Practice Mindfulness

Studies on long term work-from-home workers found that lack of interaction with colleagues and the lack of an office vibe can result in a disconnection from the outer world, leading to isolation.

Pitfalls of working from home: 

• Mental health disorders like anxiety, stress, and depression
• Feeling isolated
• Less self-discipline
• Lack of exercise
• Unable to keep the boundaries between work and life.

WFH (Work From Home) eventually means you are working from coffee shops, parking lots, from your car while driving, and almost anywhere you can log in to your laptop or communicate on your phone.

No one knows where you are and what you are doing, and that can be an advantage, but also can be misused. 

The schedule that makes you start early, and mimic the office hours works best, as you end up being free earlier too. However, night owls may find working at night to be more productive or comfortable for them.

Maintaining a schedule in a routine, while incorporating regular exercise with it, works best.

If your only friends are your friends at work, it'll be more challenging to avoid work on evenings and weekends. If you do have coworkers as close friends, consider setting some boundaries around work talk.

Try to avoid getting drawn into office drama, as it will increase the time you spend talking and thinking about work.

Speak up when your workload is too much. Tell your boss if you are stretched too thin or when you regularly work too many hours. Talk about what you can reasonably get done in a week.

Also, don't say yes to everything. If you have a hard time saying no, don't respond immediately. Instead say, "Let me get back to you", or, "Let me think about that."

Pick a place for your office away from distraction.
Boundaries also apply to other people who may be sharing the same space. Children can work alongside you as if they were coming to the office.

You won't have the same cues as you do from your workplace to remind you to get up or get lunch. When you lose the pace of your day, everything can start to blend together.

Treat your exercise, meals and stretch breaks as you would any other meeting. Put it on your calendar, at least to start.

An informal daily huddle where everyone is face-to-face in a virtual meeting, holding a fresh cup of coffee is a great way to start the day with purpose and energy. It requires everyone to wake up early, get dressed and make a cup of coffee.

A morning routine is great for productivity too.

Infusing music and dance in your breaks can add a sense of pleasure in the otherwise dull and drab routine, enhancing the immediate virtual surrounding of the extroverts.

The key to working from home is clear communication with your boss. Your manager might not be used to managing people virtually or may not have a ready-to-go suite of tools for remote workers.

To prevent a breakdown in communication, you need to know exactly what's expected of you from day-to-day. Ask your boss for a 10-minute video call to start and end the day. Reach out to coworkers and managers regularly so that you won't get forgotten.

• Don't lounge around in your pajamas. Treat it like a real job.
• Create a space exclusively for work that is removed from distractions, just like you would at your office desk.
• Create boundaries within your home that your family members understand when you're 'at work.'
• Bookend your day. If you can't enter and leave a physical office that creates more precise boundaries, use psychological transitions like a 20-minute coffee in the morning, then exercise right after work.

Most perfectionists can’t see their standards are unrealistic and bad for them. To find if you’re a perfectionist, ask yourself if your standards:

• ... are higher than those of others.
• ... can be met by you or others.
• ... help or get in the way of you achieving your goals.
• ... can be relaxed without affecting much the end result.

In sports, the drive for perfectionism is a positive force and turn setbacks into opportunities to reflect, learn, and adjust your approach. But regular perfectionists keep revisiting past failures as a form of self-condemnation.

All this does is cause them to raise the bar even higher, increasing the likelihood of failure. Try to see failure as simply a launching place for success, so you can break away from perfectionism.

• Casual leisure: short-lived, immediately gratifying, and often passive; it includes activities like drinking, online shopping, and the aforementioned binge-watching.
• Serious leisure: meaningful, challenging activities that cause you to grow as a person.

In a live-to-work society, where your career is also your identity and status, the instinct for leisure atrophies. Paradoxically, then, getting a good weekend means working at leisure.

One mistake people make when starting a hobby is picking something aspirational rather than something they enjoy. When you pick a hobby, stay true to what you enjoy. If you like cooking, try to take your current skills up a notch. If you like writing, try a fiction workshop.

If you want to try something totally new, start small. To hold yourself accountable, enlist friends in the effort.

A hobby is not a side hustle. It is important to develop hobbies outside of our economy with no financial motives attached.

Since a leisure pursuit is an outlet for stress, the pure pleasure of engaging in a hobby should be enough. A hobby not only helps to refuel us for a busy work life but also helps us to practice deep focus.