5 Reasons You Might Be Struggling To Work From Home

2020 changed our lives forever - we discovered that we can work remotely, away from the office and colleagues. We found out that we can do that fairly well and don’t really want to return. The fact is: WFH stays for 2021 and beyond.

But do we realise how WFH influences our habits, our health, our emotional state and even our identity?

1. Boundaries between work & home blurred

Work entered our bedrooms, living rooms, kitchens. We respond to our emails out of hours, on the weekends and are expected to be always available on Slack/Teams/Zoom. The sacred place we called home suddenly became not so safe and relaxing any more.

Are we working from home or living at work?

2. Our screen time & consumption of information increased

Zoom calls, emails, social media, messengers, Netflix/ TV, you name it. We are constantly switched on, consuming information without any time to digest it. Previously we used to travel between our meetings or at least have a cup of tea in the office kitchen. Nowadays, it’s back to back Zoom calls and no opportunity to reflect. Exhaustion, lack of focus and energy, worsening eyesight, problems with sleep. How long can our brain sustain it?

3. We are working longer

Harvard Business School recently published a study where they discovered that remote workers on average work an extra 48.5 mins per day. That’s two more days a month! In the office environment, we had cues to finish work, like seeing other colleagues leaving the office or rushing out of the door to catch that bus/ train to get home in time for dinner. Now without these natural cues, we stretch our working day. Here we need to ask ourselves an honest question: are we more productive and efficient in these extended hours?

4. We feel disconnected and unmotivated

Even the most introverted introverts realised that those superficial morning chats by a watercooler/coffee machine were actually a nice thing to have. WFH has shown us how important those human interactions for our need for belonging. We miss our colleagues, our team, we feel lonely, sometimes even abandoned, we crave those human physical connections. And in aftermath of this emotional distress, our engagement and work motivation are dropping.

5. We are grieving for our professional identities

Who am I without my colleagues, my manager, my company, my office desk, my suit? Where is that work persona I was building for years? Locked at home. This year we had to rediscover our identity, our values, find new meanings and new parts of ourselves. But deep inside we can still feel that grief and that’s completely normal. Acknowledge it.

Personally, the hardest thing for me was to adjust to the blurred personal boundaries. In April-May 2020, Sydney was in lockdown and the organisation I worked for moved all psychological support into an online space. Suddenly, I was co-facilitating group therapy on Zoom from my living room. It felt as though my clients had entered my personal space. It was hard to adapt to this new norm. I had to implement rituals that helped me create a mental and physical separation between work & home.

I am curious, what changes are you struggling with since working-from-home? What are you still adapting to?

Please share in the comments below :)