Stress and Working from Home

People who work from home end up being more stressed because they don’t have the place to escape the pressure that accumulates from the work place.  This is one of the common complaints of self-employed people who simply don’t know when to stop working.  An advantage of the regular 9am-6pm staff is that they have the luxury of ‘leaving’ their work behind in the work place to spend their non-working hours including public holidays completely for themselves.  During these hours, the 9-6 worker can completely forget about what happened in their work place and completely detach from the stress and the pressures of their work.  This story is not the same for some who are either self-employed or those who hold positions with tremendous responsibilities.  These are the people who would usually complain that 10 hours at work is not enough to fulfill their day’s tasks and responsibilities.  What usually happens here is that some of them take their work home and that is when the stress multiplies in their lives.

This behavior of taking work home takes the form of having subtle thoughts about work to the more obvious behaviors of bringing their computers and their entire files home with them.  Some literally don’t bring anything home from the office but they spend their time away thinking and worrying about their work.  This subtle form of taking work home drives the person to allow stressful thoughts about work to dominate their consciousness even while sleeping!  On the other hand, people who bring their files and laptops to their home barely get enough sleep; and when they do, they wake up the next day only to go back to their work place!  Even computers and office machines need some rest to cool down; if not from home, where else can we get it?

When you treat your work as integral to your life, you will have to love your work.  Stress is multiplied when one brings work home because home is supposed to be the place where we get our rest.  Home is supposed to be the place where we find our family and life.  It’s bad enough that some people have to bring their work to their home but some even work in their bed rooms.  I personally know some people who even work with their laptops on bed!  What happens here is that we go to the work place, we build up stress (cortisol and adrenaline, which causes fatigue, build up in our system) and we go home and add more stress!  In our society today, it is of no wonder why more and more cases of burn out and stress are emerging.

Home should be a place where our body and mind should be programmed to slow down and relax.  It shouldn’t be a place where stress hormones are produced and are piled up in our system; we already have places outside home to do that for us.  The problem with working at home is that we programme our mind and body to function at a pace it does when we are in the work place.  This deprives our body and mind the rest it needs to recuperate for the battle of the work place the next day.  Home is a place for us to rest and find peace.  If one really has to work at home, make sure that you don’t work in your bed room.  Programme your mind and body to slow down and relax every time you see your bed room.  When you enter your bed room, there should be no more talk about work, no more thinking about work, and no more worrying about work.  Give yourself this time, have a good night’s dream and get your quality sleep.  You deserve it!  This will enable you to wake up fresh and ready for the next day’s battle at the work place.

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