Has working from home due to quarantine meant that work is taking over your life?
Like it or not, you’re in a new groove. You don’t have a commute. You work from morning to night. You haven’t prioritized your social life because there is nothing to do.
You’re in a new routine that is more work, more Zoom, and less social interaction. For a lot of people, it’s led to a lack of motivation, increased stress, and situational depression. (When does the workday end if you never leave your house and your computer is within reach at all hours?)
Newsflash: You are going to need to start claiming your life back, and the transition out of COVID quarantine life is going to be just as hard as the transition in.
That’s because our brains are really good at adapting, and since they’ve accepted our new reality over the course of the past year, it will take time for them to readjust once more.
So after finally getting comfortable with your quarantine routine, how do you begin to reclaim your life again? It starts by taking your time back.
4 Steps to Claim Your Time—and Life—Back
1. Boundaries Baby
Your work hours, when you do Zoom calls, and turning the video off on those calls (sooo satisfying), are all great places to start. You can also set time limits for when you respond to emails, only schedule meetings within your working hours (never outside of them), and use an application like Slack for internal team messages—not text messaging. This way, you’ll create a barrier between your personal and work life, and ensure others respect your non-working hours. Have team members that aren’t respecting those boundaries? Declare your intention, define what constitutes ‘urgent’, and demonstrate what you mean.
2. Recreate a Commute
No, not from your kitchen table to your couch, but actually leaving your house. *Gasp* I know. Even if this means you’re just leaving to get a coffee in the morning and for your groceries or a workout in the evening. Doing so will trick yourself into anticipating a change of environment when you turn on/off from working hours. This will make the transition from one to the other more clearly defined, sending a signal to your brain that it’s time to plug in or unplug.
3. Invest in Yourself
You’ve learned a lot in hibernation. You may not know it yet, but now is the perfect time to explore that newly discovered knowledge and put those little lessons into practice. Make a list of all the things you’ve learned about yourself this past year. How can you go deeper and invest in yourself more? What areas are you still looking to build yourself up in?
4. Confront Discomfort
Acknowledge the anxiety that will come with yet another major transition. You’re only human after all. Give yourself permission to feel that anxiety, explore it, and know you are exactly where you need to be. No one is expecting you to do this perfectly.
Remember: this transition will look different for everyone. While some may jump into our new, new normal, others may need to take some additional time to ease back in. There’s no right or wrong way to ease out of quarantine, so don’t beat yourself up if you find it’s taking a bit longer than you expected. By supporting one another, we’ll all get there.