Working from home may sound very lucrative at first. No long commutes, working in your pyjamas, the comforts of your home may be attractive but once you actually start working from home you may realise it to be equally, if not more, stressful as going to work away from home.

Work-life balance can be messy when there is no distinction between work and personal life if everything is happening in the same room, 24/7. Many people have reported worsened mental health and professional stress after the pandemic resulted in work-from-home for almost all sectors.

Single people are overwhelmed with chores, married and families with kids struggle to manage without any break from the constant cycle of work. While everyone’s life is different, and their professions may differ, there are certain things everyone can do make work-life balance more harmonious when working from home.

It’s good to want perfection in all aspects of our lives but it’s simply not realistic. Especially when working from home. There may be fewer supplies than your office like printers, machines etc. so make do with what you have instead of stressing about what you don’t.

Go offline

When work happened in offices, online time was leisure. Now everything is online. A good way to separate work from life is to go offline for a while when work ends. Walk in the garden, read a book, or talk on the phone instead of texting. Reduce that pesky blue-light exposure which is known to cause stress.

Transition between work and home

Your car or metro ride was a good way to put some distance between your work and home. Now that is gone so you need to create your own transitions. Take a walk after work, even for five minutes. Put some distance between work hours and home hours.

Clock out

“Go home” at the right time and end the job at a proper hour. Just because it’s work from home doesn’t mean you should keep working till midnight. You still should have the “going-home” frame of mind when you end the office at your regular clock-out time.

Separate areas

Create an office. Even if you live in a studio, make that desk your office where you go only during the office hours. Don’t bring the “office” to the bed or the couch. Let those remain your “home.”