How to work up and wind down in your at-home office

Finding a place where work stops and home begins can be crucial to productivity and can help keep motivation high in these difficult times. Here are a few tips that our dedicated team have been using to maintain their incredible work efforts.

Schedule in your downtime

Recognise your own productivity throughout the week and reward it. By picking some short relaxation activities and some longer ones, you can scatter them throughout your week. A short relaxation activity might include making a cup of tea and leaving your work space to drink it, while a long one might be baking some cookies or listening to a podcast. These can be scheduled into your evenings or lunch breaks and allows you to have full control and balance in your working week.

DIY Tasks

Whether you’re new to DIY or a seasoned professional, it could be a good time to learn a new skill with the tools you already have in your home. If possible, try renovating your usual workspace. Tones of yellows and greens promote a relaxed atmosphere in an office.

Create physical boundaries

The human brain is extremely responsive to patterns. In the same way that spending all day in a bedroom can affect sleep quality, working all day in a living room can ruin your relaxation time. Try to limit your work to one particular room. Many Barratt Homes properties have dedicated studies. However, you could convert a lesser-used room in the house such as a dining room or a spare bedroom into a make-shift office to distinguish between work and leisure.

Think about your expectations

Regardless of whether you have just landed your dream job or have been in the same position for decades, it’s only natural to want to impress. This is probably what got you where you are, or you might be relying on it to get you where you’re going. It’s important to remember that we are all human and balancing work, social and family life can be a demanding task for anyone. If you have work emails sent directly to your phone try scheduling specific out-of-office times to respond where possible.

For some people, working from home is already part of everyday life but for others, it’s a brand new experience. Whether you welcome the change, or cannot wait to get back into the office, remembering the important things in life will help you tailor your work-from-home experience for the better.

Whether you are new to working from home, or have been doing it for years, a gentle reminder to unwind can certainly go a long way. Hopefully by following the same tips that our team uses, you can find yourself flourishing in your work from home situation.

 For more information about BARRATT HOMES visit www.barratthomes.co.uk.