Career Management Alliance Blog

No, I’m not referring to how you feel first thing Monday morning, nor to the feeling of sleepwalking through a job you’re bored with.  I’m using Marci Alboher’s term for people who work fully or partially from home and often feel overwhelmed by trying to establish a boundary between work time and personal or off-work time.

While working from home offers many conveniences and satisfactions, there are also endless temptations: to extend the work day; to interrupt personal or family time to send the forgotten email; or when fatigued to “rest” by surfing the web rather than take a real break.  Personally, I know I’m caught in the blur when I find myself eating at my desk or answering the siren call of my email inbox when I’ve signed off for the day.

One of many admonitions warning us about practices such as these comes from new brain physiology findings.  Two discoveries are particularly relevant.  1) Insights, or those creative “ah-ha’s” that can elevate our work from ordinary to extraordinary, tend to occur when the brain stops thinking, or when it’s at rest.  2) When an idea is accompanied by a sensation of pleasure it generates more “brain power” than when accompanied by a neutral or negative (e.g.fatigued or blurry) sensation.

So it behooves us to do what we can to place some markers around the time we dedicate to work. Here are a few suggestions culled from colleagues and online sources.

• Set an alarm for a 10-minute warning prior to ending a work session
• Keep to-do lists for personal and work items on separate colored paper
• Take a walk around the block at least once during your work day.  Physical activity helps clear up the blur!
• Plan your day in 30-minute segments.  Assign a time limit for each work task, and set a timer.  If you run over, at least you’ll do it consciously!
• Attach electric volts to your computer chair, set to fire at the designated end of your work day.  (Thanks to Gina Trapani, in her interview with M. Alboher)

Here’s a weekly column devoted to work life balance for people working at home.  For those of you wrestling with blurry work lives, what solutions have you found?  We’d love to hear your suggestions.

Nina Ham