Finding Balance when WFH

The pandemic has transformed the way we work and live. As governments around the world placed strict travel and workplace restrictions to contain the spread of COVID-19, more people than ever before began working from home, completely shifting the work paradigm. In 2020, more than 70% of employees in the U.S. were working from home due to the public health situation caused by the virus.

For many of us at BFA, working with remote team members is nothing new. We have teams in more than five countries and several time zones. From San Francisco to Toronto and Buenos Aires, we’ve been managing late meetings and sunrise deployments successfully. The transition to a fully distributed team, with every person working from home, brought on new changes, some made work easier and others more difficult.

Over time we have learned that, like beauty, everyone has an individual way of working. We’ve learned to embrace and encourage each other’s needs to ensure we have a productive and healthy team. Many of our team members have found it helpful to establish boundaries and create healthy separation, and one way we do this is with temporal frameworks: a set of events or circumstances related to something else. A temporal framework gives structure to our routines and distinguishes the time for work and play — an essential for preventing burnout. This trigger for the separation of work and personal life used to be our commutes, a time to clear our heads and shift gears. But when working from home removed that trigger, we found ourselves searching for a way to redefine what our days looked like.

Creating Your Temporal Framework

If you’ve been working from home for the past year, then you have a pretty good idea and first-hand experience of how challenging it is to separate work from your personal life. Working from home often blurs the line between these two worlds, especially if you have kids, pets, a partner, or other family members around. With so many distractions, it can be even more difficult to separate the two if the people around you do not respect your space and boundaries.

Within our teams, we encourage and respect creating a temporal framework that works for each person. This will not only help you regain control over how you spend your time, but it will also make you more productive at work while leaving some space for a personal life.

To help you get on track, we asked our teammates to share their advice. Check out the top 10 temporal frameworks below!

1. Have “work” clothes

Engineering consultant, Jorge de los Santos, wears pants.

Sounds obvious, but we’re not talking about pajama pants. Having “work” clothes is an expression of being properly dressed as if you are going to go to the office. The key here is making a tangible distinction between your work time and your free time so that it is difficult to mix them up. These small rituals have an immense impact on the way our mind perceives things. If you wear your pajamas for work as well as for fun, you are not making the clear distinction your mind and body need to shift gears.

Try to maintain the routine that you had while you went out to work. Wake up, brush your teeth, wash your face, dress up, have breakfast, and then move to your work desk to begin your day. If you are dressed properly, it will be easier for you to stay focused during your work hours.

2. Manage notifications to minimize screen time

Our senior engineer, Aldana Laura Quintana Munilla, always keeps her notifications on mute when she’s done with her work for the day. Our phones are often the most distracting objects when we’re trying to get work done or spend quality time with ourselves, friends, and family.

Precious time is wasted when you click on and engage with app notifications on your smartphone. That is why muting them during certain hours will save you time and keep you motivated for longer. Slack allows you to control your notifications and away time, and most cell phones have the option of scheduling downtime. Make sure you use these features to your advantage and limit your screen time.

iPhone users have an additional setting: Block at Downtime. This feature can block a specific app, requiring a passcode to access it. It’s a great way to stop you from absent-mindedly checking Slack and emails, or receiving notifications when you’re offline. It can also help prevent you from mindlessly scrolling during work hours.

3. Protect and enjoy your family time

Our senior VP of engineering, Rohit Deep, puts a hard stop to work in the evening so he can cook dinner with his family. Since the WFH orders went into effect, he’s been able to spend more time with his children, and this has given him more room to explore new interests and hobbies.

You won’t see many meetings in his calendar after 5:30 p.m. because he has designated this time to stop work and cook with his children. In the morning, he decides the menu with his family and then completes small prep tasks between meetings. Once his work time ends at 5:30 p.m., he shuts his computer off, and the cooking begins.

4. Do your hair and makeup, if that’s your thing

Similar to wearing what you would normally wear to work, getting ready every day as if you’re going into the workplace signals to your brain that it’s time to be productive.

As someone who’s worked remotely for several years, our senior technical program manager, Lori Setliff, takes time every morning to style her hair and makeup for the day. She shares that she has noticed a drastic difference in her productivity on the days she takes time to get dressed and ready, versus the days she opts for loungewear and no makeup.

Working in professional attire helps you focus more and wrap up work on time. It also sets your brain up for a reward in the form of switching to comfortable pajamas or loungewear once you’re done with the day.

5. Use a specific water bottle or coffee mug

Senior director of engineering, Daryl Beattie, recommends grabbing your favorite water bottle or coffee mug and placing it on your work desk to use during the week. Try not to use the same mug outside work hours, so your brain associates it solely with work and productivity. This small ritual will not only help get your day going but also keep you hydrated.

Need extra support staying hydrated? Start a Slack channel (ours is #hydro-homies) and create automated reminders to drink water. It’s a fun way to cheer each other on!

6. Eat your meals in a different room

Engineering manager Alejandro Grinberg has found that separating the place where he works and lives is key to creating an effective temporal framework. Make it a habit to stop eating your meals at your work desk, and opt for your dining room table or breakfast bar instead. This small habit allows you to take a much-needed break during the day and create physical separation from life and work. Tip: Take your food to an outdoor space for some vitamin D and fresh air!

7. Move during breaks or canceled meetings

Sometimes meetings end early or get canceled, and you’re left with a small window of 15 to 30 minutes before your next Zoom meeting. These breaks can be the perfect time to respond to your 57 slack messages, scroll Instagram, or finish that project you’ve been multitasking on all day; however, senior director of technical program management Nicole Clendeninn uses this time to move. Whether she’s jumping on a 15-minute Peloton Climb Ride with Tunde Oyeneyin or going for a walk, she moves instead of cramming in more work. This small shift in thinking helps to train your brain that work does have boundaries.

8. For Parents: Create a daily habit with your children

Nobody holds you accountable like a child with a promise. When you say you’re going to do something, a child usually won’t forget — and this helps keep you honest. Use this to your advantage to start and end your day. VP of people Todd Carlisle has breakfast with his family every morning before work and school start. Director of machine learning, James Faghmous, takes a daily walk with his oldest and youngest children. Guard this time and use it to help you shift gears.

9. Schedule something fun

In the “before times,” you might have scheduled a CrossFit class or happy hour with some friends to end your day. Unfortunately, with select cities still under some form of restrictions, these activities aren’t quite feasible. Instead, senior machine learning engineer Barbara Evangelista ends her day with roller skating. It’s something she looks forward to and allows her to get out of the house.

10. When you need it, take time!

Whether it’s an hour to grab lunch with a friend, a doctor’s appointment, or an actual vacation, schedule PTO. Put it in your 1:1 notes to review with your manager under a section called “Upcoming PTO”; that way, you can work knowing that there’s a break coming, and your manager can help you prepare to take time off. If you’re a manager, hold your team accountable to always have something in this section. If your team isn’t planning PTO, encourage them to do so.

Time is relative, and for remote workers, it is way too easy to lose track of it. Even when you enjoy the work that you do, sitting in front of the computer for over six hours at a time can be counterproductive — because as time passes, your productivity will start to go down, and with it, your mental health. We often don’t notice the blurring of work-life boundaries until our productivity and well-being take a hit.

As we continue to inspire unique beauty here at BFA, we also recognize the need for balance and the importance of encouraging one other to tend to our psychological and emotional needs. So if you find yourself struggling to get up and get going, then it may be time to check your temporal framework. We hope that with a few useful tips and tools (like these 10 above), we can all get closer to striking a work-life balance that helps us feel more energized, in control, and fulfilled.