Battle Your Home Office Habits
Work comfortably, but not too comfortably.
Image by Gabriel Beaudry on Unsplash
Home office — once a beloved perk offered by companies. Nowadays, a standard and a necessity. You can love it, you can hate it, but the home office remains around like an old friend who you enjoy seeing once in a while but sharing a flat with him would be annoying.
It is very tempting to succumb to the temptation to be comfy when working.
Your boss or your colleagues are not around to watch your screen. You can procrastinate and spend time browsing Facebook and YouTube videos. The kitchen and toilet are clean and fresh. Plus, you don’t have to commute. Working from home has undeniably its beauty, but it can also quickly become a beast.
A standard workweek goes like this: you get up at 7 am, have a shower, get dressed, have breakfast, and leave the house to be at work by 9 am.
At the home office, you sleep until 8,45. Crawl out of bed at 8,55. Make a coffee, and you sit in your pajamas at the laptop at 9 am. Around 10 am, it is a good idea to brush your teeth. However, later you are too tired of sitting and head back to the bed with your laptop.
Yikes! What a sad truth.
If you don’t keep your routine, you sag.
To avoid the home office beast, you must keep your working habits as much as possible. And it all starts with one thing — a perfectly fitting workplace at your home.
Set a proper workplace
Working at your little lunch table in the living room is sweet but not practical. You look down all the time at your little laptop screen, stretching your neck too much. The wooden fashionable chair is not comfortable for 8-h sitting, so you are bending your back.
Moreover, I am not even talking about the usage of a mouse without a proper jelly pad. All in all, it is a hazard to your health. To fix your routine, you need to be properly equipped — a good size table, big screen, and ergonomic chair.
You might need to re-arrange a few things in your household, but it will so pay off. It will help to distinguish your living/relaxing zone vs. the working corner.
So, talk with your company and see if you can take the office equipment to your home. Alternatively, you might need to get your own. Pick something which suits the type of work you do, and you find pleasant — like quality, well-fitting underwear.
Do care about yourself
A lot of my colleagues stop taking care of themselves when working from home. To be fair, we have been working remotely since March 2020. So, that’s a long sweatpants extravaganza.
Treat home office still like an office environment. Shower, shave, dress, and put makeup on. You see how much better you will feel.
Make your sweatpants great again at 5,30 pm, no earlier!
Keep a difference between work and life routine
I do it by using a calendar and a list of daily tasks. I put together a work agenda, household chores, social life, reading, training, walking, writing, and watching TV.
That way, I never get bored. There is always plenty to do. Even if spending the whole day at home. The lockdown situation has been mentally challenging.
So yet again, the routine is the number one on the way to keep you sane and healthy. Days carefully filled with tasks push you forward.
Every day is a special day.
As long as you accomplish something, you keep your confidence and drive high.
Final thought
Regardless of the place of work, you need to pay attention to the routine and proper working environment. you don’t want to sag physically or mentally.
Therefore, battle the home office beast, which invites you to lie on the sofa, be lazy, and get up late. Live life you want to, even if there are some external limitations like a pandemic or never-ending home office.
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