How does your working days look like? Are you Working From Home or Living at Work?
One of the major shifts that the pandemic has to bring in our lives is the interchanging of our desks in the office with the cozy corner in the most beautiful part of the house. Pandemic has taken away that 9-6 office hours working and put us at a Work from the Home schedule. And while most of the offices have made the work from home schedule flexible for the employees, what has been happening is that employees have started to live at work, instead of working from home. Many people lose the track of time and just work the whole day and we are really curious of what’s your case. Are you Working From Home or Living at Work?
Work From home (WFH)
The term is to refer to the work done from home, from one’s personal space, rather than that of a confined space with other fellow workers. The acronym WFH refers to the same and has come in extensive use during the COVID 19 Pandemic worldwide, of course, because several businesses shifted on WFH schedules from the normal office days.
Living at work
There are several people who survive at work and with work. This is what is called living at work. For people like these, their lives revolve around work, job, employment, career, and success. Where money may or may not be a significant thing that they look for, but their mind always keeps revolving around their work.
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Disturbed Work-life Balance: How pandemic is leading to a shift in people being in Work from home to Living at work
Most of the offices have started a flexible working hour schedule with work from home routine. While this has been done by most of the organizations with the vision of making work from home easier for those who live with their families. But while people have got the flexibility to work whenever they like, the problem that most people have been facing is that they have started living at work. Here are a few reasons why it has been happening –
1. Home is a neutral place and creating a work-friendly environment there is difficult – It is often said that home is where the heart lies. At a confined space like that of an office, one gets an atmosphere to work. At home, people generally find themselves at ease. There is a choice for where to sit and in what posture to work with. There is flexibility to have naps between work. A home can look like a really safe space, but it definitely isn’t the best to be productive.
2. Work from home is filled with distractions – It is no denying that work from home means availability of every kind of comfort and measures of entertainment available. Hence, it a space filled with distractions.
3. There’s no time limit – Since flexible working hours remove time boundaries, there comes the problem. People can become lenient, and stretch their work the whole day. And many just end up working the whole day irrespective of their daily targets and face burnouts. This is what is leading to disturbed work-life balance.
So, how to not live at work?
But while we already know that we are living in a pandemic, and work from home has become a necessity rather than a choice. Hence, one needs to find and figure out the best way to just work at home instead of ending up living at work. Here are a few things that you can do.
1. Set your deadlines
2. Fix the amount of work you can do in a day and resist yourself from doing any more or less than what you decide
3. Fix a work station and create a healthy environment for working
4. Refuse to work after deadlines
5. Fix some time for rest, for family and self-care
6. Learn to say a ‘No’ to yourself and to others too.
Well, these are a few things that you need to do in an effort to have a better work-life balance. The pandemic has done a lot worse than good, but as we know, you have adjusted with it. But don’t settle for it. Don’t live at work at your work-from-home schedule.
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