Developing a strategy to boost your work-from-home resilience is essential to your mental health. Trying to deal with all the changes we’re all going through seems futile, doesn’t it? And that includes adjusting to the new normal of working from home.
Whether it’s just temporary or permanent, working remotely creates an interruption to our daily lives. Working from home reduces stress in some ways, but it can create other stressors as well.
Many of us face new challenges like isolation, communication issues, time-management difficulties, and lots more.
In the beginning, it might seem like a dream come true, how about now? How are you dealing with working remotely from home months later?
Feeling a little stressed? Wishing you could go back to the office? Pondering changing jobs? Contemplating freelancing?
Wouldn’t it be nice to simply deal with the day-to-day issues and quickly bounce back and recover your momentum?
Learning the best strategies for work-from-home resilience allows you to handle daily challenges more effectively and avoid becoming overwhelmed.
Cultivating Resilience in Company Culture
If you’ve noticed, resilience is a big topic on the web. Nearly every industry is discussing ways that they can cultivate resilience in their company culture.
Why is that?
Well, for starters, working from home introduces a whole new set of challenges harming employees’ mental health, job performance, and relationships.
So, if you’re working remotely, you’re probably.
- Concerned about spending too much time alone
- Feeling disconnected from co-workers
- Dealing with time management issues
- Trying to address negative feedback or ask for help when you need it
- Concerned about reading the wrong tone into text communications sent to you
- Worried that others will misinterpret your text communications
- Juggling time expectations of your job and time others in your household require
- Dealing with caring for children or family members during working hours
More than ever, people who are working from home are discovering ways to build resilience. It’s easy to be a little jealous of the people who bounce back quickly and keep going.
Sometimes, they can draw from some invisible psychological well that empowers them to deal with change and adversity better than others.
Well, the good news is that nearly all of us can develop that same type of control over our emotions and productivity by using the best strategies for work-from-home resilience.
We can learn to change our perspectives and habits.
Best Strategies For Work-From-Home Resilience
Here are the best strategies for building work-from-home resilience. I’ve included some from the book Resilience: The Science of Mastering Life’s Greatest Challenges.
1. Create A Designated Workspace.
It’s incredible how much stress relief you gain by creating a separate space for work.
In the office, it’s not uncommon for people to customize their cubical or work area. You need to do the same thing when you’re working from home.
Even if you have limited space for your home office, it’s a good idea to take time to evaluate it. Is it in the best place possible? If not, where should you move it? Even if you can’t relocate your home office, make a list of all the clutter and distractions and remove them (if possible). Now, make a list of all the things you need in your working environment to make your job a little easier. Lighting or a new desk chair can create an amazing difference in your work area. How about your schedule? When do you work best? If you can, adjust your schedule to reduce your stress.
2. Focus On Solvable Issues
When dealing with all the changes and challenges that working from home creates, you’ll need to keep a positive attitude to deflect the stressors. It’s okay to be aware of the negative information relevant to your problems. But, quickly disengage from situations you can’t solve and focus on those you can solve quickly.
3. Reframe Stressors and Control Your Emotions
Often you’ll find that you’re stressed about things you can do absolutely nothing.
Accept the things you can’t change, don’t become overly concerned about thing you can’t control. Stay focused on your task.
Learn to re-evaluate and reframe adverse events in your head. Develop self-awareness so you can regulate your emotions. And learn to use humor to de-escalate your stress and regain control of your feelings.
Are you feeling overwhelmed? Compare your feelings with the facts. Are those feelings accurate? Is the situation genuinely overwhelming? Or, have you encountered an underlying trigger making you feel that way?.
When you begin feeling stressed, don’t identify yourself by saying, “I’m stressed out.” Reframe it by saying something like, “I’m feeling a little stressed right now, but I’ll be okay in just a few minutes. Identify what you’re feeling at that moment, but separate that emotion from your identity..
4. Try time blocking
Time blocking is a great way to build your work-from-home resilience. One of the advantages of working at an office is you can (at least in theory) leave it and go home, and you didn’t have to deal with work on weekends.
That type of environment made your time much easier to manage. That’s not the way it works for most of those working remotely. You have to oversee your time. If you’re not careful, you’ll find yourself working too much and neglect yourself and those closest to you. Or, you’ll not get enough done during the week and wind up working weekends. Either way, it’s not a good thing.
One of the best ways to manage your time is a technique called “time blocking.” Creating blocks of time in your schedule to accomplish specific tasks allows you to have an overall view of your day.
