Seems like a pretty redundant concept, right? Quite the contrary... working FROM home is the same as working FROM an office or working FROM your place of employment. Working AT home is the same no matter where you perform the bulk of your work. It's putting in the extra time and neglecting to spend time with your loved ones or avoiding going out at night because you're "stuck" at home working.
Separation of work and home is fairly simple when you have a designated "place" to work that's outside of your home. When your place of work IS your home, things can get a little more complex. It's important to realize that regardless of WHERE you work, you still need to allow yourself to have a personal life. Your family still needs you to be present and your productivity levels will actually improve if you allow yourself to take a break.
So how can one do this? It's so easy when all you need to get your work done is a computer to just constantly be sucked in as soon as a new email pops up on your phone. It took me months of arguing with my husband about my working "too much" to realize that it wasn't benefitting anyone for me to be looking at my life as being constantly "on call".
The first thing I did to "fix" my overarching work schedule, was create an ACTUAL schedule. Granted, depending on your industry of work your schedule may not quite reflect the typical "9-5" standard, but it's important for your own sanity, your family and your clients to know when to expect that you will be working and when you are NOT working.
Next, stop treating your job like a hobby. Your job is exactly that, your job. I wish for you and PRAY for you that you enjoy your job as much as you would enjoy a hobby... but it's critical that you realize that your job requires dedication and, in most cases, routine. It is so easy when working from home to put off clocking in until after you vacuum the floors, do the grocery shopping, fold the laundry, weed the garden, etc. etc. etc. The trouble with this, is that you spend all day putting off work to take care of household chores, and then at night when your family is home, you're stuck finishing the work you put off all day.
Another thing I have found incredibly helpful for making sure I'm spending time with my family when they're home, is to ensure we have dinner as a family. We either cook meals together (which I plan in advance to save us from the last minute "let's just have cereal for dinner" nights), go out to eat as a family, or plan a dinner with our parents/siblings/close friends/ etc. We make mealtime a priority. No computers allowed. No cellphones allowed. We spend time with each other.
Along these same lines, we have begun a nightly "technological shutdown". After a certain point, technology gets turned off. This prevents me from checking those late night emails that flow in and feeling the need to jump on the computer right away to take care of it. If I happen to see an email come in on my phone (because let's face it... sometimes you just have to Pinterest yourself to sleep), I am way less likely to feel like I need to take care of it right away if I know I have to go fire up the computer and wait for it to restart. I simply flag the email in my inbox, and get to it when I clock in the next morning.
Finally, don't let yourself become a hermit. It is SO INCREDIBLY EASY to sit at home on the couch, wearing your pajamas, not brushing your hair, working on the computer all day. This is dangerous. Not only for your physical health, but also for your family health AND your mental health. Inclusion is a basic need of humans. By forcing yourself to get dressed every day, do your hair and make-up, go for a walk, go to the gym and SCHEDULE recurring social gatherings with other people, you allow yourself the human interaction we (almost) all instinctively crave and you force yourself to step away from your computer.
It's tough, especially when first starting out, to force yourself to turn down extra work and risk upsetting your new client by saying you'll get to something in the morning instead of right away, but in the long-run... it's critical to nourish your relationships with those closest to you and to allow yourself some "me-time" without feeling like you can't relax until all the work is done.
Working from home is WONDERFUL... but don't let yourself fall victim to always working AT home.
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