Working from Home? 5 Things We Shouldn’t Do (That We Do Anyway)

Working from home has led to all kinds of flexibility in our work day… or has it? What initially seemed like a flexible professional lifestyle has revealed itself to be another kind of unbending office culture. As a recovering workaholic, I still have days where I fall prey to unhealthy behaviors which I know are not good for me in the long run. We all do some of these things sometimes. But if your working-from-home work days often feel worse than going into the office ever did, it’s time for a change. Here are the top five behaviors that so many of us give into — I know I do!

1. Not Taking Enough Bathroom Breaks

We’ve all been there: one meeting runs too long, while another has started in a different Zoom room, you don't want to be rude… and suddenly your allotted break time between meetings is gone. But you persevere. Or you are in the middle of a very important team conversation and you don't want to be the one person who stops it (or misses out) to go to the bathroom. Or — and this is the most extreme option — you’d love to take your computer or phone with a zoom on mute to the bathroom but you are afraid of making a mistake and zoom malfunctioning and your co-workers seeing you in a… less than ideal situation.

Part of what might be happening is that you are scheduling things too tightly and need buffer time between meetings. Try scheduling meetings on the 15 and 45 minute mark of the hour, thereby ensuring a 15 minute gap between calls. But what if you need to take a break in the middle of a meeting? As much as you may have FOMO or are worried about slowing your team-mates down, if you need to take a short break it's very unlikely that you're the only one. A colleague even confided in me after a meeting I facilitated, “I'm so happy you called for a bio-break because I was just going to go the route of a UTI!”

2. Not Leaving the House All Day

Even though I know better, I sometimes do not leave my home during the work day. This happened especially often at the beginning of the pandemic, when so many of us were adjusting to working from home. Our laptop screens become our windows into the world, and wearing slippers for hours soon shifts from feeling like a luxury to feeling like laziness — even at the end of a productive day. It’s not healthy for us physically or mentally to stay indoors in our homes 24/7, and in the long run, we actually are better able to focus on work when we take both a break and a breath of fresh air from time to time. One thing I have done is commit to a daily goal of walking outside for 10 minutes. 10 minutes is small enough that it is not daunting and encourages me to start. Other solutions include: identifying if a video call can move to a phone call and then turning it into a “walking meeting,” eating lunch outside — this has an added bonus of making real time for lunchtime — and, for heads-down focused tasks, working from a coffee shop.

However you do it, getting out of the house every day will help you be more present when working, and more able to relax when it’s time to relax.

3. Stretching the Workday Outside of Working Hours

Have you ever scheduled meetings before 9am or after 6pm to maximize your day? I admit that early or late meetings can be effective because they call on your ability to process information and discuss without others vying for your attention. However, if you stretch your day to its ends, you will also stretch your ability to concentrate to its ends.

Delineating “time on” and “time off'' is healthy for you and helps your colleagues understand when is a good time to speak and not. If your company, like mine, is on a communication platform like Slack, take advantage of their status messages and emojis to mark whether you are on or off, taking a personal day or in a meeting. Additionally, I like to give myself “trade-off time”: if indeed I plan to have a late meeting, I make up for it by having one meeting less during another part of the day.

Working from home means that your personal and professional spaces run the risk of being blurred. Be careful that your time doesn’t become blurry as well. For instance, if you have an after-hours meeting, be sure to be clear about the intention — is it a social call with a colleague? Is it an informal way to address work-related matters? Clarifying at the outset your goals for the conversation will help create healthy boundaries and expectations.

4. Checking Our Email and Slack Late at Night

Even though I swear I’m off the clock, sometimes there are still things to be done after 8pm and I may look at email on my phone to see if it’s something important. On a good-habit day, I return the message to being marked as unread and deal with it the next day. On a bad-habit day, I run to my computer and do the task immediately, sometimes even emailing a colleague about it — with the caveat “not urgent” — while secretly hoping they too will want to take care of this right now!!!

This behavior is, of course, related to the previous one; checking our email (or Slack messages) is another way we stretch our workday outside of working hours. The key difference, however, is that the former behavior is about making plans outside of the workday and this one is about impulsively checking to see if anything is happening. Know that if and when something is truly urgent — the information will get to you. Until then, silence your work notifications after a certain time, and do your absolute best to stop checking your phone. The day is done. No matter what happened at work, you’ve earned your evening.

5. Not Making Time for Personal Tasks

Calling your doctor to make an appointment, processing mail, and doing housework are just a few of the tasks that sometimes take a back seat to our work lives when we work from home. It's crazy to think that even though the laundry machine is right there, I am too engrossed — or feel too busy — to move my clothes to the dryer.

We used to take breaks to take care of personal tasks from the office, so why is it so difficult to make time for personal tasks while working from home?

One theory is that because we are constantly trying to prove that we are committed to our colleagues and team, if we are away from our virtual workspace, we feel we are not actually contributing. Another theory is that we get really pulled into what is going on, whether it is office politics or just work projects, and simply forget that we had a couple other things to take care of during office hours. In an office environment we have social cues to stop and take a break, and even sometimes our commutes allow us to take care of some tasks.

Remember, it’s not only okay to make time for personal tasks, it’s important. Some things can only be done during work hours, and others — like switching the laundry — can be done as a necessary break from focused work.

The key to shifting these behaviors, and forming healthier ones, is all about boundary-setting and better time management. While we all do some of these things sometimes, forming better habits and taking the first step in correcting unhealthy patterns will help us avoid burnout (and UTIs).

We are all works in progress in our professional lives as well as in our personal lives. Which of these behavior changes do you think you could work on tomorrow — or even today?