Dealing with Stress While Working from Home

Remote work was a phrase that was not heard often before the COVID-19 pandemic. Today it describes up to 15% of employment opportunities in the US. What does it mean? It is part of a job description that directs the employee to work from a location outside of the office. This inevitably means remote workers will work from home for some or all of the time.

Dealing with stress while working from home may sound easy: wear what you like, no annoying colleagues who interrupt your work, and no commute. Where is the stress in that? Without the structure of an office and the routine that it brings there are a variety of obstacles to a calm, productive working environment.

Working from home may present different challenges that will not include a long commute or the struggle to focus when you are being creative. Many people are finding the new areas of stress difficult to deal with, and polls say that many feel more stressed and more often experience night-time waking as a result of work-related stress.

Dealing with stress while working from home inevitably includes the fact that work and personal boundaries become fuzzy. Having your smart device follow you to the kitchen to make coffee, and keeping up this habit before work and after hours, and during the weekend, makes it more difficult to unplug and end your workday by leaving the office.

Types Of Stress That Come with Working from Home

Distractions Here, There, and Everywhere

With no one to casually walk past your desk and view your screen do you find yourself more inclined to scroll social media, watch television or react to the sounds of your neighborhood?  (Isn’t that the garbage truck?). On top of these, you have your pets sitting on your keyboard, or staring at you with their puppy-dog eyes wanting to be taken for their walk.

And when you are forced to weather a disappointing client call or a difficult conversation, there is no one to say you cannot use coping mechanisms of your choice such as engaging in retail therapy or playing video games until you feel better. You may even feel tempted to check your phone because your delivery is due any second.

Little Structure

Besides having to attend virtual meetings on time, there may be very few rigid times that you need to keep to during your working day. Questions that arise may include:

• What time does your day start and how do your colleagues know you have started it?
• How do you moderate the time you take for your lunch and coffee breaks during the day?
• When it comes to the end of the day, how do you handle things?
• Does your line manager or colleagues expect you to quickly answer their after-hours requests?

An upset work-life balance veers towards less rather than more orderly.

Working While Parenting

Parents who work from home have other unpredictable elements to include in their schedules. These include children returning from school in tears, having to collect them, organizing child care, and generally carrying a higher personal emotional load during the day than you would otherwise.

Establishing And Respecting Boundaries

Many people find it difficult to set and maintain boundaries that protect their relationships with their colleagues and family from unfair expectations. Some family members, for example, your mother-in-law, may consider you being home means she can drop in unannounced. Or perhaps a neighbor asks for help with a task that would normally have waited until the weekend.

To handle things, you may wonder if you should reiterate that you are unavailable running the risk of them becoming frustrated and angry.

Not Being as Physically Active

Working from home means that you do a lot less walking. Walking to the kitchen and back multiple times does not make up for the incidental steps you take walking to meetings, lunch, and back again. As you are less physically active during the day you often end the day with more energy. The result is that you are not as tired at night and so your sleep suffers. As a result, the next day you struggle more than usual to focus while working amidst the distractions.

A Bit Too Quiet

You may enjoy the focus that you can achieve by placing your phone face down or even turning off your Wi-Fi connection, but the social isolation from a workplace is very real. Irritating and needless interruptions aside, there is a distinct benefit to the social interaction at the office during the day.

Strengthening relationships during a coffee break or being able to bond in small talk before and after difficult client conversations strengthens your emotional reserves and enables higher productivity. In a high-intensity environment with no social affirmation, many find it difficult to maintain productivity levels.

Try These Ideas When Dealing With Stress While Working From Home

There are a variety of ways we can approach situations that cause stress. An unstructured, lonely, and lethargic environment punctuated by family and domestic interruptions is not ideal when you are looking to meet professional targets and get the job done during your work day. Be encouraged that the stress caused by this can be mitigated by implementing various stress-busting strategies.

As you read on some of these will be familiar and others will be new. Pick the ones you like and try one or two out today. Look to implement the others in the next few weeks. If you do this there is a high probability that you will be far more effective and able when dealing with stress.

Create A Routine

Creating a dedicated workspace is a very effective way to help your body and mind to gather to stay focused on your work. Far more effective than your duvet and pillow in creating a work zone, a workspace in the corner of a room, or by setting up your laptop and office stationery on your dining room table in a distinct way that formalizes the working area will help you to shift gears between your home and work life.

Once you are done for the day, you can pack up your desk and not be bothered by your laptop screen blinking at you because you know that tomorrow will come. You will be able to handle work again tomorrow.

Mute Distractions

Turning off social media and all non-work-related alerts is a good place to start when looking to reduce the number of distractions competing for your attention during the day. Deciding on three to five set times during the day when you check and respond to messages is also considered a good practice. Constantly breaking your concentration from your task to answer a few non-urgent messages often means your flow state is interrupted and until you reach it again the pace of your work is slower than it needs to be.

Playing classical baroque music through noise-canceling headphones is also another very useful method many people use to relax and ensure that outside noises do not distract them.

Having a set routine is a long-established and very widely used method for dealing with stress. This routine may include some of the following characteristics:

Have a morning ritual. Use an alarm and wake each morning at the same time and spend some time in solitude with God, reading your bible and listening to what the Holy Spirit is telling you through the Scriptures. Spend some time exercising, stretching, and enjoying a cup of coffee. Ensure your morning routine is something you enjoy and anticipate the evening before.

End your workday. Besides packing up their desk and work equipment neatly, some people change the music to something more upbeat or turn on the radio to catch the local news while preparing dinner. Putting on a pair of trainers and walking around the block after you are done for the day is a good way to signal to your body and mind that it is time to relax and wind down.

Eat lunch at the same time each day. By taking a midday meal break your mind can recover while your body absorbs new energy from your meal. To feel more energized by the lunch break make sure that you do not keep checking your email or messages. Rather close your computer screen and put your phone down.

Move more. This may look like going out to the yard to do some chores for a few minutes in mid-morning and mid-afternoon. It could be playing with your pet or performing some stretches.

Get outside. Breathing in the fresh air and enjoying warm or cool weather can energize you. Performing a breathing exercise while in the open air can also be very helpful to blow out the cobwebs.

Prioritize challenges the night before. If you can confirm your schedule, then do your most difficult tasks first. You are at your best when you just start work and while it is a tough start to the day, it is far better than trying to start the hard things in the middle of the afternoon.

Use rewards. Maintain your motivation by segmenting your tasks into bite-sized chunks and then give yourself rewards for completing each step. It may be the chance to message a friend, take a break, physically check off the item on your to-do list, or play with a pet.

It Takes Time

Remember that as you experiment with implementing a new remote work routine it may take a few weeks or months for you and your colleagues to acclimatize to the new schedule. Remember that dealing with stress while working from home may take a few iterations but your mind, body, and soul will thank you for doing so. More than likely, so will your colleagues.

Christian Counseling for Dealing with Stress

If you’re looking for additional help to learn more about dealing with stress, whether as part of everyday life or while working from home then why not browse our online counselor directory or contact our office to schedule an appointment? We would be honored to walk with you on this journey.