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Working from home shouldn’t be a chore, but sometimes it can feel that way. Staring at the same four walls day after day soon gets boring.

In this post, we take a look at some of the factors that make working from home a drag and what you can do about them.

Lack Of Work-Life Boundaries

The lack of work-life boundaries when working from home is one of the most annoying aspects of having a career in 2022. Family starts intruding on your workspace, and because you are WFH, your boss is constantly harassing you, asking you to carry on working well into the evening, even though that’s usually family time.

At first, these blurred boundaries seem novel. But over time, they just start to grate. You wish you could go back to the way things always were.

The trick here is to negotiate new rules of the game. Bosses have no problem with people clocking out of the office at 5 pm, but they seem to have an issue with the concept now that people are in their homes.

The trick here is to point out the issue and insist on working hours. If communications are outside working hours, they don’t require a response until the next day.

Lack Of Equipment

Doing work from a home office is okay if you have all the right equipment, but that’s rare. Desks, proper seating, and printing equipment tend to be in short supply when in the domestic environment.

One option is to simply go out and buy all the equipment you need yourself, but that hardly seems fair. The other option is to lobby your company to provide it for you, just as they provide regular equipment in the office as a business expense. If your company offices have closed, you may be able to ask to use desks, chairs and so on until it opens again.

Virtual Time-Keeping

You would think that with people working from home, they would have more independence and autonomy. But in some businesses, that hasn’t happened. Digital technology is making the problem even worse. Companies are using web-based tools to make it easier to monitor precisely what their colleagues are doing in real-time.

Naturally, you want some accountability when working from home, but you don’t want your Big Brother boss breathing down your neck while you are trying to concentrate on your work. The solution is to suggest to your employer that they move towards goal-oriented performance supervision if they are worried about staff slacking off. This way, nobody needs to monitor anyone else. Employers simply collect the data they need and then use it to measure worker performance.

Isolation

Isolation is a big issue when working from home. People are alone all the time, unable to interact face-to-face with their colleagues. For extraverts, it’s a disaster. Slack and other messaging tools just don’t cut it.

The problems go beyond one’s mood as well. Social isolation isn’t good for personal well-being and can, in many cases lead to real breakdowns.

One option is to insist on video calls for the morning meeting. Another is to suggest team building exercises every month for everyone in the office. The more cohesion you can build, the less it will feel like you’re working solo.

Solving Technical Problems

When there’s a technical problem in the office, IT support staff quickly descend to resolve the problem. If they’re not there straight away, it’s unusual.

However, when you’re working from home, things are different. Mostly, you have to solve problems yourself.

The trick here is to read more about the problems you’re likely to encounter and how to solve them. You can also ask your firm to continue hiring IT staff remotely and provide them with digital tools that let them take control of your PC if there is a problem.

Problematic Performance

When you work from home, the temptation to procrastinate is extreme. It’s hard to knuckle down and work when there are so many distractions and other things that you could be doing.

The trick here is to find ways to make yourself more conscientious. Think about the negative emotions you experience when you don’t put the effort into your work that you know you should. Usually, it is better to just get on with it.

Difficulty Loving Your Company

It’s easy to love your company while you are there, but when you work from home, it feels like you are in a long-distance relationship. Again, encourage more engagement with your team.

Not every individual works the same way. Some can sit still for hours, gets up only for bathroom breaks. Some has to get up every now and then to be able to think clearly. Doing the office renovation has taught us exactly that. Let’s start with the home-office for messy individuals.

A trip to the hardwood store is a must for this kind of home-office setup. Smooth and even flooring is needed for the messy individuals. Cabinets, lots of storage spaces, boxes. The messy ones need to locate their stuff in order for them to work properly and efficiently.

For this kind of workers, the end justifies the means. It does not really matter how messy and disorganized their work space is as long as they deliver what is being asked of them.

Their essentials: large desks/tables, a simple chair, and storage space.

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On to the next kind of worker… the neat and organized ones.

The home-office setup for the neat and organized individuals should be as “sterile” as their personalities. Nothing out of place on a clean desk, no document unfiled. Paint on walls is neutral, mostly white and gray. Floor is carpeted because you know they like things muted especially the noise.

Their essentials: a neat and simple desk and chair, an in-and-out document tray on top of the desk, magazine boxes, and filing cabinets.

Then, there are home-office setups for individuals always-on-the-move. Those who can’t stay still for long periods of time. These are the workers who need to get up from their workstations every so often to get their adrenaline going. They need to stand up, walk around, go somewhere for short breaks in order to pump their energy to work effectively.

Their essentials: a movable table or desk that they can bring anywhere they feel like working. No need for a chair because they can stand while working or sit down anywhere they can move their table to. Area rugs, couches, pillows, cushions that they can use when they feel like hankering down somewhere to concentrate and work.

Of course, there is always the traditional home-office setup for the old-fashioned workers who can work when seated down on a chunky desk with a swivel chair, a reading lamp on top of the desk, an area rug, a fireplace perhaps, window bringing in natural light behind them, and a closed door when the working hours is up.

We can all relate to these types of home-office setups. We have seen it, we have one or two in our homes, and we have encountered the type of workers who use them. They may be our parents, an older family member, or even you and I.

