Linked: How to set clear work boundaries — and stick to them
I really like the ideas in this article, but obviously this is the one that is going to most resonate with many of us right now:
“Working remotely requires a heightened consciousness to make space for ourselves in and around work. We need to have careful conversations with our coworkers to ensure that our boundaries are understood and respected.”
It can be very difficult to create a boundary between work, and not-work, when you work from home. There was a time when we had certain things to trigger that boundary. Pre-pandemic, for example, I tried to be done working by the time my wife got home from work. Now that she works from home most of the time too? That clear boundary doesn’t really exist any more. So what I find helpful for me is to define the things I want to get done during my non-work time. Maybe I know that we are planning on watching a movie, or I’m going to do some work on one of my blogs, etc. I make sure to do that, and not pay any attention to work, and I make sure to do that stuff outside of my home office. That creates these artificial, but important, boundaries, and yes, I mostly expect work to respect them unless there’s some emergency that can’t wait.
Because they don’t, and can’t, pay me enough to make myself miserable. As the saying goes:
No job is worth my mental health.
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