#MakeYourSpaceAtHome: How to maintain work-life balance? Divide your home into zones!

Inspirations

Our homes have recently been turned into offices, round-the-clock educational facilities and small leisure centres. In brief, all these places – work, nursery, school - are suddenly squeezed in the space that used to be our own. It’s easy to get confused. As a result, we often get distracted, we work longer hours, we procrastinate and our job takes up all day rather than the usual eight hours. Today we will tell you more about how to avoid all this and maintain work-life balance.

Remember about regular working hours

Try to get up at more or less the same time as you normally would, follow your daily routine, get dressed and sit down to work, and after 8 hours give focus on your (most) important obligations towards your nearest and dearest.

Activity based working: get up and go

It’s one thing to separate work from personal life. Your effectiveness is another story. We have already mentioned zoning. In the Activity Based Working office each activity type has its own zone. You organise formal meetings in the meeting room, you sit down at your desk to reply to e-mails, you relax and recharge your batteries in the kitchen and you hold phone conversations in a booth.

You can adopt a similar approach at home. Let’s start with zoning at dinner time. Leave your work for a while and take your time to have a meal. Go to the balcony or look out of the window. Give yourself some time to relax and regain strength in your regeneration zone.

We do realise working from home often involves numerous conference calls. Find some place, like a special armchair, where you can talk on the phone or hold video-conferences. This is your communication zone.

Most of the time you probably work on your PC: doing office work, individual concept work or assignments that require utmost focus. This is your administration or concentration zone, where you actually sit down behind your desk.

Office zoning or in exceptional situations – home zoning, is not a whim. It’s much easier to focus on specific activities if you realise and remember that you normally do them in specific places. This is why it is important not to work while you’re in bed, because this will impact both your work and the quality of your sleep.

We know that home office is a dynamic reality, full of challenges and temptations, but we should bear in mind that we are still the main agents responsible for the comfort of our work.