7 Ways to Get Rid of Work From Home Stress

Published in

My Remote Work Life

6 min readMar 6, 2019

Working from home or remotely often gets a romantic reputation of being glamorous and stress free. While I wouldn’t trade it for anything, it certainly isn’t free of problems, bad days, and unwanted stress. In reality, working from home stress is real. Fortunately, in 6+ years of working remotely, I’ve found that there are some important things that I can do to keep stress to a minimum. What’s even better is that these tips are also applicable if you work in a cubicle or traditional 9–5 job. So, here they are:

Go for a Walk or a run

Being cooped up inside all day isn’t good for anyone. But, when you start working from home this becomes the norm. It’s easy to get to the end of the workday and realize that you haven’t stepped outside or walked more than a few steps the entire day.

Whether it’s a 10 minute walk in the morning before you start working or a break at lunch, this makes a huge difference in your focus and mental state.

When I’m starting to lose focus or feel overwhelmed, I find that taking a few minutes to get outside often saves me a lot of time in the long run. I might have been struggling to solve the same problem for an hour, but when I just take a break and return to it after a walk, the solution often comes easily.

Find a remote/work from home bestie

If you’ve ever worked in an office or a more traditional job then it’s likely that you either had a work bestie or at least one or more casual acquaintances that you would chat with, vent, or share advice and ideas with.

Unfortunately, when you make the transition to working at home, it’s easy to feel lonely when you don’t have a built in work support system. If you have a remote job where you have colleagues, think about whether there’s anyone who could fill that void. Do you have someone that you could chat with 1–2 times a month or do a video call with?

Remote work has its own challenges, and it can be really refreshing to chat with others that really understand your specific situation.

If you’re thinking that you want this but don’t know where to start, I get that. Do you follow anyone online who works remotely? Try reaching out to them. Or, maybe you can search for facebook groups specifically for remote or work from home employees.

Keep a journal/put your thoughts on paper

Journaling daily can be a mental lifesaver. Try keeping a small notebook with you at all times or even have a specific Google doc or evernote doc where you can jot down your thoughts. When I’m feeling stressed and overwhelmed, I find that it often goes back to having too much on my mind.

The simple act of writing and getting my ideas down on paper often makes a huge difference for me. Even if I can’t take action on it all, just writing how I’m feeling helps too.

Schedule 2–3 short breaks into your day

Most of us are guilty of pushing ourselves too hard on occasion. We work work work through the day and are lucky if we even make the time for a 20 minute lunch break.

Breaks are great because they are refreshing and also give you something to look forward to. I find that at least one break in the morning and one in the afternoon is a good place to start for anywhere from 10–20 minutes.

You can use this break time to make a cup of coffee, call a friend, family member or a spouse, read a book, just walk around, anything you want. The key is doing something that you can easily stop after 15–20 minutes and that you enjoy. It should be something that you look forward to and leaves you refreshed and ready to get back to work afterwards.

Make a “worry list”

One of the best things that I’ve done for my mental health is to start a worry list. If you’re wondering what this is…it’s exactly what the name implies. It’s a list that I keep on an evernote doc where I write down everything that is worrying me at the moment.

It might sound silly but just like I mentioned previously about the importance of journaling and writing things down, this really does make a difference. A worry list helps you to get the craziness out of your mind and on paper. And, something amazing happens when we write down our worries, we often find that they’re not quite as scary as we may have imagined.

Use the “do it anyway” technique to avoid procrastinating

If you’re on my email list, you might remember that I talked about Mel Robbins Mindset Reset program that she’s doing this month.

Last week she talked about a great tool called, ‘Do it anyway.’ This means that even if you don’t want to do something, if you know it’s good for you then you just do it anyway. This has been so helpful for me this week and I can’t even count the number of times that I’ve practiced this.

For example, each week I write an article for Zidisha featuring one of our entrepreneurs around the world. Usually this is something that I absolutely love to do and typically I do this at the beginning of the week. However, last week I kept putting it off and couldn’t motivate myself to start. Fortunately, I watched Mel’s video on “Do it anyway” and as soon as the video was over, what did I do? I wrote the article right then.

Try this in your own life this week. Whenever you start to feel resistant to something, whether it’s a work task, making a phone call you don’t want to make, going to the gym, just do it anyway.

Try to single task as much as you can

If I was making a list of the top 5 productivity tools in my life, this would definitely make the list. Multitasking is common in today’s world. We flit from thing to thing from email to tasks to Instagram, and back to email, often all in the span of 10 minutes or so. It’s crazy, right?

We’ve really lost our ability to focus, do one thing at a time, or as Cal Newport would say, ‘do Deep Work.’

Most of us want to make a difference in the world, whether it’s providing the customer service that will brighten a bad day, working for a cause that we believe in, or being a manager that encourages the people working for us. Whatever it is, it probably requires some level of focus and concentration.