Working from home comes with its share of perks. You get to wear pajamas all day, spend more time with your family, and not deal with traffic going to work.

It comes with a few drawbacks as well, particularly the fact that the line between home life and the office is hardly there anymore.

This problem is more pronounced for those working remotely for the first time. To ease their employer’s productivity concerns, they burn the midnight oil regularly, including on weekends. At the same time, they’re homeschooling their children, shopping for groceries, and cleaning their homes.

As a result, the risk of burning out has become very real, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic.

What is burnout?

Coined by psychologist Herbert Freudenberger in 1974, burnout is defined as “physical or mental collapse caused by overwork or stress”.

Burnout isn’t just regular fatigue; it has three domains.

• Physical and emotional exhaustion
• Cynicism and detachment
• Feelings of ineffectiveness

Symptoms of burnout

Burnout is a gradual process and doesn’t happen overnight. Here are the common signs you need to watch out for:

• Physical, mental, and emotional exhaustion
• A negative outlook on work and/or life
• Trouble concentrating and forgetfulness
• Demotivation and detachment from work
• Using food, alcohol, or drugs to feel better
• Detachment in personal relationships
• Stomach or bowel problems
• High blood pressure
• Difficulty in sleeping
• Lower productivity
• Absenteeism
• Headaches
• Irritability

The signs of burnout are pretty much the same as they were before the coronavirus pandemic. The current environment, however, accentuates those signs.

How to prevent burnout

So how can we separate our work and home life if they both happen under one roof now? Here are several suggestions:

Maintain temporal boundaries as much as possible

Just because you don’t leave home to go to the office, it doesn’t mean your workday doesn’t end. Try to stay within your regular 9-to-5 work schedule and avoid working in the evenings or weekends. Otherwise, look for the best work hours for you, then stick to it.

What’s important is that you don’t do any work during your free time. This is crucial to your well-being.

To make this possible, you’ll need to effectively coordinate your schedule with others. This will likely involve regularly holding video meetings with your team and integrating remote work software into your procedures.

Maintain physical and social boundaries

Here’s an idea: put on work clothes before you start working at home. It’s like flipping a mental switch that places you in the right mindset.

Being dressed for work helps improve your productivity – and perhaps more importantly – changing back to home clothes makes you feel good at the day.

So wearing your jammies all day probably isn’t the best idea.

Think about creating other types of physical boundaries through routines that help you maintain work/life separation. Some ideas include:

• Exercising before or after working.
• Taking regular coffee breaks.
• Spending time with friends virtually.

Concentrate on your most essential work

Busywork is defined as low-quality activities that’s performed to pass the time or look/stay active. As people are working remotely due to a pandemic, there’s no need to appear busy – we’re all swamped with balancing work and home concerns.

Because of this, you should devote all your energy to top-priority goals.

Likewise, you should avoid low-quality activities and let non-urgent things go. Doing so lets you concentrate on your most important tasks and be more efficient in your work.

Partner with us

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