Have you ever been super excited about a vacation and work yourself to the bone, so to speak, so you can take the vacation you want. And then by the time you take your vacation, your immune system is so compromised that you become sick and spend your vacation resting rather than exploring? Over working has the same relationship to our output. If you overwork yourself and don’t allow for inspiration or recovery, then you will likely spend more time trying to recuperate the energy you “overspent.”
As we are settling into fall, many small businesses and entrepreneurs may be finding themselves in suspended state of quarantine or work-from-home burnout. While the general belief may be that working from home is more relaxing, the reality is that since you work from home your boundaries may be slim to nonexistent. When you are working a nine-to-five, you can go take a spinning class after work or plan a phone free dinner. But when you are working from home, there is often no distinct stopping point.
Buzzes from smartphones and dings from social media can cause spurts of stress and less uninterrupted rest. Research shows that people that that allow work to intrude into after hours are simply put, less happy. Adverse effects include negative work rumination, poor affect and insomnia.
Covid has created a number of other challenges across industries. And for those of us still working, there is a reluctance to turn the day off, so to speak and there is a lot of pressure to be especially productive during this time. “When are you going to have this amount of time,” you may think to yourself. There are fewer commutes and in person meetings which gives us more justification for putting in longer hours. When you are working from home, you may find yourself squeezing in more and more time on the laptop late night or checking your email “one more time.”
Setting boundaries should not be exclusive to married people or those with children. Employees with families often set specific boundaries for the hours they work because you may have a sitter or other obligations at a designated time. And by that same token, regardless of your relationship status you are just as entitled to making personal commitments that mark the end of the day.
According to occupational stress and employee well-being research co-written by a team of researchers at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, those who have greater “boundary control” over their work and personal lives had a better ability to protect themselves from a better at creating a stress buffer that helped protect them from falling into a “negative-rumination trap.”
Recently in Fortune Magazine, Laura Vanderkam wrote:
Any organization that institutes a 9:00 a.m. virtual check-in needs to also have a 4:45 p.m. virtual goodbye ceremony.
I love this idea of creating a virtual goodbye for yourself at the end of the day. If you are anything like me, you may work up until the minute. So setting your alarm for 15 minutes before your desired end time is such a good reminder to wind down.
Now I am a realist and realize that there are many days that you have to work longer hours to finish projects, proposals and bids. There are seasons when you will need to stretch yourself a little further to earn business or schedule a later client consultation. But with intentional daily planning, you can make maximize your work day productivity by setting boundaries and reminders to stop working or take breaks so that you are your optimizing time without burnout.
