Being constantly connected to your electronic devices, and the social media they enable, may be bad for your health and well-being and working remotely only compounds these challenges.
Until very recently, I didn’t have a smartphone. In 2018, I wrote an article outlining the benefits of not being connected to the world through a phone. I was perfectly content living a largely disconnected life.
However, since that time, things have changed.
It is increasingly difficult to manage life without a smartphone. I recently took my family to a baseball game and would have been unable to access the ballpark without a smartphone because the phone serves as your tickets. Without a phone, I might not be able to enter a concert I bought tickets for, and it is increasingly difficult to order takeout. Reluctantly, I now own a smartphone.
Working from home, or remotely, has only magnified these challenges. Being constantly electronically connected can make it difficult to separate work from home, leading you to being constantly “on call.” This can further keep you in a perpetual state of activation.
In general, excessive smartphone use is associated with anxiety and depression and compromised sleep. Further evidence suggests that being in contact with work when physically outside of the workplace can lead to higher levels of distress as opposed to those who leave the workplace behind them when they depart.
So how can you manage if your home is your remote workplace? These four tactics can help you establish a clear boundary between work and home.
1. Create physical boundaries
Use physical space or objects to create a separation between work and home. For example, closing or locking the door to a home office creates a physical and psychological barrier that keeps you away from your laptop and helps you split your work life from your home life.
If you do not have a home office, you may have a dedicated work area. Erecting a divider, such as a folding screen or even an unused bed sheet, can serve the same purpose.
To maintain a strict separation of work and home, consider getting a work phone to separate work from personal communications. Outside of work, consider leaving your phone at home when going out for leisure activities in the evening or on weekends to help you escape electronics completely — though be sure to let trusted individuals know where you will be if you plan on disconnecting for an extended period of time.
Simply put, keep your work space separate and view your phone as nothing more than a highly advanced landline of old, plugged into a specific area of your home and unable to be taken further.
2. Create temporal boundaries
Set boundaries around when you will address things, and how much time you will devote to work. It is more and more common to see messages in email signatures noting the days and hours during which people will respond to messages. This is a positive development.
You can also block out time in your schedule to address work and non-work issues. If you have a phone that you use exclusively for work, turn it off and charge it during the times you don’t intend to be working. Protecting your time with such tactics is an effective way to promote work-life balance and maintain a healthy relationship with technology.
