Working from home: perks and perils

Working from home has a lot of perks, but surely has perils, too.
I’ve been working exclusively from home for a year now and I love it, but it’s not been that bed of roses all the time. Here are some perks and perils worth sharing:

Perk: There is no time wasted commuting
Peril: feeling alone and left behind
I miss listening to music while driving, talking to the receptionist and my office neighbors, having lunch in the same restaurant during the week, etc. The ways I found to cope with it is having an online group of friends that work from home too, so we can chat every day, tell some jokes, share information. I also kept a routine of going to Pilates lessons twice a week (before the pandemic) and used to meet some friends to have lunch. Now, we’ve adapted that to ‘virtual coffee’ meetings.

Perk: Being comfortable at home
Peril: Taking the problems from work to home (and vice versa)
I don’t take my laptop or other materials out of my home office, meaning that, if I am in any other part of the house, it’s time to relax or be with my family.
I even created a code to self educate me: I change my clothes when it’s time to “go home” 😉

Perk: You can eat healthier
Peril: Skip proper meals and live on snacks
As you can reach your kitchen whenever you want, you can end up having snacks all the time, skipping proper meals.
My strategy here was reserving time on my schedule to prepare the meals and clean the kitchen daily from 11 am to 2 pm.
I know that cooking every single day is not an easy task so you should look for an alternative that best suits your needs, such as ordering food, buying precooked food, cooking on the weekends, etc but avoid skipping your meals.

Perk: Having a more flexible schedule
Peril: Having no quitting time
When you are working in the office, you check your watch several times during the day to see if it’s already time to go home. However, being at home it’s easier to say “let me finish only this task” and then you spend hours doing that task and many others.
As I use Google Calendar to control my classes and other appointments, one strategy I found was setting up a notification for “time to go home”.

I also recommend this article from Business Insider in which some professionals discuss the perks and perils of working from home from different perspectives.

Drop me a line! I would love to hear from you: what are your strategies to keep a good work and life balance when working remotely?