How to Set Boundaries While Working From Home
Published Feb 2022
Written by Jasmine Williams
Are you working from home or living where you work?
If it’s getting harder to tell the difference, then know that you’re in the same boat as millions of other workers around the world. When you work outside of your home, your home life and work boundaries are pretty straightforward. You have to travel to a different space to do your job, so you know exactly when you need to focus and when you can relax.
When you work from home, this physical separation is a lot harder to achieve, often leading to blurry work-life boundaries. However, it’s not just your physical space you need to consider. There’s also the issue of technology. Many of us work from laptops and smartphones, and the portability of these devices means it’s a lot easier to work when you should be off the clock, like during dinner or when you’re on vacation.
Lastly, there are the boundaries you set with the people in your life. From colleagues Slack-ing you at all hours of the day to kids or pets interrupting your Zoom calls, working from home can often lead you to feel like you need to be available to everyone at all times, which is a recipe for burnout.
What It Means to Have Healthy Work-Life Boundaries
Fortunately, it doesn’t have to be this way. You can work from home and maintain healthy boundaries between your professional and personal life. In fact, doing so can help reduce stress, prevent burnout, and enhance your mental and physical health.
However, before we dive into tactics, it’s useful to understand what setting boundaries at work actually means. As Forbes contributor Shane Snow explains, “At work, having healthy boundaries means taking responsibility for your own work and results—and working in a way that helps others to solve their own problems, instead of taking responsibility for them yourself.”
Setting boundaries with the people around you means “taking responsibility for your own actions and emotions, while not taking responsibility for the actions and emotions of others. It means understanding that you don’t have to take on everyone’s burdens—and you can still be a good person if you say no.”
In other words, setting a boundary doesn’t mean you’re cutting a person out of your life or giving people ultimatums. The purpose of a boundary is to protect your time, space, and energy so you can show up as your best self. Healthy boundaries should support your needs and the needs of your colleagues, clients, and housemates.
10 Signs You Need Better WFH Boundaries
Not entirely sure whether your boundaries could use a tune-up? Ask yourself the following questions:
Do you often work from your living room couch, dining room table, bed, or other personal spaces?
Do you check your work email on the weekends or after hours?
Do you feel like you spend all day responding to people’s messages?
Do you feel like other people’s work takes priority over your own?
Do you feel like you’re always the “fixer” and have to save everyone around you?
Do you always try to accommodate your colleagues’ or clients’ requests (e.g., squeezing in new projects, working on tighter deadlines, making extra changes, etc.)?
Do you feel like you’re “always-on” and need to be accessible to everyone around you?
Do you find yourself often biting off more than you can chew and working beyond your capacity?
Do you find yourself forgetting to take breaks during the day?
Do you regularly work on weekends or after you’ve “logged off” for the day?
If you answered ‘yes’ to most of these questions, keep reading, my friend, because it’s time to enforce some boundaries.
6 Ways to Set Boundaries While Working From Home
1) Define Your ‘No Work’ Zones
We’re turning the cliché ‘create a dedicated workspace’ tip on its head. While it’s helpful to carve out space in your home that’s just for work, you also need to work in a way that feels good for you. If you’re somebody who likes to change up their workspace, working in one spot all the time can feel a little stifling.
Some days, you might want to work from your home office, but other days you may feel like working from the couch in your sweats or from a coworking space, and that’s fine. Flexibility is one of the biggest perks of remote work, so working from your living room or kitchen table from time to time isn’t the end of the world.
Instead, it might be helpful to figure out which spaces in your home are purely for your personal time, i.e. ‘no work’ zones. For example, most experts say you shouldn’t work from your bed, as it can make it harder for you to fall asleep since your brain will think you’re in a place of work.
2) Set Your Work Hours
Whether you prefer to stick to a traditional 9-to-5 schedule or work in the middle of the night, it’s a good idea to schedule in your work hours into your calendar—and stick to it.
“I start work at the same time every day and finish at the same time,” says Hanna McCormick. “Having the set hours really helps me to create a boundary between ‘work’ and ‘home.’”
Once you’ve set your work hours, make sure your colleagues, clients, and housemates know when you’re on and off the clock. Set yourself as away or unavailable on chat apps like Slack, and if you use a scheduling app like Calendly, make sure that people can’t book meetings with you outside of work hours.
3) Have Clear Expectations
When you work remotely, sometimes people think you’re more available than you are. You might be bombarded with requests to hop on last-minute calls or run errands during work hours, but as member Megan Wagner aptly puts it, “Just because you're working from home, doesn't mean you're a 24/7 convenience store!”
To make sure you don’t fall into the “always-on” trap, make sure that everyone you work with knows the following:
Your availability: When are you working and when are you not?
Your accessibility: When can people book calls or meetings with you? When can people expect a response from you?
Preferred communication: Do you prefer people reach you by phone, Zoom, email, etc.? Are you okay with people texting you or sending you work-related DMs?
Your capacity: Are you able to take on more work beyond the scope of a project or outside of your job description? If not, what happens?
