Congratulations! You’ve made it through another week. If you’re still working from home and you’re still annoyed by that, this week’s post may offer some more clarity as to why that might be the case. If you would like to read (or re-read) the first two posts in this series, they can be found here:
A large part of what feels unnatural about working at home is context. There is a large amount of variability in the degree to which context matters to any given person in any given situation. Some people can wear “Wednesday” underwear on a Monday without batting an eye, and some people think eating pancakes for dinner is chaotic. There’s no right or wrong approach here—it’s a matter of personal preference. We do tend to form associations based on context, though, and may find it unusual, undesirable, or uncomfortable to encounter something outside of its typical context.
For instance, it’s common to reserve certain activities, music, fragrances, and foods/flavors (and, for this author, an ever-expanding collection of festive socks) for a particular holiday or season and to feel that something just isn’t right when we happen upon them during a different part of the year. Did you ever have the experience when you were younger (perhaps young enough to think teachers don’t exist outside of the classroom) of seeing a teacher in public on an evening or weekend? Was it unsettling? Context. Wearing a bathing suit at the beach? Normal. Wearing a bathing suit to a funeral? People will have questions. Context.
For some people, this concept applies to the functions that are considered appropriate in different rooms or areas in their homes. There are, again, individual differences from household to household, but within each abode, there are often established norms, even if they are unspoken. For example, we cook in the kitchen, eat dinner at the table, watch television on the couch, and brush our teeth in the bathroom. We are advised to “protect” our bedrooms from intrusive outside influences (including blue-lit screens) by limiting the activities we perform there. But what happens when the place where we change clothes, sleep, or have sex is now also the place where we have to “report for duty” at the beginning of a workday? What if we have to “set up shop” on the same surface where we are used to doing nothing more than playing cards with our loved ones and eating pancakes for dinner?
Photo by Charles Deluvio via Unsplash
Not everyone has a home office or even a desk at home, and even those who do may not have set up those spaces to accommodate multiple people (spouses, partners, housemates, etc.) working (or in the case of kids, studying and attending classes) at home at the same time. A space that was adequate for writing an occasional paper or managing emails on evenings or weekends might not be equipped to serve as an appropriate setting in which to conduct video calls with supervisors, colleagues, or clients. If you didn’t anticipate that you would ever have to perform work-related tasks at home, it’s perfectly understandable and reasonable that you don’t have an exact replica of your workspace at home.
In addition to the potential logistical issues, the occurrence of work tasks and non-work tasks within the same physical spaces may create an uncomfortable overlap that interfere with “normal” functioning in either domain; numerous distractions at home (whether from a child who needs your assistance, the stack of lunch dishes waiting to be washed sparking an If You Give a Mouse a Cookie style cleaning spree of the entire kitchen, or the temptation to take “just a quick nap” becoming too great to resist when you can see your bed over the screen of your laptop) can interrupt your concentration and impact your efficiency and productivity when you are trying to focus on work.
Photo by Pawel Czerwinski via Unsplash
Conversely, during those times when you are trying not to focus on work, the new presence of reminders of your job at home can make this difficult. Without the clear signals that your work day has ended and it’s time to go home (because you’re already there and chances are no one is going to shut the lights off on you if you don’t leave), that stack of papers and the sense of anxiety that unfinished work might stir up can be hard to ignore when it’s right there in front of you. Remember the “your bedroom should be a sanctuary that you must protect” advice? That sanctuary feeling may be in short supply when you find yourself trying to perform typically private activities—waiting to fall asleep at night, changing your clothes, plucking your eyebrows, engaging in physical and/or emotional intimacy with your partner or yourself—and you can see the spot four feet away where you had a video call with your boss earlier in the day. If you had already had trouble “leaving work at work” before this pandemic came to be, it stands to reason that it is even more difficult for you now that you are surrounded by tangible cues that remind you of work even when you shouldn’t be “on the clock.”
The reduction, blurring, or complete lack of boundaries may be one of the most challenging aspects of working from home. The process of creating, adjusting, maintaining, and enforcing boundaries can be difficult even in the best of times, but it may be a key to retaining or regaining your mental well-being while working from home, and you may find that the payoff in the long run merits the extra effort now. To learn more about this process, read next Monday’s post about using time to set boundaries. If your experience of the passage of time has been anything like mine during this pandemic, the week between now and then will somehow manage to feel like both twenty minutes and eight years all at once.
MEET THE AUTHOR: ANNA KOZITZKY, LGPC
She specializes in treating interpersonal trauma, particularly related to sexual violence, and is motivated by the idea that if she can’t prevent people from harming each other in the first place, she can at least help out with the healing process after it happens. In addition to serving people who have directly experienced traumatic violence, she also works with supporters of these individuals. Anna also sees clients who are dealing with depression, anxiety, and major life transitions.
She appreciates creators who see and highlight the humor in the absurd elements of humanity (e.g., Marcel Duchamp, Igor Stravinsky, E.E. Cummings) and, where appropriate, considers it helpful to find moments to share laughter with her clients during their sessions. When she’s not working, Anna enjoys making things—especially food and crafts— to nurture her loved ones. She doesn’t just have one sweet tooth; she has 28 of them. To balance out a sense of cynicism brought about by some of the doom and gloom in the world, Anna likes to play pleasant video games like The Sims, Harvest Moon, and Stardew Valley.