How To Improve Your Work/Life Balance When Working From Home

Whether you’re working from home, co-working at a local WeWork, or commuting to a traditional workplace, finding the right work/life balance is never easy. For some, these realms can overlap considerably, especially during the pandemic when so many have transitioned to working from home. As a property management company, our management staff has seen a wave of residents transitioning to work-from-home setups either temporarily or permanently, which can make it more difficult to achieve your ideal work/life balance. These are the tips we’ve gathered that can help you make the most of your time and live a happier, healthier life.

Understand Ebbs & Flows

Firstly, it’s important to determine whether you’ve got a chronic or an acute problem on your hands. Life and work will both have regular ebbs and flows; there may be busy seasons and slow seasons, or emergencies may come up. Understand that there will likely be times when work and life are out of balance, but that’s okay on occasion. What’s important is that you have the balance you want on a larger scale.

Manage Your Technology

In the age of smartphones, we’re always connected to both work and personal life, if we choose to be. Often that constant connection actually makes it harder to focus on the task at hand. But luckily there are plenty of ways to manage technology to ensure you’re focusing only on what you need to focus on. Don’t be afraid to adjust your notifications, email forwarding, and calendar settings to help you attend to what’s important now and compartmentalize what can wait until later. That might mean turning off mobile notifications for your work email or messaging outside of normal work hours or ensuring that only important personal emails are able to reach you at work while more trivial ones are ignored.

Take Advantage of Your Paid Time Off

Most folks are much happier when they take regular vacations and stay home when sick. Ensure you’re taking advantage of all your Paid Time Off each year if you’re able. If your PTO rolls over, you might be tempted to save it up to use all at once, but bear in mind that shorter, more frequent vacation time could make you even happier than a single, extended break. Assess your short-term and long-term needs and plan accordingly.

Set Boundaries and Work Hours

Work and personal life will seep into each other if you let them. Coworkers will send emails in your off-hours, or you’ll remember you needed to buy a new sweater while you’re working on something you’d rather not be doing. Setting boundaries (and communicating them to others) helps ensure you’re focusing your attention and making the most of your work and personal time by not constantly context-switching between them.

That’s it for our tips on creating good work/life balance! If you found this post useful or interesting, we encourage you to share it with your friends and colleagues! If you want to find your ideal home at one of our RPM communities across the US, check out our Communities page.