WFH: 10 ways to set healthy, effective boundaries to thrive

When it comes to successfully working from home, it pays to be a bit of a hard-ass. Draw up ground rules and be firm about it. After all, you’re the only one who knows what conditions you require to be productive.

If it’s a dedicated workspace away from common areas, communicating your meeting schedule to family members (young and old) or observing a non-screen lunchtime away from your desk, do it.

Talk honestly with your family or housemates about how to divide domestic labour – who cooks lunch, walks the dog – and responsibilities – are you in charge of groceries, cleaning up – and make sure you hold up your end of the bargain and don’t just take on everything by default.

For many, having an official start/end to the workday is the only time management tool they know. Now that this hard start/stop is not set in stone, “just one more email” or “I’ll just wake up 30 minutes later” can become an issue.

An easy (but powerful) time management strategy is to be intentional: have set office hours, out-of-office-till-tomorrow auto-responders, and block off “proactive time” daily for non-interrupted work. If the constant interruptions from emails and messaging platforms get too much, turn them off and check in hourly.

That coffee run you would take, the banter you shared with a co-worker, these were all active breaks you unconsciously took to de-stress throughout your day. With social banter now existing virtually and your lunch buddies only available on Zoom, it’s important to periodically check how productive and healthy (mentally and emotionally) you feel.

Identify ways to do a mini-unwind. Take a 20-minute nap, pop outside for a brisk walk or just turn away from your laptop and listen to music. If you need help to enforce a break, use apps like Time Out for Mac and Smart Break for Windows to “lock” yourself out of your computer and give your brain some all-important zone-out time.

(Read also “WFH And Always Staring At The Screen? Here Are Ways To Relieve Eye Strain“)

One day a week, link up with a colleague on Skype or Zoom and be each other’s accountability buddy. Apply the Pomodoro Technique – work on a task for a 25-minute stretch, take a 5-minute break, after four pomodoros take a longer 15-30 minute break – and use break times to catch up or even watch something on Netflix.

Not only does this give your day structure and social interaction, but this approach has also been proven to help people work to their optimal productivity. Due to the built-in break times, you will feel less distracted or prone to procrastination.

Commuting, the bane of everyone’s work life, was actually a way many of us would unconsciously decouple from work. Now that the commute has been shortened to going from the living room table to the couch, the sense of work blurring into one’s home life is impossible to ignore.

To overcome this, practise a form of context switching, a small daily routine to symbolise the workday is over. Perhaps it’s playing some loud music, or changing out of your house dress into your workout clothes, or just packing up the workspace so the “desk” once again becomes a living room table. This switching of gears, while small, will do wonders for drawing a firm boundary between your WFH and at-home life.

Jotting down tasks and goals might seem like one more piece of unnecessary admin, but think of the added documentation as a trackable paper trail and a dynamic productivity tool.

Not only will keeping track of achievements and contributions motivate you to get things done, but it’ll also be a way to build your personal credibility with your higher-ups. If you find your list growing too long, identify a “must-win” for the day so you’re focused on your top priority, no matter what.

If you’re lucky enough to know your team members and managers well, you’ve likely found remote working a little less daunting. If however, you’re relatively new to the role or the team, it’ll be essential to forge strong communication channels from the get-go.

Take the initiative to check in with your team what form of communication (email, text, Hangout) is preferred, how often, and if there are some blocks of time to avoid (e.g. after 8pm, or from 3-5 pm when a colleague is dealing with home-schooling). Similarly, if you have personal preferences, this is the time to raise them so everyone is aware.

Out of sight will be out of mind if you lack the initiative to get involved in projects. In a traditional office set-up, waiting to be asked to collaborate might be the way things get done but in a remote setting, it’s easy to become just another Zoom window.

Volunteer your abilities, be open about collaborating with others and take it upon yourself to send a regular “No Need to Respond” update to your manager so he/she is aware of what you’re working on, as well as your accomplishments.

Just because everyone is working remotely doesn’t mean it’s a situation that has the flexibility you need. If your company is insisting everyone remain online during regular work hours but you have small children or an elderly member at home to look after, this deserves some flagging up to your manager.

Outside of tasks and meetings that require everyone present, it should not be unreasonable to propose some workarounds so that you can complete your work in a productive manner and not be online just for the sake of it.

The remote work life may be your colleague’s idea of heaven or your version of hell. Some thrive in solitude, while others need the workplace banter to spark creative ideas or to keep the competitive juices flowing. What was meant to be a short-term “lockdown” has become our new reality, and we’re all going to have to adapt in order to thrive.

Examine your working style and find new ways to make an impact at a distance, look into honing your productivity and automate as much as you can, and finally, get comfortable advocating for yourself.

Now, more than ever, it’s not enough to just get things done but to be visually seen to be doing a stellar job of it.

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