This way, you can prioritize your tasks into separate blocks of time and tackle things in smaller chunks without stressing out and becoming overwhelmed.
If you’re working remotely, it’s a good idea to create blocks of time to protect your free time as well. If you’re a workaholic like me, this is a significant way t ensure having a better work-life balance.
5. Schedule In “Me Time.”
One often overlooked fact is that when you’re working from home, you’re never really “off. That’s because you’re present, and you’re available to assume tasks, run errands, or take care of children or aging parents. To relax, you’ll have to schedule time into your day so you can relax.
Simply scheduling in a few uninterrupted moments each day can do wonders for your mental and emotional wellbeing and boost your work-from-home resilience .
6.. Maintain Your Core Values
Working remotely can leave you feeling somewhat distant from others. Even if you have a network like Slack, you can still seem like you’re working in a vacuum. Proximity makes a massive difference in the five social skills: empathy, cooperation, listening, and verbal and written communication.
For some, it’s easy to become emotionally detached. That is why maintaining a robust set of core moral values that allows you to exercise a spirit of goodwill and benevolence toward those you work with remotely and in person.
7. Find and imitate a resilient role model.
Do you know someone who can work exceptionally well from home? Find out they schedule their day, what habits they’ve developed, and how they accomplish tasks faster. Then, use them as a “work from home” role model.
You may know some negative role models who have traits to avoid as well. These can provide you with a wealth of information on what not to do if you want to increase your work-from-home resilience.
8. Maintain a supportive social network.
Working remotely can be lonely. One of the most challenging things about working remotely is establishing solid supportive relationships. Don’t depend on social media to provide the depth of support you need. To be resilient, you need a robust social network to provide a “safety net.” This means regularly talking on the phone, Facetime, or other video app or having a face-to-face conversation. You won’t develop strong resilience by trying to do it alone.
9. Prioritize physical fitness and well-being.
For some of us, the more we work in our home office, the easier it is to stay inside and neglect opportunities to get outside. Sure, you might have hated that drive to work, dealing with traffic and the bad weather, but it forced you to get outside twice a day. Again, this helped you mentally separate being at “work” and “at home.”
Like “time blocking” I mentioned earlier, blocking out time for taking a walk can help you mentally switch from home to work and vice versa.
Plus, regular exercise improves your mood, thinking, emotional regulation, immunity to disease, and overall self-esteem. Getting fit will help you overcome traumatic situations and recover faster. And, if you’re a little more sensitive to anxiety, exercise can help you overcome the fear associated with physical symptoms related to fear and gradually decrease their intensity.
10. Self-Discipline and Life-Long Learning
To create more work-from-home resilience, you must change the way your brain works. And that requires self-discipline accomplished through training. The authors of Resilience: The Science of Mastering Life’s Greatest Challenges suggest that building emotional intelligence, moral integrity, and physical endurance can all help deflect stressors.
Here’s a great quote from their book. It’s powerful.
“In our experience, resilient people are lifelong learners, continually seeking opportunities to become more mentally fit.”
“Indeed, a 2004 study by Cathie Hammond at the University of London concluded that lifelong learning was associated with “…a range of health outcomes; well-being, protection and recovery from mental health difficulties, and the capacity to cope with potentially stress-inducing circumstances; … self-esteem, self-efficacy, a sense of purpose and hope, competences, and social integration. Learning developed these psychosocial qualities through extending boundaries, a process which is quintessential to learning.” (Hammond, 2004)”
11. Identify, Use, And Grow Your Strengths.
If you want to develop greater work-from-home resilience, it’s helpful to know the strength of your mental, spiritual, and social characteristics. Once you can identify and evaluate them, you can strengthen your weaker attributes and maintain the stronger ones. Armed with that knowledge, you’ll be better equipped to approach difficult situations.
12. Set A “Quitting Time.”
One of the best things you can do for yourself and those in your household is to have a definite quitting time. It’s easy to become so focused or so tired that you just keep plowing along and lose track of time. This is unhealthy for you physically and can create stress for those living with you. When working at an office, there were signals that it was time to quit and go home. Work in the office begins to wind down. You hear chit-chat in the hallway, doors opening and closing. However, you don’t have those signals at home. So, set a definite quitting time and take back your time at home.
I hope you’ve enjoyed this post on the best strategies for work-from-home resilience. Building resilience can help you improve your quality of life and allow you to live healthier and happier.
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