Are you struggling to be at your best while working from home? Finding it difficult to maintain boundaries or missing that human connection? Discover ten tips that can make working from home truly work for you.

I’m a huge proponent of remote working.

The time and money saved, along with the flexibility of working from home, have significantly improved the quality of our working lives, especially for those with families. It’s something that was forced upon many at the start of the pandemic, and yet plenty now wouldn’t take a job without it. It has both revolutionised and democratised our working lives.

That doesn’t mean it is easy.

I was fortunate enough to have experience in hybrid working before the COVID-19 outbreak, and even I found the adjustment to full-time remote work challenging. The reality is that remote working can provide numerous benefits over office working because it’s not the same as office working. That means it comes with its own unique set of challenges as well.

The result is you can’t approach working remotely the same way you would office working, in the same way you wouldn’t think you can drive a motorbike just because you know how to drive a car. The general principles have overlap, sure, but they aren’t the same thing. Remote working has to be treated by its own rules.

So what do those rules look like? How can you make the most of the benefits that come with remote work, without losing out on the camaraderie and boundaries that come with office working?

Here are my top 10 tips for how to be at your best when working remotely:

1. Ringfence your time

The biggest barriers to flourishing in a remote working environment are the blurred boundaries around when your working life ends and when your personal life begins. When your house becomes your office, you are both working and living at the same time, all the time.

While the rise in smart phones is doing its best to blur those lines regardless of location (more on that in the next point), when we work in an office we have a physical boundary for where most of our work takes place. We leave the house in the morning, and we subconsciously approach “Work Mode”. We’re in the office, we’re working. We come home, work is finished, and our brains can start to switch off and allow us to live our lives.

This is why being clear with yourself about when you are and are not working becomes so important. If you say that you work between 9am and 6pm, that means you don’t do any work prior to 9am. At all. No, not checking emails in bed when you wake up. No, not planning for your day tomorrow when sitting on the sofa in the evening. By enforcing the boundary that would already exist if you were going in to the office, you allow yourself the chance to switch off when you’re not working. That provides you the space to recharge, meaning you can come back to work the next day energised and focused.

2. Turn off notifications

“But how will I know if someone needs something from me after I’ve finished working?!”

That’s exactly the point. As long as we have notifications lighting up our phone every couple of minutes, our brain is still in Work Mode. Being contactable all hours of the day prevents us from ever switching off. If we can’t switch off, we can’t recharge. We can’t recharge, and we go to work the next day with the same energy reserves as we finished the previous day. And I’m guessing that won’t be a lot.

It was as recently as the late-2000s that most (but not all) employees were virtually uncontactable when they left the office. If something happened while they were gone, tough! It’d have to wait until tomorrow. When work stopped, life began. Now, I’m not sure work ever stops. That’s important to acknowledge.

“Now, I’m not sure work ever stops. That’s important to acknowledge.”

As with all of these tips, I offer this guidance both as a way of helping with your wellbeing, and in improving your work performance. This isn’t a luxury that you don’t deserve; this allows you to live the type of life you want to be living, and allows you to be at your best when you are working.

So turn off the notifications. All they are doing is preventing you from truly letting go and getting the mental recovery you need.

3. Take regular breaks

It’s easily done. You get in your flow and you just keep going. Your toilet, snacks, and meals are all a few footsteps away. You don’t have anyone to disturb you. Head down, work. And work. And work.

It is easier to take breaks in the office. Maybe your break comes when you have to wait to use the coffee machine in the breakout room. Maybe you have to pop out to get lunch, or a colleague comes over for a conversation. Maybe the break even comes when you’re walking from your desk to a meeting room. Your scenery, your focus, your energy, they are all moving when you work in an office. They rarely stay in one place without anything to break it up.

Breaks are important. They allow you to claw back the energy you used while working. Breaks give you space; space from whatever is going on behind your screen, or whatever is rushing around your head. It can sometimes feel like taking a break is a luxury you can’t afford (after all, who is going to be doing the work if you’re not?!), but the truth is your performance at work is more effective if you feel refreshed. A recent study showed that humans can only maintain peak performances for 52 consecutive minutes. If you’re trying to work for hours without pausing, chances are it’s not just your wellbeing that’s suffering, the quality of your work is too.

4. 20/20/20

I already mentioned this technique in my guide to reducing stress (Read More: “Stressed? 5 Techniques For Dealing With Anxiety”), but it’s worth repeating in this context.

20/20/20 is a resetting exercise that I have found is most powerful when working remotely. It allows you the opportunity to stop what you’re doing, reset your eyes, and reset your mind, while taking less than a minute and without even having to leave your chair.

The way it works is every twenty minutes, to look at something twenty metres away for twenty seconds.

