Ways to avoid burnout when you work remotely

Although we still firmly believe that working remotely can be great for companies and employees alike, people can have a tendency to work more while doing so.

When your home is your office, it can be hard to separate your work and personal life. Here are some ways to help avoid burnout and keep living the dream…

Maintain a routine

Whatever your working hours, make sure that you keep to the routine as if you were working in an office. This will make it easier to distinguish between work and non-work time and help to prevent you from doing too many hours.

Treat your working day as you would if you didn’t work remotely

It can be easy to slip into bad habits when you work from home, the aforementioned routine will help with this but seemingly little things like getting dressed for work, making a pot of tea or coffee and not just opening your laptop in bed and starting work as soon as you wake up, will make a real difference. Bear in mind that there is no-one to tell you to stop working, you need to decide when to stop.

Create boundaries

Relish the freedom that remote working allows but be proactive about setting boundaries and sticking to your priorities. Find the hours that work for you and make sure that your colleagues are aware of what they are. Working remotely doesn’t mean that you need to be available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, it offers flexibility which you can enjoy if you have a few things in place.

Take breaks

We don’t just mean a lunch break, though that is important too. Throughout the working day in an office, think about how many times you get up from your desk to get a drink or visit a colleague, have a meeting etc. The good thing about working remotely or being at home is that you have the opportunity to make so much more of these breaks. Take a walk, do a spot of yoga, get ahead of the laundry, basically do whatever works for you.

Schedule some human interaction

As much as rowdy colleagues can be off-putting, it is nice to have some human interaction in your day. Whether it’s for a spot of gossip in the tea room or to discuss weekend plans, these small interactions do provide moral boosts throughout the day. This is one of the main contributors to burnout and can be easily avoided with a bit of social interaction. Nowbridge can help with this, you can see who is there and if they’re free, send chat messages and more.

One of the main ways to avoid burnout is to be aware of it. Practice self-care and make sure that you’re able to enjoy the perks of working remotely. Having a healthy work-life balance doesn’t purely come from working remotely, it comes from being in control of your working life and making sure that it works for you.

 

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10 tips for staying sane when you work from home

Although working from home is pretty great, it can be tough to stay motivated. Here are our top ten tips for keeping sane and staying motivated.

1. Get dressed, have a shower and prepare for work like you would usually.
2. Make a list of daily tasks and make sure you do them, block out time in your calendar if you need to discourage colleagues from putting in too many meetings or calls.
3. Try and stay out of the kitchen – we know it can be tempting to snack constantly when you work from home but try to have the discipline to resist, just as you’re being disciplined in everything else.
4. Plan some social interaction – this is an important one, it can be lonely working from home. Whether it’s evening exercises, standing lunch or coffee dates with friends, do something.
5. Change your environment – if you find yourself going a bit stir crazy, it can be a good idea to take your laptop, phone and work to a local coffee shop or a co-working space.
6. Take regular breaks – either by doing the above, getting up and making a cup of tea or coffee, doing some laundry, taking the dog for a walk etc. If you find it hard to do these, you could set a timer for yourself.
7. Work your way – if you like to listen to the radio or have the television on in the background or whatever it is, if that helps you work, do it. Whatever helps you work more productively, do it!
8. Make sure you have the tools you need – a decent WiFi connection capable of video conferencing and file sending/downloading, a good pair of noise-cancelling headphones and potentially a decent microphone with a mute button or a headset – even better.
9. Stay in touch with your co-workers and boss throughout the day – there are so many tools available to help you stay connected *cough* like Nowbridge *cough* and other productivity tools like Trello or Asana. Stay part of the team!
10. When your working day is finished, stop working – this is one of those easier said than done things…but it’s important. Whether you work 9-5 or you’ve found that you’re more productive working in the afternoon, you need to keep the boundaries between your work life and your home life.

We hope you found these useful! Have we missed anything? Let us know!

Be more productive when you work from home

• Make yourself a home office or at least separate off an area for yourself and tell yourself that is where you work from home. If you don’t have any separation, you’ll always feel like you’re trapped in limbo between working and not working. Another way to counter this is by using Nowbridge but we’ll talk more about that later…

• Decide what your hours will be and stick to them (as far as possible). If your company are flexible with the hours you do, work out when you work best in the day. A lot of people find that they work best outside of the 9-5 constraints, i.e. if you’re more productive after lunch, do your hours then. Of course, depending on your job, some companies might prefer you to stick to the normal 9-5 hours. It really depends on the company, the industry and your role.

• Make sure you take a lunch break and get away from your computer during that time. Try to avoid eating lunch at your desk, this blurs the boundaries between work and non-work.

• Take breaks. Remember that if you were in the office, you’d likely be going to get cups of tea or coffee or walking to fetch work from the printer. It’s important to take breaks from the screen and by doing little jobs like hanging your laundry out to dry or emptying the dishwasher, you don’t have to do these things later and can enjoy your home time more.

• Work like you’re at the office. As in, try not to schedule appointments for the middle of the day or take a long lunch with a friend – don’t slack off!

• Schedule time to check in with the office. This can help with any collaborative projects and remind you that you’re part of a team. A lot of companies have taken to using online chat software – again, Nowbridge does this and also has Skype integrated. 

• Get some background noise. We don’t know about you but we find it hard to work in silence. If you like it then – job done! If not, why not try Spotify or the radio?

• Get dressed every day. As tempting as it might be to stay in your pijamas, getting dressed helps you get into the right mindset for the day and again, gives you a small amount of separation between your home time and your working day. NB: This is also a good idea if your company like spontaneous conference/Skype calls.

A little bit about Nowbridge

As we mentioned earlier, Nowbridge can help bridge the gap (see what we did there?) between working from home and the office. Live still images updating every few seconds all day long create the illusion of being together. You control who you connect with and when. You can only be seen by the people you can see. Did we mention it’s free and easy to use?

So you can turn your laptop on, open Nowbridge and see who else is working. When it comes to lunchtime, you can either leave it running while you are away from your desk or press pause – flagging the fact that you’ve stopped working. Use it throughout the day to send chat messages to colleagues or even quickly call them on Skype when you can see they’re at their desks. At the end of your working day, press pause or close Nowbridge down and it’s clear to everyone in your team that you have finished for the day.

Try it today! 

 

The difficulties of working remotely

We all know the benefits of working remotely…but the recent BBC interview with professor Robert Kelly about South Korea (where he was briefly interrupted by his young children rushing into the room – you’ve all seen it!), has brought to light some of the things that inevitably happen when you’re working from home and started some great discussions on social media about remote working.

It can be hard to stay professional when you’re working remotely. Whether it’s because you usually dress more casually when you’re at home, or the seemingly constant interruptions and distractions from pets, family, the doorbell, the neighbours mowing the lawn etc. – but all of that is just an element of working from home.

Back to the aforementioned video, people all around the world were actually rather enamored by the children. There are already parodies on YouTube, some people have pledged to enter every room with the young girl’s “confident swagger” from now on, and others think that he was a bit abrupt with the excited children and could have briefly paused the interview to take them outside.

However, there are theories for why he couldn’t do that…and this is our favourite:

“MY THEORY: BBC interview guy couldn’t move to properly deal with the kids because he was wearing a shirt/tie/jacket but just some pants.” – Marie Le Conte (@youngvulgarian) March 10 2017

I’m sure lots of people can attest to being in similar situations while working remotely but you know what? Life happens. It’s the way you deal with situations like this that are the real test.

 

Has anything like this ever happened while you’ve worked remotely? Let us know in the comments!