This is a guest article.
By Jonathan Warner
On the surface, working from home is a fantastic way to earn a living. You get to earn a lucrative income in the comfort and safety of your own home, and you’re able to spend more time with your family in the process. However, experienced remote workers will tell you that this isn’t always the case. If you’re not careful, your work life could invade your home life, and vice versa.
With this in mind, it’s important to maintain a balance between both, so you sustain a successful livelihood, but not at the expense of family harmony.
Here are some of the best things you can do to do exactly that.
Support Your Productivity
No doubt, the biggest threat to a successful remote working career are the myriad distractions that come from working from home. From restless kids to random family demands, as well as easy access to social media and non-work-related websites, it can be all too easy to get sidetracked and lose precious work hours in the process. For this reason, it’s important to have measures and tools in place to keep you productive and creative throughout the workday.
- When you’re a parent working from home, staying focused and productive is, by and large, both the challenge and the solution.
- It’s a real must to establish boundaries by creating a dedicated workspace, as well as setting a firm work schedule.
- It’s also important to adhere to a morning routine religiously to give your days some structure, as well as to keep you in a creative and focused mindset.
- Invest in productivity apps to help you organize and manage your time better and maybe even keep you from the rabbit hole that is the world wide web.
- When you’re toggling between work and housework, consider doing your tasks by batches to help save your time and energy.
Keep Your Kids Engaged
Kids stuck at home with nothing to do is a recipe for disaster. And as you work from home, you can’t always be on hand to hold down the fort, so to speak. For this reason, it’s absolutely crucial to keep your kids occupied with fun, engaging, and stimulating activities — not just to keep the boredom at bay, but also to allow you to work in relative peace.
- Working from home with kids around can be a stressful and less-than-ideal situation, so it’s important to have a plan.
- If you’re feeling overwhelmed by the situation, it can be a great idea to find inspiration from work-from-home parents who are getting things done to see that it’s not an impossible situation.
- Make use of activities that bored kids will enjoy with minimal supervision.
- You can also leverage remote learning resources via kidoinfo that educate your kids without them realizing it because they’re having so much fun.
- It’s also wise to keep homebound kids on a schedule that coincides with your work-from-home timeline to keep everyone on the same page.
Prioritize What Really Matters
The ironic thing about working from home is that the line between work and home life tend to get blurry in the process. For this reason, it’s crucial to not lose sight of the need for balance, so that you’re able to produce good quality work and sustain a successful career, while also spending good, old-fashioned quality time with the family.
- Don’t lose sight of the need to keep a healthy work-life balance.
- Consider delegating some of your tasks and hiring help from online job boards to free up some of your time and energy for more important things, like family time.
- Indeed, spending time with family should remain your priority, as opposed to work.
- As a bonus, you manage stress better when you maintain this healthy balance.
Suffice it to say, working-from-home has its challenges, but these are nothing compared to the opportunities it provides in keeping the bonds of family strong. By giving your livelihood structure and keeping your kids engaged, you can better enjoy the things that truly matter. Win-win.
