These days, the lines between work life and home life are pretty blurry. Whether you are working remotely, working hybrid, or even have a tough time leaving the office for the night. It can be difficult to clock out and get back to your personal time. If you’re looking for ways to find more balance throughout the week here are four ways to separate your work from your personal life.
1. Create Set Work Hours
If you are a freelancer working from home, it’s easy to start working late into the night. Or on the weekends or any other time that should be personal. Just because you’re working from anywhere, doesn’t mean you should always be on the clock.
One way to separate your work from your personal life is to create set work hours. You don’t have to work 9-5, but you should create blocks throughout the day specifically for work.
You can present these times with your clients to avoid communication outside of your working hours.
A great way to set up your work hours is to try tracking your time throughout the week. Once you know how much time it takes you to work on certain tasks or how much time you may be procrastinating, you can better create and narrow down your work schedule for the day.
Tracking your time can also help you prevent issues like workload paralysis or having your workday spill over into your personal time in the evenings.
2. Find a Work Space
If you are working from home, it can be difficult to separate work and life. You don’t want your work to overtake your home or your home to overtake your work.
You can easily separate your work life from your personal life by finding a designated workspace for yourself. A workspace can come in many forms.
Maybe you are fortunate to have a whole room to use as a home office. If you don’t, you can set up a desk space in a more quiet part of your home. A desk space or designated workspace is what you will use for work rather than the couch or the kitchen table. This allows you to completely separate your work life from your couch time.
If being at home makes it too difficult to focus, consider using a co-working space. These types of spaces are opening up again. Using a co-working space allows you to completely separate your home life from your work life as you should only work when at your co-working space. Finding a space to dedicate to work can help you create better separation in your work-life balance.
3. Set Boundaries
If you work in an office or even at home, it can be tough to shut off the laptop for the day. Or maybe your boss asks you to stay late often. If this is the case, then you have to do your best to set boundaries at work.
This means leaving when your hours are up, or if you work your hours making sure you communicate with clients when you are off the clock. A late-night now and then happens, but if you feel like all you do is wake up, go to work, then go to sleep, you won’t have any separation in your life.
Speaking with your manager about healthy boundaries can also show if you are overworked. Having these conversations can lead to solutions rather than just getting through the long hours. Don’t be afraid to stand up for yourself and get the personal time that you deserve.
4. Find New Hobbies
If you want to just relax during your personal time, feel free to enjoy some good R&R. But if you find that you keep yourself working when you’re just chilling at home, a great way to have more separation in your life is to find a new hobby.
Your hobby can be anything, from cooking nice meals to joining a community sports team. Even if you just decide to go to a local trivia night with friends, having something to look forward to outside of work can help you separate your work and personal life.
Most of our lives are intertwined with technology, so much so that we never truly unplug from technology – mobile phones for instance. Simply switch off your phone and go for a walk with your friends.
Make sure to leave the work behind atleast on weekends. Another idea is to uninstall apps like Slack on weekends to resist the temptation to check them frequently.
Conclusion
It can be difficult for us to take time off from work every day. But everyone deserves to enjoy their life away from the office. Try finding little ways to have fun in your personal life and set healthy boundaries with work. Everyone should be able to feel balanced when it comes to work and personal life.