Whether you’re working as a health coach after getting your health coach certificate or have been working from home for years, this time of social distancing is making it easier for everyone to experience work from home burnout.
For many, it’s not easy to work from home, and they have to get into the groove. For others, it’s as simple as going into their office, shutting the door, and getting the job done. No matter which category you fall into, you can easily experience severe burnout if you aren’t careful. In this blog, you’ll find a few tips for avoiding burnout.
Set Actual Work Hours
When you work from home, it’s important to set a work schedule you and your family can deal with. If you work sporadically, at different times during the day, you’re going to easily become overwhelmed and ready to give up. When you work in an office, you have a strict starting and stopping time, even if you have to take work home with you. When you work from home, the lines aren’t as clearly drawn and it’s easy to find yourself working over or even not working enough to get the job done. You need to set actual work hours, whether those hours are from 9 to 5, 5 to 10, or overnight is entirely up to you and your own individual needs.
Take Plenty of Breaks
While it may be tempting to do just one more hour or one more project before you take a break, regular and plentiful breaks are important to your health and your productivity. It’s important to give your mind and body a rest every hour if you don’t want to become burnt out and unable to do the job you’ve set out to do.
Plan Your Work Week Ahead
The feeling of being overwhelmed is a huge part of burnout. To avoid being overwhelmed and triggering burnout, sit down on Sunday nights and map out a clear plan of what needs to be done for the week ahead. Knowing exactly when each deadline is and what needs to be done daily to reach it is the best way to keep stress at bay, and keep you from getting behind on work. When you’re behind on your work, you get stressed, frantic, and in many cases fail to be productive at all, planning your week can help you avoid that.
Give Yourself Little Rewards
Working from home shouldn’t be all work and no play and it should never be a grind. You should give yourself little rewards for reaching a deadline or sticking to your planned schedule for the week. A reward can be as simple as taking Monday off to relax or as big as planning a family vacation when a huge project is completed. The point is to reward yourself for a job well done, instead of just moving to the next task on your list.
Create a Good Support System
It’s going to be impossible to avoid burnout when working from home if you don’t have a good support system backing you. Your family and friends need to understand that when you go into your office and close the door, that’s work time, not the time for knocks on the door and phone calls.
It’s also important to have friends, family, and even fellow work from home buddies to vent to when you get overwhelmed or things seem too tough to handle.
These are just a few tips to help you cope and avoid burnout when working from home. While it’s a great thing to do, there have to be rules and boundaries for the job to be successful and for you to stay mentally and physically well.