I've been working from home 1-2 days a week recently. It's been a great boon to my general productivity and happiness, but I've been experiencing difficulty "turning off" at the end of the day. I haven't been able to signal to my unconscious that it's okay, you can relax and stop working now.
For those of you who work remote full-time, or just occasionally, how do you "end" your day?
Top comments (54)
I can't turn off even when I work at the office. :) How do you do it?
Same here. I even get a call from office to cover up some stuff right when I just get home. It's really stressing 😶
I routinely leave to and from work by taking a 20 minute walk. That is enough for me to drive my mind to work mode in the morning and sufficient as well to let the last thoughts run their course after work. Also I have separate laptops for work and for personal use. Main thing is to however practice this daily, just as you would leave to and from office. And I work full-time from home.
While I don't have long-term experience working from home, this problem is one that I've faced quite a bit on a smaller scale and have been concerned about when considering working from home in the future, but I think your 20 minute walks sound like a very simple and effective way of switching gears in/out of work-mode. I'm definitely going to give this a try the next time I have to bring a few days of work home.
I use separate work and fun computers for the most part. When I am done with work, I try moving rooms, starting a video game, or cooking dinner.
My current setup is a work laptop, a home laptop, and a home desktop. I set out goals for what I need to accomplish and break my time into chunks. I don't get on my desktop unless I am going to do something not work related.
Even though I don't work remotely, I too find it hard to switch gears at the end of the day. I like the cooking dinner suggestion in particular, ymmv :)
I've been considering getting a desktop to help with this. Gonna go for it after reading your comment. Thanks!
Damn good call. I'm on my computer trying to read something or watch a show and VS Code is just calling my name sometimes.
Of course, it's easy to have the problem in the other direction, where Reddit is only a click away when you should be writing acceptance tests. 😁
Admittedly, I have it set up so I can work on my personal computer if need be (vpn, dev environment) but it is there in a pinch. I try to enforce the separation for work/life balance and mental health.
I know the problem of distraction rabbit holes well and I hate using website blocking software. RescueTime is one option. You can get more analytics on your website viewing habits or set a time limit for how long to spend on a task/site.
Or, you can try using different browsers. I use Chrome for work, Chromium for freelance, and Firefox for everything else. If you don't have the spare cash for buying separate hardware, this can be a good way to go about it. :)
Using you suggestion, It could also use dual boot OS or dual user account, one for work, another for personal life.
My setup is like @Alyss, work laptop and personal desktop/laptop.
I do like 1/2 times week remote, and I'm a lot more productive and focused.
I don't have trouble disconnecting from work, what I do after finish is cooking or watching TV in living room.
Also, I work in my bedroom, is where I have my desk ;)
I have a shutdown ritual. I got the idea from the book "Deep Work" by Cal Newport. Basically, at the end of my workday, I perform the same ritual in order to "shutdown" currently it looks like:
This works well both from home or from the office. It's like you're giving yourself permission to be done working. After about a week, your body starts to understand what you're doing and gets on board.
I'm going to try this checklist, including the audible "And, I'm done" sign-off. That sounds like a brilliant physical/mental signal of closure at the end of the day. Might supplement that with a walk around the block for good measure.
Thanks for sharing!
Have an office.
My office is in my basement (go 🇨🇦) and when I come upstairs at the end of the day that's it. I also have 2 laptops as mentioned. Work laptop stays in the basement, other laptop stays upstairs.
Having separate physical spaces seems to help.
Something a client of mine did was walk around the block after work. Once the lap was done, work day was over.
I live in NYC where space is tight, so a separate office at home is tough — but I'll definitely be using the "walk around the block" trick.
The most redeeming part of my commute is the walk + podcast time + fresh air, so I can replicate that in a similar manner at the end of the day.
Cheers!
Given that the ‘separate space’ approach is impractical for you, what a about changing what you wear or even which cup you drink from? As long as there is some clear separation somewhere, it might be enough for your subconscious to get the picture.
6pm. Close laptop. Take dog for walk. After walk, enjoy the evening with my SO.
While it's not always that easy, it is usually that easy.
If a wild inspiration strikes, I'll send an email from my phone to myself or write it in my work notebook.
If I'm in a super crunch time (like right now), I set a later stop-time, like 10pm. If I'm doing any work beyond that, I'm really hurting myself and my relationship; that's non-negotiable.
Use a good time tracking tool. If you've got anywhere between 6-8 hours in (including study time, reading up, answering e-mails, etc) it's time to call it quits. Also, have a routine! I prefer getting an early start, getting distracting things out of the way (workout, groceries, you name it) and have pretty normal working hours.
The end to my working day is a cooking dinner. I'll put on something to watch and spend 45min+ in the kitchen happily cooking away. It's a great way to end my work day because they are such unrelated tasks.
TL;DR:
Stuff that worked for me, maybe not everything is possible for everyone:
Long:
I work from home 2 to 3 days a week now. I've been doing it for years. I've found it got easier over time.
I'm pretty strict in my work-life balance separation. I can imagine people that run their own company, or are independant freelancers may find this more difficult than an employee.
In the beginning I always forgot to take lunch breaks or take them in 5 minutes. There was a feeling of guilt that was not there when taking breaks at the office and it took a while before I was confident to take breaks of equal length. Or even to quickly get out of the house to get some food.
The same "guilt" make me work late, or get back to work in the evening. This was increasing stress.
I don't know where the guilt came from. Maybe the fear of being accused of "slacking off".
Anyway: allow yourself to take breaks. Step away from the home office during those times. Take out the trash, empty the dishwasher, walk around a bit.
I have always used a seperate laptop for work and home. It helps to fully shut down and put away the work laptop at the end of the day.
I think this ritual can help to put you in a different mental state.
I also have my laptop on a desk in a seperate room where I don't hang out if I'm not working. So it takes some effort to get "back to work".
If you live with other people, it's important to have a clear agreement: when I'm working I'll be working and I should not be disturbed (within reason). But also: when I'm done working I'm all yours. Don't be half present at home and half working. Nobody benefits from that.
It's become easier with kids, since frequently you have no choice but to stop working on a tight schedule.
Only recently, I have learned that it helps me to have fixed work-at-home days and work-at-the-office days. But that's not really related to your question anymore.
Kids ok, but how about babies?
Can you elaborate a little? Are you referring to my remark that kids enforce and en-of-day or that I can't mix being with the family and working?
The original point I was trying to make was: you can't work excessive long days when you have kids to get from school, babies from day-care or older kids to soccer practice or wherever. These obligations enforce an end of the work-day.
In that regard I don't think babies or kids are different.
Sorry, that was a pretty vague point that I made.
I get your point how they mark the end of the work-day when they return home. By babies, actually I tried to mean 0-1 age, pre day-care babies. How to approach this when the baby is always at home?
Asking because I liked your point about not being half present at home and half working. And with our first child, 6 months old now, my work transitioned to half present at home and half working most of the time as mother needs quite a bit of support.
I simply never been a fan of working long hours, lol