While you have more personal time and family time to enjoy when you have a remote job, maintaining work-life balance can be extra challenging. When you’re working at home, you’re surrounded with distractions. And it becomes a bit more difficult to draw the line between your job and other things that matter such as your hobbies and family. So, how do you separate work from personal life when working remotely?

Schedule parallel working hours
Family time is important but when you work from home, it can be hard to define the boundaries especially when there’s a deadline to meet. The secret? Schedule parallel working hours. For example, your partner is working from 9am to 6pm or your kids are at school from 7am to 4pm. If you can, align your work schedule according to the time your family also spends time at work and school. This will help make yourself free of work obligations by the time they’re home. This would be an excellent way to ensure that things are getting done while being able to spend adequate quality time with the family.

Create a routine and stick to it
Whether or not you have the privilege to work on a flexible schedule, it would still be helpful to follow a daily routine. Avoid working on random hours of the day based on your availability. Establish a routine and decide on the schedule you’ll be dedicating for work as well as for your personal needs.

For instance, you can dedicate 4 hours of your time for work in the morning after getting breakfast. Then take a break for an hour so you can have lunch and take care of other stuff. Then finish the rest of your work afterwards. By creating a routine, you’re developing habits that can help you strike a balance between work and personal life so you don’t end up compromising any of the two.

Be mindful of your start and end points
It’s easy to lose track of time when you’re working remotely. It can also be tempting to continue working beyond your shift especially when you have too much workload and have nothing else to do. However, doing so may make you get burnt out. Be sure to set start and end points on your daily work day and strictly follow it. Productivity may be important but you will be less productive and less efficient if you’re stressed and burnt out at work. Again, work-life balance is always important.

Indeed, one of the biggest challenges when working from home is to stop yourself from working way beyond the hours you’re supposed to. But remember that it’s crucial to separate work from personal life to keep yourself, healthy, happy and productive!