Setting and Maintaining Healthy Home Working Boundaries

As the world starts to shift back towards ‘normality’ many firms prefer to continue remote working in the spirit of flexibility and eventually saving on costs. It is a clever move, because so many people today want trust, empowerment, and flexibility that come from home based work and people are any business’s lifeblood.

However, it is critical that as we all emerge from the worst times ever witnessed, we must stay vigilant about our own well being as well as that of others while working from home. First and foremost to keep us happy, focused and productive when WFH we must set down some solid meaningful boundaries.

In this post, we will share three tips for setting up healthy boundaries while working remotely.

Clearly define what your working hours and boundaries are and stick to them! Life is fluid after all; therefore it’s essential to review them often.

Give yourself generous deadlines for projects or tasks to be completed within reasonable amounts of time thus avoiding unnecessary stress. Because there are more distractions at home than there would be at the office, so as not getting caught short if a task will take three hours then yourself five.

It can be highly distracting (and just slightly stressful) when WhatsApps pop up all day paired with slacks messages plus email notifications while using Teams

Do not hesitate turning off your notifications whenever you feel like checking your phones, emails or apps. Messages with ‘ping’ sound do not help anyone.

Make use of “Out of Office” or voicemail message for reinforcing your preferences in terms of communication channels. Make sure you have an appropriate message on there so that they can know how often you check these messages and when they should expect a reply relating to the same.

Sometimes saying no is enough but if an outright denial seems too harsh think about other softer ways through which one may enforce such boundaries without actually changing their self-made rules which protect their contentment and sanity better.

Make sure you get out of your house at least once per day even if it is just for a 10 minute walk in nature. Your brain will be stimulated by the change of scenery, help you think better and improve your mood. It’s also good for your body. If time is tight put on your hands-free kit and catch up with colleagues or bosses while you walk.

Be gentle and kind to yourself as there will be days when things fall apart or go wrong.

I hope these points give you some new things to explore or some old things to reinforce.

The only people who will ever have a problem with you having healthy, productive boundaries are the people who are set to gain from you having no boundaries.