By: Dr. Michael Osit
The Pandemic created an entirely new work culture for millions of Americans. Working from home 100% of the time and hybrid working (the week split between working from home and going into an office) has become the new norm for many. We had already been experiencing a new era where lines have become blurred between work and personal life due to the 24/7/365 ability to access emails, texts, and messaging platforms such as Slack. Now add the work-from-home concept and the lines between work life and personal life are even more muddied, and in many cases, nonexistent.
Working from home is not fraught exclusively with negative issues. There are definitely some benefits and advantages to working from home and hybrid work situations. But your work situation has to be managed in a way that you are able to maintain a work-life balance and avoid resentment in your job, and rapid burnout. The following are suggestions as to how to achieve a productive work-from-home job while attending to your personal life needs. 
Maintain a Calendar
Whether it is a calendar on a digital device or a paper calendar, maintaining a calendar with both job-related and social events is important to maintain. Your calendar should also have time blocks for administrative work. That is the first step. The second step is actually sticking to your calendar. Scheduling your day and week helps impose structure for you. Structure facilitates productivity, helps in meeting deadlines, significantly reduces stress, and guarantees attention to your personal life needs, both socially and functionally.
Compartmentalization
Separating your work life from your personal life and keeping them separate is called compartmentalization. Compartmentalizing is tantamount to putting your work demands in a sealed box when you are attending to your personal life, and putting your personal life into a sealed box when you are working. Doing so will help employ strict boundaries between when you are working and when you are “playing” to firmly define that easily blurred line. You should even dress for work even if you are working from home. When these boundaries are firm and clear you will feel more in control over your life and prevent resentment of both your work and personal life because there will be no spillover into each other. Work-life can seep into your personal life and your personal life can easily spill over into your work life when you work from home.
Manage Expectations
An additional way to compartmentalize is to establish clear limits and “rules” with both colleagues and family members or roommates. Respectfully and carefully, communicate with the people you live with so that when you are working you are not available for conversation or favors. Similarly, let your employees or boss know that your family/personal life is important, and that you will certainly be available for emergent situations, but that you will be far more productive when your personal life needs are being met.
Digital Divide
Separating your personal and work emails can be helpful in separating your home and work lives. It is important to maintain self-discipline by not looking at work emails when you are with friends or family, and not checking your personal emails when you are working. Keep your cell phone calls and texts separate, as well. If you are fortunate enough to have a separate work cell phone, put it away when you are not working, and do so likewise with your personal phone when you are working.
Prevent Isolation
Take time, while working, to touch base to just say “hi” to colleagues. Facilitating social relationships within the business environment is both beneficial to prevent professional isolation and promotes successful task functions within your job responsibilities.
By paying close attention to both your work and personal lives-but only at the time you are engaged in each, your life will be more relaxed, comfortable, and productive. It will also be less stressful, more in control, and more energized.
Dr. Michael Osit is a Licensed Psychologist practicing in Warren, and the author of The Train Keeps Leaving Without Me: A Guide to Happiness, Freedom, and Self Fulfillment (2016), and Generation Text: Raising Well Adjusted Kids In An Age Of Instant Everything (2008).