Work-From-Home Burnout and 6 Tips to Avoid It

Millions of office workers were shocked by a sudden switch to remote work from home. People who are not used to this format might experience more stress, which can lead to a decrease in productivity or even burnout.

This risk might seem not dangerous, but in fact, it is rather substantial. Boundaries between professional and personal life disappear. Former office workers might have an impression of a constant working process and no free time at all. Remote work from home often results in ‘no-time-off’ feeling when workdays blend with weekends. Finally, the whole week seems to be a single day without breaks and pauses. If one works in this way for several months, burnout will be the most likely outcome.

If you still have questions on whether this problem is worth your attention, here is proof. The WHO (World Health Organization) states that burnout is an official syndrome that comes from chronic stress on workplaces, which haven’t been managed. When our workplace moves to our homes, it becomes extremely difficult to distinguish office stress from personal life, so the moment of desperation can catch you earlier!

How to Find Out that You’ve Come Close to Burnout?

The first thing you should do to keep healthy relationships with your work is to recognise an upcoming burnout. Better prevent such things, as beating consequences might take a much longer time.

So, what are the signs of burnout?

• You feel fatigued even in the morning.
• Your productivity is decreasing day after day.
• It’s hard to focus on even simple tasks.
• You can’t come up with creative decisions as you used to do earlier.
• You can’t focus on work, which causes mistakes.
• Your appetite decreases, as well as inner motivation in general.
• You start perceiving work as an enemy or some negative force.

Have you noticed at least 50% of all these signs in your everyday life? It’s time to make changes until you are caught up by burnout.

Here are top things to do to prevent negative consequences, become more productive and not lose love for your work!

Tip #1 — Maintain Healthy Boundaries

When working at home, people often lose physical and social boundaries. They don’t wear office clothes and work in pajamas, they don’t prepare for the office work and get to it as soon as they launch their laptops. This results in the merging of personal and professional life and often overtime work. You just don’t know where to stop and become tired very soon.

The solution to this issue is maintaining these boundaries even at home:

• Put on your work clothes (or something in the smart casual style) which you would wear in the office.
• Go for a walk in the morning and get a coffee-to-go in the nearest coffee shop.
• Tune in to work! Be ready to act when you finally get to your computer.
• In the evening, change clothes and enjoy your free time with family or friends, as you would do after office hours.

The point is to adhere to working hours and not to become too exhausted by tons of everyday tasks.

This tip is similar to working out a morning routine, which we mentioned in our previous article. You can check it out later. ;)

Tip #2 — Focus on Really Important Things

Getting lost in a handful of small but time-consuming and monotonous tasks can be discouraging and demotivating. If you need them to be done in any case, put them next to the essential tasks. In the morning, when you are full of energy and inspiration, handle crucial tasks requiring creativity and a fresh approach.
Concentrating on immediate, not important tasks, makes people feel non-productive. This is a straight way to burnouts when working both from home or office.

If you’re feeling too exhausted by monotonous work, ask your team leader for advice. In some cases, it’s reasonable to place an order on a freelance site rather than spend specialists’ efforts on non-important boring things.

What’s more, everyone needs to feel their importance and value for the company. This motivates and inspires!

Tip #3 — Dedicate Time for Short Breaks

If you have ever worked remotely, you may know it’s very simple to lose track of time and get absorbed by work. This is a familiar feeling when you start working at 9 AM and ‘wake up’ at 5 PM, realising you’ve missed lunchtime.

Why is it so difficult to take breaks when working at home? In the office, your colleagues commonly invite you to have a cup of coffee or to go and have lunch. At home, when you’re gazing at the screen all the time, you can miss that.

So, what’s the way out?

• If you live together with family or friends, ask them to ‘wake you up’ from time to time.
• If you live alone, use alarm clocks or special apps or bots signalising about the break time.
• Dedicate at least 10 minutes per hour to snacks, physical exercises, listening to favorite music, or talking to your old friend by phone. Still, we don’t recommend scrolling socials, as this won’t leave your eyes a chance for rest.

You’ll be surprised that regular breaks will positively affect your productivity!

Tip #4 — Beware of Procrastination

Procrastination is the global problem of the 21 century. The more time you dedicate to browsing social networks, the less time you have for performing work tasks. This causes the effect of incredible workload. You feel pressed by deadlines and work in overload mode, in a short time.

To deal with this issue, just set realistic deadlines and keep control of using social media and personal messengers. Create a rule for visiting them, for instance, check news and messages before your working hours, in the middle of the day while having lunch, and after work. Believe us, nothing incredible is happening there when you’re working. The news will remain the same, and shared links from your friends won’t disappear.

In a force majeure situation, your relatives and friends will call you by phone, so you won’t miss something really critical. You may even inform everyone that they should contact you via phone in case of emergencies. Otherwise, you’ll be busy and answer later.

This might be tough for extroverts accustomed to being online all the time. However, no one else will do the work for you. Take this challenge and make sure it’s not too difficult!

Tip #5 — Plan Your Leisure Time

Do you know that procrastination can seize power over your personal life as well? It can for sure. So, plan your activities for free time as well. The lack of quality time with family mambers and friends cause the impression that all your life is full of work and unimportant staff. You start losing control of your life and notice obsessive thoughts about life passing by you.

What is the solution? All the limits exist only in our heads. Albert Einstein said: “Once we accept our limits, we go beyond them”.

• So, first of all, you need to realise what limits you. Be it tight deadlines or too many tasks, all these issues are solvable. End your day at the same time every evening.

Plan your work hours and leisure time, as well as control procrastination. Set an event in your calendar for going out with children or watching a family movie on a couch. Switch your focus to pleasant things and relax…
If you find yourself surfing the web, return to reality using the phrase: “I’m not busy with what I’ll praise myself in the future”.

Don’t replace the pleasure of spending time with children or achieving professional results with momentary relaxation on social networks.

Tip #6 — Don’t Neglect These Tips! ;)

The last and most important thing is… Follow all these recommendations for remote work from home and be sure that the burnout syndrome can catch us at any moment. People are not superheroes. We all have a limited energy reserve. Working 24/7 is possible for some time, but that energy reserve comes to its end eventually.

Overconfidence is great when you want to show excellent results in a short period of time. Still… this is not the right regime to survive in the world of business.

So, let’s conclude the key takeaways:

• Develop and maintain boundaries between professional and personal life.
• Start with the most important tasks and leave routine ones for later.
• Take short breaks: drink tea or coffee, do physical exercises.
• Don’t let social networks devour your time.
• Don’t be overconfident! ;)