Once you have gone through setting a budget, saving up, and then designing your office to work best with your needs, you will look at how to best organize those articles that quickly clutter it. Once you go through both of those aspects, it will be time to ensure a separation between your work and your life.
With the always-on, always-connected, remote work lifestyles that most of us live, it may not be easy to differentiate between work and personal life.
Although you may be back to working out of an office setting, often, these separate spaces don’t necessarily translate to a separation of how present you are at either.
Unfortunately, we often see what we do so closely aligned with who we are rather than focusing on who we are, which then determines what we do.
Threshold Approach
If you temporarily or permanently work from home, try an approach to separating what you do for a living and your life. Apply something that I call the threshold approach. This approach looks like having your home office set up in a specific room (ideally a separate space). When you are in that space, you are set up to be in focus mode, where you are completing tasks and projects specifically for work. You do not use that space for any other purpose. You are fully present when you are in that space, but you are entirely focused on your personal life once you leave that room. Doing this creates a clear differentiator between your work and home life.
Geographical Location
If you temporarily or permanently work from an office, take the same approach and apply it to a landmark. Once you pass that landmark, you no longer answer calls from work, thinking about your meetings tomorrow or projects. You have done everything that needed to be accomplished for that day, and once you pass the landmark, you can focus on your home life.
Both approaches will enable you to switch between tasks and focus, disciplining yourself not to allow your mind to wander back.
Creating an Organized Space
While a clear separation may be easier with a separate geographical location, you may consider setting up your home or work office to be a different style than you would have otherwise. You may choose a minimalist approach to only have those things in your office that pertain to your work, reducing or eliminating anything that would distract you.
Call To Move
My call to action is to apply one of the two approaches to create a clear transition from work mode to home life. See how this improves both those who depend upon you at work and, more importantly, at home.
Have a question? Our team would love to help! Email us!
