8 best practices when working from home

There are several best practices that people can follow when working from home to maintain their productivity and well-being:

1. Establish a routine: Set a schedule that includes specific times for starting and ending work, taking breaks, and engaging in other activities.
2. Create a designated workspace: Set up a dedicated workspace in your home where you can work without distractions. Make sure it's comfortable, well-lit, and organized.
3. Dress for success: Although you may not be leaving your home, getting dressed for work can help you feel more professional and motivated.
4. Communicate with your colleagues: Stay in touch with your colleagues and supervisor regularly, whether it's through email, video conferencing, or instant messaging.
5. Take breaks: It's important to take breaks throughout the day to stretch, move around, and recharge. Consider taking a lunch break away from your workspace to give your mind and body a break.
6. Set boundaries: Establish clear boundaries between your work life and personal life, such as turning off work-related notifications outside of working hours.
7. Stay organized: Use digital tools to stay organized, manage your tasks and deadlines, and track your progress.
8. Prioritize self-care: Make sure to prioritize your physical and mental health by taking care of your body through exercise, healthy eating, and getting enough rest. Take regular breaks to recharge your mind and avoid burnout.

By following these best practices, you can maintain your productivity, well-being, and work-life balance while working from home.

In the name of transparency, this was generated by ChatGPT, so I'm going to give my take on some of these points:

Dress for success

Personally, I wear sweatpants and a t-shirt everyday and I think everyone is going to approach this differently. If your company culture is about dressing the part, as if you were in a traditional office, or if it puts you in a "work" state of mind, than sweatpants and a t-shirt might not be for you. Some days you might want to wear a button down or professional clothes (at least from the waist up) to make you feel like you're "at" work, even though you're not, it might be a good idea just to make your work and life feel a bit more separate.

Set boundaries

This is hard to do at companies with a poor culture. Your company should be encouraging a strong work life balance, and if they truly do, don't feel like you're doing anything wrong by taking breaks once in a while and not being available outside of working hours. Speaking of working hours, your company should encourage employees to set working hours, so people know when it's appropriate to reach out to you. And if they do reach out to you outside of working hours, don't feel like you're being a "bad employee" if you don't respond until you get back to those working hours. 

Prioritize self-care

This is related to Setting boundaries. It's critical to take breaks during the day. Make sure you go outside, breathe some fresh air, get some exercise and break up your day so it's not straight work throughout the day. You need to get up and stretch once in a while at the very least. Burnout is something no company wants (or should want), so hopefully they realize you need to take breaks during the day and that they'll trust you can get the work done, regardless of what hours you work or however many breaks you decide to take during the day or night. 

Create a dedicated workspace

Now, who would I be if I didn't touch on this one? Of course Lone Birch offers products to help you do this, but it's important to touch on the "dedicated" keyword. It's important to distinguish a place for work and a place for the rest of your living space. People can get caught up in feeling like whenever they're home, they're at work, but that should never be the case. If you can't use time (i.e. your working hours) as a way to separate work from normal life, than use a dedicated workspace to do that. Really, this relates back to creating a good work-life balance for yourself. 

Conclusion

I'm impressed with what ChatGPT generated for this and I think I'll do more of these, but I'm a big fan of transparency, so I want to at least give my take on some of the points if I want to dive deeper, if I keep using the AI to generate some of these blog posts. 

To conclude, all of this comes down to your company culture. You and the rest of the company decide what the best practices are and you should be an advocate for creating a good work-life balance and making sure everyone understands the distinct separate between work and life. No companies want burnout and employee turnover, so it should be in their best interest to establish these best practices and be examples for the rest of the company. If people are still productive, what's the difference? The difference is happier employees.