More and more people are working from home these days, and if you are one of them then you are probably going to need to have a good place to work. If you have the space, then building and creating your own home office is obviously a good way to go, and it is something that you are going to want to consider if you want to work well in your own home. But how do you actually go about creating your own home office? In this article, we are going to take a look at some of the best ways to do so, so that you can start building your business or doing your freelance work from home much more easily.

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Get Creative

One of the things you might want to consider is to find creative ways to make it a true office. There are a lot of things you can do here. If you are looking for some way to be able to brainstorm ideas, then you could use some dry erase paint and create an entire whiteboard out of a wall, and that is something that is really going to be beneficial for getting those ideas flowing. If you put your mind to it, you will be able to come up with other creative ideas like this, and create an office which is going to be as functional and enjoyable as possible.

Don’t Forget Comfort

Even as you try to create a practical office space, you should never overlook the fact that you also need to try and be as comfortable as possible. There are a lot of ways to ensure that you do this, and it is something that you are going to want to think about in many areas. Mostly, it’s about ensuring that you find the right furniture, but it also goes into the design of the room in a more basic sense too. As long as you provide yourself with plenty of space to move around, you are going to be much more comfortable – but be sure not to overdo it on space either, as that can prove to be problematic in other ways, and could mean that you end up feeling it is not really a proper home office at all.

Converting An Outhouse Or Shed

One of the most common ways that people make home offices is by converting an outhouse or shed in the garden into an office. If you have the means, you can do that, even if it means you have to build the shed first. The beauty of this is that it is slightly apart from the rest of hte home, and therefore you are not going to be disturbed or disturb anyone else, and you can make it a kind of sanctuary in this way. That is going to really make a difference to your experience of it, and will help to ensure that you can work from home much more easily.

Working remotely from home has some huge benefits: your coworkers never know if you are wearing pajama pants, there’s no long commute drive to and from work each day, and nobody (besides your family!) cares that you are blasting your music or podcasts throughout your workday.

If you are new to remote working, it may feel like you got shoved into it, and once you set up your VPN and your laptop, you may not have thought much about the space that you occupy for about 8 hours a day. If you are spending that much time in one spot though, you might as well make the most of it! Let’s dig into some ways that you can change your office surroundings, even if your home office happens to be your dining room table.

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1. Have a clean backdrop for any video conferencing. While it’s fun to look at everyone’s backgrounds with pictures of pets and kids, and try to guess which books on the bookshelf behind them they’ve cracked open to read recently, it’s distracting. The space behind you should be relatively boring so that you can keep a good work-life balance: something that can be hard to come by when you’re finding yourself working from home. Below are some tips to help keep distractions behind you to a minimum:

• Remove any personalized items including framed photos that your webcam may show.
• Take down any wall hangings that include quotes on them.
• If you have a large bookcase, aim to have the books be out of focus. (You can do this on some upscale webcams.)
• If you can’t easily blur out the background of your home office, opt for a simple backdrop, either by pinning a bed sheet behind you, or purchasing a simple background. (Zoom, for example, even has free backgrounds to blur out your actual room.)

2. Add some music! Instead of playing music from your laptop speakers, which, let’s be honest, probably aren’t great, consider investing in a real speaker to place beside your desk, or even in that bookshelf behind you that you’re trying hide. The KEF LS50 is a mini bookshelf speaker, so it doesn’t take up a lot of space, but does offer a lot better audio quality than any built-in computer speakers. After all, you can listen to your podcasts all day without anyone judging you. (Just don’t get mad if your productivity decreases a little.)

3. While you may be used to the fluorescent lights of many corporate offices, you don’t have to deal with that at home. In fact, you can choose to have different hued lights depending on the time of day. Add a welcoming lamp on your desk, or floor lamp beside you, and use a bulb that can switch from bright blue-based light in the morning to red-based or warmer tones in the afternoon. There are several bulb options on the market right now that allow you to switch hues, including the very popular Philips brand. Warmer toned lights in the afternoon help your body understand that the sun is getting lower in the sky, and has been linked to improving your ability to sleep.

4. The last thing you want to do when you see your home office it feels like it doesn’t represent you, or fit with the rest of the house. Although it’s advisable to keep your immediate background devoid of personalized things, you can add a cozy blanket to throw on your lap as you work, a fun rug to add color, and desk accessories or even a vase of fresh flowers from the garden. You may be working, you are doing it from the comfort of your home. If you’re craving a creative office space, check out these options. Searching for more inspiration to inspire productivity? Architecture Digest has an amazing selection that can help motivate you to get down to business.

5. Consider purchasing a standing desk. If you’re going to be working at home for the foreseeable future, it might be time to purchase a standing-sitting desk. People who have sitting jobs have an increased risk for diabetes and heart disease, so if you can switch out some of your sitting with standing, you’ll reduce these risks. You’ll want to find an adjustable one so that you can stand or sit depending on your mood; make sure you also have a supportive rug where you stand, since standing on hard surfaces for prolonged periods of time will end up hurting your feet.

Working from home might be a little strange for those of you who have spent years physically interacting with your coworkers, but it certainly does offer more freedom to your surroundings.