Are you enjoying work from home?

Does it surprise you if I tell you, work from home means you are actually being less effective, less efficient, putting in more efforts for less work and actually end up doing a lot more than usual? That it doesn’t help work life balance unless you are mindful about it? It’s really not that surprising because we are not trained for unstructured way of working.

Yesterday, my closest friend called me. She is a teacher. She enjoys her work. Usually on excellent terms with colleagues. But In last few days there is much bickering and tempers all around. Now because of lockdown all of them are teaching using Zoom. Teaching itself is laborious job and this is an additional burden. Still after initial hiccups working from home was nice. No commute to work. You have flexibility, you can do your own stuff, you have more time with family, you have longer lunch hours. All those perks you dream of. But slowly she started losing grip on her schedule. Being a teacher, class schedule stays fixed but rest of the work is flexible.

Surprisingly, her chores around house are taking double the time than usual. It felt as if she is running around all the time to finish her usual tasks. She had absolutely no time for her own kids. It feels as if there are no boundaries between her house and office work. No breathing space. Everything actually takes more time to finish. Within 3 weeks of work from home she is exhausted. First week was honeymoon, another week was hectic and the next is nightmare

She was moaning how - work from home - can bring up work life balance issues. Isn’t staying home and flexibility directly translate into balanced personal life?

Imagine, right from the age of a tiny toddler you always had a schedule. Preschool, school, college, job. You wake up fixed time, you go out, do your thing and you come back. Did you ever have at any age this much flexibility? That you now have because of lockdown?

Our minds are used to working within a structure, a framework and a schedule. With these 25-30 years of solid training suddenly you are now thrown into unstructured work. You are expected to manage your time and your effort on your own in an alien setting. it does throw up few complications.Some are managing well. They had some practice. Or naturally more adaptive but many are having issues, just don’t recognise they are stressed. Some are really struggling. Working from home needs practice.

Lets see an example, you take longer time to get routine things done. You actually think there is all the time in the world. You have an hour to reply to that urgent email. You can clean up cupboard while composing your reply. An hour later, all your stuff is still on the floor. You still have to reply to that email. It’s a wonder how work expands to time available!! Or does time contract?

It is nature of mind to take some time to get into mood of work or relaxation. It is most effective when there is a setting, a ritual and a routine that it is used to daily. If you think you can just jump between work, chores, pleasure and relaxation because you are now at home - you are giving it more pressure to adjust rapidly. Either you get stressed or you take double time to finish the task.

Next, You also tend to do more work or exert yourself more when you are at home . You think you relax if you are at home. Just laze around. Well that may be possible for few lucky ones, if they have someone else doing all those chores. But if you are that someone, you work more. because there are no boundaries, it is difficult for you to estimate how much time you can spend on a task. You have all the time in the world so take up more than you can chew. Or stick to some stupid task like arranging books for couple of hours without realising it’s taking so much time. Before you know your precious flexi time is gone.

You know, now is the time you have to be mindful of your work life balance. When you don’t have a structure guiding your life. It’s excellent opportunity to practice self management and time management. It’s also excellent time to practice self care. You are now the master of your time - you just need to learn how to tame it. Not run after the clock.

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