Why It’s Important to Separate Work and Home Life
Since the advent of the Covid-19 pandemic, more people than ever before have been able to work from home or fully remotely and this can present many of its own challenges. One of the largest of these is how to draw a distinction between work and home life when the physical spaces that they are occupying are the same.
If you work from home, it can be tempting to just work until you finish the task at hand, whereas if you were in an office you would have shut down your computer and gone to catch the bus or train home instead. Working beyond your contracted hours can impact your life in many ways, mostly negatively and we will look at some of the reasons why it is important that you are able to live separate work and home lives below.
Reasons to Separate Work and Home Life
Being able to maintain a work-life balance is important for being able to live a happy life. If you don’t feel like you can switch off from work, this can have a negative impact on your sense of wellbeing and can lead to depression and mental ill-health.
Maintaining Healthy Relationships
One of the primary reasons for taking care of your work-life balance is that if it is out of kilter, it will have an effect on the interpersonal relationships in your life. If you are emotionally unavailable to your partner and/or children in the evenings when you are meant to be finished work, because you are still concentrating on work tasks, this can lead to resentment and even relationship breakdowns in extreme circumstances.
You need to be able to give yourself permission to relax and take some down time with those closest to you, for the same of your own health as well as the health of your relationships. Those who feel like their partner works too much can often feel like they have been abandoned to some extent. Try your best to be there for them and switch off the work tasks at the end of your contracted working day. You never know when it might be too late to change your course and give them more time and attention.
People who are too plugged into their work are often a lot more stressed out than those who have a more sensible balance of the two.
Reducing Stress
Being able to switch off from work has real and tangible health benefits including a reduction of stress. Stress is something that can have really drastic negative effects on the human body and is thought to be able to speed up the ageing process, as well as increase the risk of heart attack and stroke. These are obviously serious consequences and should be avoided if at all possible.
The myriad ways that excessive stress can affect the human body and mind has been long documented by the medical profession and allowing yourself to work too long and too hard can really cause serious damage to your health, both physical and mental.
Setting Boundaries
In work and home life it is important to be able to set boundaries so that you can live the kind of life that you want and need to. If you make yourself endlessly available to your work, you will be given more and more work, regardless of the hour of the day, and you will most likely not receive the respect, appreciation and remuneration that you are due for the efforts that you have expended.
It is often the case that far from succeeding in building your reputation at the company, you will be seen as someone who is available all of the time for work tasks and you will be treated with less respect than you would have if you had been prepared to enforce your own boundaries and ensure that you drew the distinction between what it was reasonable to expect from you and what wasn’t.
People who are always available to take on more work and will do it at unreasonable hours are sometimes seen as pushovers or even brown nosers who are seeking to curry favour with management in order to gain quicker career advancement. This may not be how you see yourself, but it is important to understand that this is the impression that may be created with colleagues and management alike.
Improved Work Efficiency
A good work-life balance can actually improve your efficiency when it comes to dealing with work tasks. It can help to put a stop to some of the procrastination that many people suffer from and this can make a real difference in the amount of work that can be done. Decluttering your workspace is a good start when it comes to improving efficiency. You can try to separate your work and home lives by using a different room as an office, rather than your living room or another room that is already used for some kind of household task.
If you are lucky enough to have the space to do this, it is a sure way to give yourself more space to work without distractions and allow yourself to close the door on your work and your “office” at the end of your working day! Being able to create this kind of space allows you to have a definitive way of both arriving at work and finishing up at work each day.
For an added touch of authenticity, you can even try to walk around the block every day before work and then do the same after work. This will make it feel as if you are walking to and from work and will allow you to feel closure once the working day is done.
Efficiency is also improved when there is more time pressure to finish tasks, not less, so be sure not to work later than you should, or you may actually be harming your own productivity rather than improving it.
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