November 18th, 2021 | Updated on June 28th, 2022
Working from home comes with a lot of benefits — there’s no commuting, no need to pack lunches, and you can often get away with wearing pajama bottoms for most days. It can also come with some incredibly stressful problems.
Find out how you can deal with some of the biggest work-from-home problems.
Tech Disasters
When you work from home, you don’t have an IT team to help you resolve tech disasters. If your computer breaks down or your smartphone gets lost, you’re going to be on your own. You’re going to have to get it fixed — and you’re going to have to foot the bill.
So, to prepare for this problem, you should put an emergency fund together. When you experience a tech disaster, you can use these emergency savings to cover the costs of repairs or replacements right away.
What can you do if you don’t have enough savings? If you don’t have enough savings to cover an emergency expense, you can try to borrow money online through a line of credit — this can be useful when your emergency fund is still new and practically empty.
If you’re approved for a line of credit, you can request a withdrawal within your pre-approved limit and use those funds to cover the emergency expense. Once you’ve resolved that problem, you can manage the repayment process at a steady pace.
Distractions
Your home office is likely full of distractions, like outside noise, disruptive pets and family members that assume your schedule is wide open just because you’re not in a corporate office.
How can you deal with these distractions? First, block out the noise. You can do this with the help of noise-canceling headphones and white noise apps. Second, create boundaries.
It can be a physical boundary, like choosing a room with a closed door to keep pets out during work hours. Or it can be an emotional boundary, like talking to your family members and being firm that they need to respect your work hours.
Overworking
Maybe getting distracted from your work isn’t your problem. Maybe you’re finding that you never get up from your desk.
First, it’s not healthy to overwork yourself. You need to find a good balance between your work and home-life — which can be a challenge when you’ve combined those two worlds with work from home.
Going overboard with your work could push you to burn out and break down. Look at these signs of burnout to see whether you’re suffering from this situation.
The second reason that you shouldn’t do this is that having breaks makes you more productive! You’ll do better work at your desk after spending some time away from it. So, try to incorporate more breaks into your regular workday. How?
- Schedule breaks! Set alarms to remind you to step away from your desk and do something else.
- Give yourself coffee breaks. People do it at the office all of the time! Go to your kitchen, brew yourself a fresh cup and relax.
- Go for a walk around the block.
- Log off when you’re supposed to. Unless you’re scheduled to do overtime, you should clock out at the end of the day. Don’t continue — the work can get done tomorrow.
Don’t let these problems overshadow the benefits of working from home! When you follow these tips, you can make sure the experience is always good.