How you separate work from life at home

January 28, 2021, 6:30 a.m.

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Working at home means living in the office. It is difficult for many to differentiate between work and life. Here are solutions to the most common problems.

My desk is in the walk-in closet, my friend and I take turns there. The other is sitting at the dining table, on the sofa, on the bed or on the bathroom floor. My friends work in living rooms, in kitchens, one has turned her one and a half square meter storage room into a recording studio, another uses the children’s room during the day to at least be “somewhere else”.

Such an environment can be annoying. At the same time, this is the situation in which many of us live and work. They are the lucky ones; the ones not being forced into open plan offices by myopic businesses.

Not perfect – but you can make something out of it

The new working environment has some major advantages, the first one being infection protection. In addition, a change of location makes you creative. Your own books can stimulate new ideas. Where no one is looking, push-ups or walks can be done in between, which is also useful for work.

The complete freedom of design allows some people for the first time in their life to set up a workplace according to their own needs. It can be a nice project – but it can also go wrong. Some common problems and how to solve them:

Problem: If you leave work behind, then she watches you lazing around

solution: The most obvious variant is not to overload the workplace. It takes a certain amount of discipline, but it’s worth it. If you only need a notebook and a notebook to work, you can fold both up and put them on the shelf in the evening. That is the fastest transformation. If you need more, you could free up a compartment, ideally one that disappears behind a cabinet door. A monitor is harder to hide, but this handle also creates a feeling of freedom in the evening, of being ready. Once storage space has been created, it doesn’t take long.

Problem: You live in the place where you want to work

solution: Calm your home.
Books, clothes, breakfast dishes, in general: stuff. There’s stuff everywhere. The visual calm of the workplace is missing. If you miss the quiet company environment, calm down your work environment at home. Straighten the books. I look directly at the shelf and have sorted mine in such a way that the book wall looks very calm, straight lines, little offset.

Tidying up fulfills several functions at the same time: You get moving, you are doing something good for yourself that you can see immediately, and you create a quiet zone. You are eliminating a sight that demands something of you. Disorder yells to even the most creative slob: Do something! If that bothers you, do something. It’s faster than you think. And the result is worth it.

Problem: You sleep in the office

solution: Redesigned a little. A friend of mine looks directly at her computer from the bed and directly at the bed from the computer. Not a satisfactory state. Home office is the ultimate step up from “taking work home”. Home office means that the home is the workplace. Whatever you are doing – the alternative is calling you.
But the desk can stand so that you sit with your back to the bed or sofa. For left-handers, light from the right is good, for right-handers from the left. You can separate living areas from one another with screens, foldable room dividers. If you are dissatisfied with your sleep, do not choose the bedroom as the place where you store your work equipment. Even a seat box with storage space can create a more suitable hiding place in the living room or in the hallway.

Problem: back pain

solution: Move. Not everyone wants a professional desk chair in the living room, but there are also simpler solutions. Ergonomic stools encourage active sitting. You can also just put a chair on the dining table and work standing up more often. You can find instructions for back and abdominal exercises on the Internet, I’ve just treated myself to a sling trainer for this. Change location when you have completed a task. The main thing is that you move regularly. The healthiest sitting posture is always the next.

Problem: You are constantly on the alert

solution: Create signals that ask for calm so that others do not tear you out of the flow. Some people need support all the time. You have a question here, an idea there, something lost somewhere, a thought there – and it’s time for a coffee break again. If you just discover that your partner is such a specimen: Talk about it! Some people work very actively verbally, others rather quietly. A clear signal that a disturbance would be rather inappropriate is that the other person is currently writing. A text message can then also be better than speaking directly: Take a break? But gladly – as soon as there is time.
When there are children in the house: Relieve each other as best you can. Times when the whole family is definitely out for two hours create a feeling of productive security.

Problem: There is no border without a way there and home

solution: Create a separation. It’s hard to go straight to family mode after a stressful day. A morning walk and an afternoon shower can be a breakup. A short run if you have the time.
In fact, many people will find it more likely that the buffer zone between work and private life is simply missing. You get up from your desk and plunge straight into your private life, where the last decisive battle of family life is raging in the afternoon.
Don’t leave it at that. Maybe you go to the bathroom without a smartphone, or you dance to music for ten minutes. The transition to the end of the day is necessary because our brains process what they have learned during this time. The author Eva Siegmund says: “We need a decontamination sluice.” Maybe at the end of the day we really have to wash off the work to get back to life.

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