Dear Boss, I Kind of Hate Working From Home

If you are already at your limits of working from home, you aren’t alone. I came across this article where the author said, “I kind of hate working from home.”

Despite several survey reports stating that people are more productive working from home, indications show that it may just be at the expense of staff satisfaction & happiness.

Identified challenges of working from home can be said to be related but not limited to lack of interpersonal communication, loneliness as a result of the office being the only social group an increasing number of people engage with; spending less on the commute but more on domestic bills; disturbance in sleep cycle due to an alteration to the circadian rhythm; and people tending to overwork themselves thereby leading to staff burnout.

The focus is on the latter – Staff burnout. 

Burnout symptoms include feelings of energy exhaustion or depletion, increased mental distance from the job, and reduced performance.

You see, the lines between work and personal life have become blurry, with staff members feeling the need to show their devotion and productivity by working all the time – afternoons blend into evenings; weekdays into weekends with a little sense of time. 

Here are a few things you could do to deal with the challenges of working from home;

Are you having challenges with sleep? 

Spend lots of time out of bed. Time spent out of bed increases your appetite for sleep, so the longer we’re out of bed, the better the quality and the amount of sleep we get.

Draw lines between your professional and personal lives

Stay away from sending work emails outside office hours. A study involving more than 2,000 working adults found that senders of after-hours work emails underestimated how compelled receivers feel to respond right away, even when such emails are not urgent.

Use time tracking software

Tools like Toptracker, Clockify can help you manage your working hours. According to research, the average UK office worker is only productive for 2 hours and 53 minutesout of the working day. 

The remaining 5 hours are spent on social media, replying to messages, or reading updates on websites.

While employers may push daily for proof of productivity and employees feeling compelled to match the perceived appearance of productivity, this can lead to counterproductivity in the long run, even if it benefits productivity in the short term.

Try to stick to your regular work routine to get into the work mindset and stay productive. If you generally shower every morning or listen to a podcast on your commute, keep that routine to set the tone for the day.

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We are working on a work-from-home report. Be kind enough to be one of our respondents in this survey. Please, participate here.