Leaving the Home Office at the End of the Day

A hot topic right now is the concept of working from home of course.

Working from home though, particularly for a prolonged period, can present problems that you would not necessarily consider at first glance.

When you are conducting your day in an office, a dedicated environment for your profession, it is a lot easier to down tools at the end of a day and leave your job there. One of the key challenges with working from home is that the transition between work time and personal time is much less clear. This can make it harder to switch off and leave work “at the office” for some. Suddenly, your personal life is, if you will forgive my use of words, infected by symptoms usually associated with the office. Email access and paperwork are at your fingertips.

Therefore and with this in mind, if you are new to the concept of home working, here are my top five, very simple tips, for ensuring that you can balance your work and home, even when they become the same environment.

1)     Dress accordingly.

I know, this one sounds a bit crazy, but I promise you it works. If you have work clothes, wear them when working from home. You will feel more complete for carrying out your work, and changing back into your casual attire at the end of the day helps to create a cut-off point to help your transition from one mind-set into the other.

2)     Plan your day.

An obsession of mine.

Have a structured day plan, with a start time, break, and end time, just as if you would in the office (hopefully!). Not only will this be invaluable for helping you keep those suddenly-ever-present distractions at arms-length (“I’ll watch just one episode and then get back to it…”), but this process again gives you cut off points that are defined and clear to help you walk away.

3)     Create a “home office”.

Try to avoid the temptation to spread yourself across the house. Work in a single location, set yourself up a “desk” of sorts if necessary and try not to deviate from that space during the working day.

This means that you might be able to leave the space set up for the working week if necessary, but it also means that you can physically step out of your “office” at the end of the working day.

Physically changing space is a very effective way to change your mind-set and can be very effective for moving out of work-mode.

4)     Have a Work Hat

To help you remove the hat, you need to wear it in the first place.

The above will all help set the scene and context for you to work in and remove yourself from, but you also need to be vigilant in having a Work Hat that you put on at the beginning of the day (not a literal one…). With your Work Hat on, you stay focused on all of the things you would normally focus on during an office day. Avoid the temptation to nip to the shops Avoid the temptation to mow the lawn. Do not watch the next episode just yet…

If you can do this, you will feel no guilt in downing tools and closing your day down once the working day is complete.

On the other hand, nothing spoils your evening more than having incomplete tasks on your mind…

5)     Dress Down Your Day

If you do not already do this, I thoroughly recommend adding it to your end of day process.

Simply, finish your day by spending 10 minutes reviewing your goals. What went well and what needs to be carried over to tomorrow.

From that, you should be able to construct tomorrow’s day plan, ready to go, meaning that now, everything completed, you can close off your day, switch off and finally watch that next episode…

Putting a plan in place means you don’t have to carry it in your head, making it much easier to switch your mind-set.

The novelty of working from home has its comforts and advantages, but creates different kinds of challenges to be aware of as well. Regardless, if you can create a divide between your home life, and your work life, it will invariably make you better at both.

More importantly, this divide will also help you look after your well-being by keeping work out of your personal time.