How to keep a good work-life balance when working from home? In this post, I’m sharing the tricks I’ve developed over the last few years to tell my brain it’s time to switch off from work (and the other way around).
Working from home has many advantages and can greatly improve quality of life, but it can also raise new concerns about work-life balance and developers health.
After nearly 5 years of mainly working from home (3 to 4 days a week), I realized I needed some adjustments to avoid (over)thinking about work during my private time. This is especially useful in periods of stress, where you need to switch off from work more than ever.
TL;DR
- Don’t allow notifications outside of office hours and especially when on a day off. If the company can’t function without you, it’s not your problem.
- Separate your private and work spaces, either physically or symbolically.
- Have rituals to mark the start and end of your workday.
- Stick to regular working hours and don’t spread working hours over the day.
- Have some hobbies not related to work and use your working hours for professional training.
No notifications outside of office hours and during time off
This is technically super easy to implement, but it requires being able to let go. You have to accept that your company can live without you, but also that if it can’t, it’s their problem, not yours.
Program your work notifications to only activate during office hours. If your work technically allows it, my best advice is to totally remove notifications from your smartphone or other connected device. If you’re currently working, you’re probably on your work computer, where notifications are activated anyway.
This is even more important during holidays. You deserved that time off, don’t ruin it by following up with the production crashes: it’s not your problem at that moment.
Keep work and private space separated
This is not always feasible, but as much as possible, you should have a dedicated space for working from home. Ideally, it would be a dedicated room. Avoid working in your bedroom at all costs.
It’s not possible for everyone to have a dedicated WFH space, but luckily, there are other ways to physically separate private and work life! One such thing is having a modular workstation. This can be a foldable desk, or a screen (like Japanese folding screens) to “hide” your workspace and physically separate it from the other spaces where your private life happens.
Those tricks allow you to “close” your work space when you’re done, it’s a ritual that tells your mind you’re “leaving the office”. I’ll talk more about rituals later in this article.
Another option is to work from a coworking space. It’s not exactly work-from-home, but it still has the advantage of reducing your travel time to the office.
When your private office also has other purposes
In my case, I do have a dedicated office at home, but my problem is that most of my hobbies happen in that office. Right now, I’m writing an article on my blog in that office. And I do have a few blogs… My other hobbies include writing books, playing computer video games, learning Japanese… which all mostly happen on my computer.
I could take my computer to another room, but I’ve got to admit I’ve grown used to having my ergonomic desk and my multiple screens, that I paid for myself, so I also want to enjoy them during my free time.
I also have a few crafty hobbies that I perform in my office (it’s my woman cave). All my craft material is stored in that room. I might try to set up another space for manual craft (following my own advice here above🙄), but I haven’t yet.
I’ve adopted some techniques to tell my brain when we’re in work mode and when we’re in free time mode:
- I close the door of my office when I’m working. This way, I do not see other parts of the house. It’s another kind of physical barrier I can put between work and private life.
- When the day’s over and I want to stay in my office, I hide all my work stuff in a drawer. This way, I don’t see them and it’s also a kind of ritual marking the end of the day. When my personal activity requires some material, taking it out of its drawer is also a ritual telling my brain that we’re going to change activity.
- You can find other tokens that suit you: it could be changing a frame on the wall that is facing you when seated at your desk, or taking your debugging duck out for working hours and putting it away when work is done for the day (ideally replacing it by a private life token).
- I also try to perform the same activity every day when work is over. For the moment, that activity is a short session of yoga. You could go walk around the block, watch an episode of your favorite show, have a snack… I would strongly advise finding something that happens outside of your office. It doesn’t need to take long, just a few minutes of a meaningful activity can do the trick.
Rituals
Rituals are a strong technique to give concrete indicators to our brain. It’s good to develop one when you start your workday (usually, we do so by reading emails and messages that came between the previous workday and now, or by saying hello to the team in a chat), one when you end your workday, and one when you close your workweek.
Mine is having a little drink Friday after work with my partner (a beer, because I’m Belgian after all) or enjoying a snack to celebrate our hard work over the past week.
Although it’s not visible, it’s a really powerful way to switch context.
Working hours
This one might not be universal, but I think it’s easier to separate private and work life when you have regular working hours. Otherwise, you might create even less tangible boundaries between work and private time.
Although taking a break and unloading your laundry machine can help you debug or find creative solutions (see below talk by Trisha Gee and Holly Cummins), I think taking extensive breaks and going back to work every few hours totally messes with your brain (and also dramatically lowers your productivity, but that’s another topic).
Have some hobbies that are not linked to work
Says the one writing a blog about her work… But I do have many other hobbies that are not related to my work. I especially stick to learning IT stuff during my working hours and not on my free time, which accounts for way less hours. I’d rather keep those scarce hours to myself, thank you.
Do you have other tips? I’d be happy to hear them!
