Decompressing when Working Remotely

Hrishikesh Pardeshi

Hrishikesh Pardeshi

Hello everyone! I wanted to share another article of mine that I blogged about early last year when I made the switch to fully working remotely from home. In the article Decompressing when Working Remotely, I callout the need to book some time to help reinforce the work/home boundary. It becomes too easy to walk out from the home office and straight into family life, and sometimes we'll carry along the work baggage. My solution is to construct a fake commute (in my previous office-life I had a real commute to decompress with). I'm curious what other people are doing to keep the work/home balance?

Here's what our users had to say:

  • Ermira Krasniqi said "Seems to be a great idea! I do something quite similar like preparing plans for the next day but haven’t yet structured it the way you have. It’s more sort of on a casual manner :)"

  • Karthik Sridharan said "Beautiful! 👇 I’m hoping to loop in some regular lunch outings with a remote friend in the neighbourhood who also works in the software domain. I suspect this will help us both get out of the house and provide a listening ear. Really smart decompressing technique Kevin. I am still learning this art and can totally relate to this not being easy at all. I plan to give your suggestions a try immediately. P.S. Subscribed to your newsletter!"

  • Scott Dawson said "I’ve blocked my lunch for years and LOVE how it prevents meetings (most of the time) from being scheduled. I love your decompress idea at the end of the day, but how often to work commitments bleed into that space? How do you defend it? I’ve been taking morning walks on Monday and Friday to bookend the week, and find that the time to listen to a podcast, observe nature, and enjoy music is really beneficial."

  • Kevin Jalbert said "I love your decompress idea at the end of the day, but how often to work commitments bleed into that space? How do you defend it? I actually block it in my work calendar, I set my work hours in Google Calendar as well to account for it. In the event, I link to my post as well ;). So far it has worked out decently well. Sometimes you cannot work around it, and you have to make some exceptions though."

  • Scott Dawson said "Oh, I like linking to it. It’s passive, but explains things well for the uninitiated. Cool!"

  • Justin said "Never thought about blocking off regular times to ensure I have time to decompress. Definitely will try incorporating that into my workflow. One question though, do you ever feel compelled to just ignore that block then when things seem busy or overwhelming?"

  • Kevin Jalbert said "One question though, do you ever feel compelled to just ignore that block then when things seem busy or overwhelming? Yep, I do make a judgment call, although I try to defend it to the best I can."