During this pandemic, we have been working from home and it has been quiet stressful for all of us to deal with such overwhelming situation.
Working from home for many, doesn’t have fixed timings or boundaries, or more work for some, or managing multiple other responsibilities along with the work for some. Deadlines, meetings, presentations, webinars and other personal things that need attention, can cause lot of stress.
As it is said, anything in access is harmful, so is stress.
Let’s see what are some common problems/difficulties that one faces when one works from home, how it is related to stress and what can be done to manage the stress
Difficulties that one faces while working from home:
- Managing your own schedule and time
Working from home doesn’t have fixed working hours for most of the people. Having flexible working hours can interrupt with your personal life as you may not be able to spend time with your loved ones even if you are at home. Not having work-life balance can cause stress as one may not get adequate time to recreate with oneself as well as with the family. Also then we cannot control social media use and that interferes with sleep patterns and that affects our work and that causes stress, it’s all interconnected.
- Distractions
When you work in office, your environment is very structured and formal. When you work from home, you are surrounded with so many distractions including your books, bed, etc. or anything that you may keep in your room that you like to do in your free time.
- Communication & Co-ordination Challenges
With the growing use of internet and meeting rooms, there comes disadvantages to technology too. Many time the internet connection, many times irregularity of attention by the client or team members or sometimes just lack of proper office setup can bring about this challenge. Also lack of human touch, face-to-face meetings can be difficult to bring each one on the same page.
- Social Isolation
We all have our own ways of dealing with the stress we face while we are working in office either by spending time with friends or with our loved ones or family or just by ourselves outside the house and office setups. We all have our weekend plans ready by the end of the week or we take trips and plan them, we go for movies outside the house. All of these being hampered due to the pandemic, makes you want to have social interaction.
- Working in House Clothes
Since the lockdown and work from home, we all have been working in our house clothes because we don’t need to be seen while we work. If there is a video call, we just dress up from the top and not the bottom. We all are conditioned to feel relaxed, lazy and calm while we are in our house clothes. This could cause a battle in seriously working and being lazy and falling prey to distractions which then could increase deadlines.
- Boundaries
When you work from home, you have other household duties, or look after your children, while you have to fulfil your duties as an employee, This can be a tough routine to decide boundaries. Creating a structure in your relationship and schedule becomes vital when you work from home.
- How does this cause Stress?
Constantly being exposed to electronic device gives one a lot of stress because directly or indirectly, everyone is absorbing the information, either good or bad from the social media. This affects your mood, sleep pattern, interaction with other people and also how you see the world.
Since lot of above mentioned points revolve around deadlines, pressure, boundaries, personal time, family time, isolation, etc. it can cause stress in your life.
Being under pressure, facing big changes, worrying about something, not having control over the situation or outcome of the situation, times of uncertainty, etc. are some of the things that causes stress. We face these when we are at home and when we are working from home.
Can anything be done to manage Stress?
Of-course
There are ways we can manage stress, let’s see them
- Identify the main source or sources of stress in your life
- Try to avoid the stressors that you can avoid
- Accepting that certain things are not in your control can let go off more stress than you can think!!
- You could also alter the stressful situation, i.e changing the way you communicate and operate in daily life
- You could adapt to the stressor by changing your expectations and attitude
- Try meditation or other relaxing techniques, that calms you down and lowers your stress
- Create a to-do list of tasks you can do in a day without getting stressed and try to stick by the list
- Accept that saying ‘no’ is okay if it’s causing excessive stress
- It’s okay to set boundaries that help you to keep stress away from you, because caring for oneself is not the same as being selfish
- Have a balanced nutritious diet, it can give you better health
- Exercise, it can release happy hormones that helps reduce the stress
- Make time for doing things that you like, for example: your hobbies
- Try journaling, writing down can give you an insight on stress and stressful situations
- Connect with your loved ones, even if it is via video call, it’s good to see their faces and hear from them
- Prioritise your tasks, do the high priority items first so that the same tasks don’t give you stress by the end of the day
- Come up with your own way to manage stress, for example: taking deep breaths can calm you down instantly, relieving the stress at that moment itself.