That’s it. It’s that simple.

When we work remotely we spend so much time looking at our screens. At least in an office you have in-person meetings or commutes to break up the screen time. But when you work remotely, your entire working world can be no more than 50cm from your eyes. Your emails, meetings, to-do list, presentations, databases, learning tools, company announcements, they’re all right there inside a screen that’s no bigger than an A4 notebook. By carrying out an exercise that forces you to look away from the screen and at something further away, it’s both good for your eyes and for your mental health. Win-win.

5) Create your own commute

This one might sound a little quirky, but stick with me.

As already detailed, when you work in an office, you have the physical barrier between work and the rest of your life. You have to actively leave your house, sending signals to your brain that you are going to work. When you head home, you are sending signals to your brain that work is over, and it’s time to recharge.

Remote work takes that away, along with one of the very, very few benefits of commuting: personal time. Whether you walk, drive, or get the train, on your way to the office that’s likely “you time”. You might be listening to the radio or a podcast. Maybe you’re reading a newspaper or a book. Maybe you’re just getting all the scientifically proven benefits that come from fresh air and exercise, such as improved mood, decreased stress, increased energy levels, improved sleep, mental restoration and the endless physical health benefits.

“Remote work takes that away, along with one of the very, very few benefits of commuting: personal time”

That’s why I started enforcing a “commute” when working from home. Before I start work for the day, I go for a walk. If I have time, it might be a 40-minute walk through the woods. If I don’t, it might be a 5-minute stroll around the corner. And once work is finished for the day, I’ll do it again.

This has an important part to play in allowing me the space between my working and personal lives. The morning walks are a subconscious signal that I am about to start work, and in the evening, that I am stopping work. It allows me the time and space to engage with nature, or listen to an audiobook. The outcome is that I stop stumbling into the start of the day, desperately clawing at additional caffeine as I try to switch my brain on, and instead begin the day with intent and energy.

6) Create a workspace in your home

When you start working remotely, it’s an easy mistake to plop yourself down wherever is most convenient. I remember at the start of the pandemic many found themselves working on their kitchen tables. Some worked from their sofa. Others worked in their bedroom.

The issue with not having a working space carved out specifically for working is that it makes it harder for your brain to let go when you’ve finished working. If your work and your life both take place in the same location, your brain can’t say, “okay, work is finished. Time to recharge”. It’s going to stay in Work Mode indefinitely. Combine that with working all hours of the night and always having notifications on, and chances are your nervous system will never get the chance to reset.

Personally, I moved around my house until I settled on a spare room, which I subsequently converted in to an office. I also shut the door to my office when I was working, sending a message both to my family and to myself that I was in Work Mode. But when the door opens and I walk out of the room? Work Mode is over. Now it’s time to live.

This can be challenging to do if your home has limited space, but it’s by no means impossible. Even if you have to work in your bedroom (and I very much encourage you to find anywhere else in the house if you can), try to have a space in your bedroom that is just for working. Allow your brain the opportunity to identify that the space you are in is for rest. That way it’ll find it easier to help you actually, you know, rest.

7) Show pride in your workspace

As mentioned in the above point, when I began working remotely full-time I gradually shifted around my house until I found a location that worked for me to work. But it wasn’t an office. It was a place that I worked, and that place was also a spare bedroom and a dumping space. It was the room we put things that we didn’t want in other rooms. It was boxes waiting to go in to the loft. It was even baby furniture we no longer needed but didn’t have the energy to do anything with.

Not the most relaxing working environment, I have to say.

Over time, I realised that if I was going to spend more time in this room than any other in the house, I needed to take pride in it. If I worked in an office, I wouldn’t accept being told to work from the storage cupboard, so why was I accepting it at home? I had to treat my working space with respect.

“If I worked in an office, I wouldn’t accept being told to work from the storage cupboard, so why was I accepting it at home?”

From there, my workspace became tidy(ish). Things went in to the loft, or moved in to other rooms. I upgraded the furniture, put pictures on the walls, bought new stationary. I even got a desk plant. It didn’t happen immediately, but over time the dumping station that I used to work in became an office. It felt good to work there. It was a place that, gasp, I actually liked being in. It prevented me from getting so easily frazzled, and empowered me to do my best work.

8) Manage how you use your time

One of the benefits of working in an office is how easy it is to compartmentalise your day. If you’re in a face-to-face meeting in a meeting room it’s harder to multi-task. You sit in that meeting, pay attention, and then leave. When you’re back at your desk, that’s when you can do your emails.

When working from home these boundaries blur, making it too easy to multitask. Focus falls through the floor. How many times have you started an activity, only to see an email pop up and you decide to respond to that, only to forget what you working on before that? It becomes incredibly hard to build any momentum that way.

