browsing social media.  
• Practice tuning into what is actually happening rather than what you need to do next and what you haven’t done
• Mindfully manage emotions around interruptions.  Keeping calm will allow you to more quickly refocus on your work tasks 
• Be aware of the changing relationship between your child’s needs v work needs and adjust according. Sometimes taking leave from work or reducing hours temporarily may be necessary. Maybe there’s people you can ask for help. Something you can outsource.

 
4. TAKE CARE OF YOURSELF
You matter..

• You are doing your best.  In the midst of managing the complexity of work-life boundaries, taking time to care for you is hugely important. Keeping a healthy mind and body will assist in maintaining control and productivity. The loss of daily incidental exercise means planned and intentional movement is required. This can be walking (with a mask as required), dancing, online classes.  It’s easy to keep putting this off (hello COVID kilos from first few lockdowns).  Intentional movement requires some self-discipline and commitment. Support for this can include a pedometer, an accountability partner, having small goals.  
• Practicing self-compassion is also helpful, particularly in removing the guilt that often accompanies the feeling of juggling many things and not being able to do them the way you want.
• Maintaining connections with others. When you aren’t physically seeing colleagues, going into work, chatting to your train buddies or engaging in many of the incidental contact we take for granted, intentional connection is necessary.  This can be in the form of a business buddy, zoom meetings (yeah, I know I think we’re all over this), messages of encouragement throughout the day.  You can also practice micro connections when out walking. This includes behaviours such as smiling, nodding, saying g’day, and waving.
• Use coping strategies to actively manage any anxiety and fear of the COVID19 pandemic. 

When you aren’t physically seeing colleagues, going into work, chatting to your train buddies or engaging in many of the incidental contact we take for granted, intentional connection is necessary. ​

IN CONCULSION
Working from home was sold as the dream. Flexibility, working in your pyjamas, being able to go out for coffee. A dream. However, the reality of working from home, in a pandemic, during lockdown is no-one’s idea of a dream. Maintaining a distinction from work and life is hard, particularly when you don’t have a she shed and your children are remote learning.
 
Accepting your situation, controlling what you can, practicing mindfulness and engaging in active self-care, are keys to maintaining your work-life boundaries . 
 
Doing all these things is not going to magically change working from home back into a dream, but it can make working from home during a pandemic less stressful. 

What are some of your best working from home tips?

Thank you for reading.  If you have found this article useful, please share with someone who it might help.  

Until next time, take care of yourself.


Kim Ross (Dunn)
Psychologist | Fierce Self-Care Advocate.

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