Weekends vs weekdays

On Friday I listened to Make Me Smart with Kai Ryssdal and Molly Wood and Kai was wondering how people who work from home differentiate between the weekend and regular old work days. I realized as I thought about it that I have three things I do to help me out and it may help out other folks who are newly entering the world of remote work.

I’ve been working remotely, either full time employed or freelancing, for eight years, and this is probably the part of my routine that’s taken the longest to figure out. But finally in the last year, after returning to being a full time remote employee, I think I’ve figured out what works for me.

First off, weekends equal no alarm clock. I live on the west coast but work with a lot of east coast folks and so I get up a bit earlier than my natural body clock wakes me during the week. I like some time in the morning before starting in on work and this is the best way for me to get that time and also not feel overly behind when I start my work day.

Second, I shut my work machine down on weekends and put it in a closet. I know, it sounds a bit drastic, but my office is also where I do yoga and stow crafing supplies and I’m not lying when I say the out of sight out of mind thing has been very helpful to me.

Finally, I stay off of screens for most of the weekend. This is a general mental health thing, but it also means that I’m in a different mode than work. The reason I’m writing this on Monday is because I didn’t want to open up my personal laptop over the weekend.

Finding some ways to make some separation between work time and regular home time is different for everyone, so play around and find what works well for you, especially if this is all new.