This is why I advocate for planning your day in advance as much as possible. While a degree of flexibility is always required, marking out your calendar with the types of activities you are going to do at certain times gives you the opportunity to focus on specific things at a time, rather than trying to do everything at once. It may look something like this, for instance:

09.00 – 10.00: Emails

10.00 – 11.00: Meetings

11.00 – 11.15: Break

11.15 – 12.00: To Do List Progress

12.00 – 12.30: Admin

12.30 – 13.30: Lunch

13.30 – 14.00: Emails

14:00 – 15.00: Meetings

15.00 – 15.15: Break

15.15 – 16.30: To Do List Progress

16:30 – 17.00: Emails

17.00 – 17.30: Admin

17.30 – 18.00: Prep For Tomorrow

Everyone’s job is different and the details of this timeline isn’t to be taken seriously, but it provides an indication of how, by breaking your day up in to categories, you can focus so much more on the range of your job without becoming overwhelmed by the volume.

9) Socialise during working hours

Perhaps the most obvious negative of working remotely is the loss of genuine socialising.

Even as an introvert, I still found the lack of human connection difficult when I began permanently working from home. I missed the interactions in between the “big” moments, like the small talk while you waited for the final attendee to walk in to the meeting room, or the fierce debates about Game of Thrones or Breaking Bad (it was the 2010s, after all). Very little of importance happened in those conversations, but they were important. They were the little touches, the bonding, the camaraderie. They were the moments that said, “you know what, whoever we have to be to get our work done, that’s not all I am. I am a person too”.

These interactions are critical. They humanise us and help us to look beyond the employee façade that all of us build. I’ve had remote colleagues that, when only interacting with them for work purposes, I couldn’t stand them at all, but once I got to know them as people I understood them so much more. These interpersonal connections help us to take people at face value and assume the best of intent. They teach us not to judge based on very little information.

This is increasingly hard to do when you work remotely, and especially if you’ll never have the opportunity to meet in person. But this just means you have to put the work in to do it. When you work in an office, this rapport-building happens almost by default. When you work from home, you have to invest in building relationships. Asking people to meet just to chat, or allowing time at the start of a meeting to get to know each other rather than jumping straight in to the agenda, are important ways to feel connected to one another.

10) Have a life outside of work

While investing time in to virtually socialising with colleagues is important, nothing can replace the value that comes from connecting to an experience in-person. If you can’t get that from work, you have to invest in it outside of work.

This is why it’s important to never lose sight of who you are outside of our jobs. No matter how stressful your job is, no matter how much remote working is trying to blur your work and home lives, having a flourishing life outside of work will always help to counteract that.

“No matter how stressful your job is, no matter how much remote working is trying to blur your work and home lives, having a flourishing life outside of work will always help to counteract that.”

This doesn’t mean that you have to drop everything and go chase your best life right now or anything, but it does mean you need to put the necessary importance on yourself. Find what brings you energy, and do more of that. Work out what your hobbies are and do more of them. Spend time with the people you love doing nourishing activities together. Put down the phone and read a book. Turn off the iPad and go for a walk. Experience the world. Be present. Breathe.

No matter how hard work is, or how successful you are at work, you will always remain you, and you are important. Be kind to yourself, be patient, be considerate. Even in an office environment, it is easy to get so lost in your work identity that you lose touch with your real identity, and working remotely only makes that harder. Know that you matter, and you are worth the effort. The more you do the things you love, the more you replenish your energy, the happier you’ll be, and the more productive you’ll be at work.

I hope you found this list helpful, and that it provides you with the guardrails to start to take control of your remote working life. Working from home is a brilliant experience that has legitimately changed lives, but never lose sight of the importance of actively managing yourself and your circumstances.

If you’re struggling with finding the right balance between work and the rest of your life, don’t forget to check out my other articles here, and if you are looking for a more personalised approach to gaining balance you can contact me here about my coaching services.

Top Three Takeaways:

1. Establish Clear Boundaries: To thrive while working remotely, it’s crucial to set clear boundaries between work and personal life. This includes defining specific work hours, creating a dedicated workspace, and turning off notifications after work hours to ensure you can fully recharge.

2. Prioritize Breaks and Self-Care: Regular breaks and self-care practices are essential for maintaining productivity and well-being. Techniques like the 20/20/20 rule, taking short walks, and ensuring you have a life outside of work can help you stay refreshed and focused.

3. Foster Social Connections: Even when working remotely, it’s important to maintain social interactions with colleagues. Schedule virtual coffee breaks, engage in casual conversations, and invest time in building relationships both inside and outside work to combat isolation and enhance your work experience.

Wanting to do more to take control of your working life? Check out my Services page to see what I can offer you as a Stress Management Coach.