How to work guilt-free in times of isolation?

Most of us have just closed the first week of working from home. Many, completely not used to this have found it challenging.

With endless articles being released on productivity hacks and other suggestions for remote work, many have started to implement to-do lists and other ways to turn up the volume of effectivity.

As a remote-worker, I have been through these stages many times before and I decided to take the time to share my thoughts on ways in which you can develop a working from home strategy that does not contribute to feeling guilty or unaccomplished. I also share more helpful tips exclusively with members of my Architecture Masterclass group on Facebook, join here!

First and foremost, lets start by saying that working from home is governed by a completely different set of rules than office work. It demands from you to be self-driven and to be able to focus on your tasks more thoroughly than when working in the office.

With many of you now trying this style of work for the first time, it is quite easy to fall into a trap of feeling unaccomplished after a full day of work.

Just about now, some of you, might be feeling like the first week of working form home has ended and you still have a long list of tasks to do.

In this situation it’s easy to fall into the trap of feeling guilty for not getting things done. This emotion is not useful and can slow down the process of your productivity even further.

So, what can you do about it?

How to handle feelings of letting your team down?

In this article I discuss a few strategies I practice which can help you better manage your expectations from yourself, whiles working from home.

Lets first focus on what other experts say.

Your feelings of dissatisfaction with yourself, which you might be experiencing at the end of your work day, are often a result of rising your bar of expectations from yourself above what is actually realistic.

“Most humans are overly optimistic — we enter the day with an expectation and plan of getting all sorts of things done,” But the trouble is, “we are not grounding our expectations in the reality of the work that we do.” Heidi Grant, the director of research and development for Americas Learning at EY.

A feeling of accomplishment with yourself, and your levels of productivity is very much related to ways in which you can learn to manage your own and other people’s expectations about how much you expect getting done at the end of the day.

Equally it is extremely important to build self-compassion towards the times when you fail to live up to your expectations.

That may sound easy but how to execute this?

Look for ways you can re-frame the situation in your mind

When you find yourself feeling guilty most of the time this happens because of a negative self-talk. In order to conquer these feelings you need to work on realizing that those inner voices are nothing more than just “stories you tell yourself”.

Objectively it is not true that you should feel bad about not accomplishing enough. Understand that, it takes time for you to switch into working from home, and that it is normal to get distracted much easily. By practicing kindness to yourself you will be able to maintain a more positive outlook towards yourself.

Gain perspective onto your productivity

It can also be very helpful to think about factors, which keep you from accomplishing your list. Oftentimes, when we fail to tick off our to-do lists it happens because we diverted our attention into offering our time and energy to others.

Try to replace a question of: “What did I accomplish today?” with “How did I contribute today?”

Recognize your limitations

With todays “growth mindset” mentality it is easy to fall into a trap of contact improvement, which in turn puts additional pressure on our expectations. But, while improvement is always possible it requires you to commit to a goal, find time, energy and recourses, which can help you, accomplish that. Disengage from the things that are less important to you and focus on those, which can benefit you.

Get pro-active

Cultivating a healthy mindset and balanced expectations is really important towards boosting up your productivity and concurring feelings of guilt, but even more important is learning about ways you can make it better.

Right-size your list

One of the ways to manage yourself better is by trying to find out how many tasks you are realistically capable of accomplishing per day and learning to set up achievable expectations. Lengthy lists are unrealistic, so try not to create them altogether.

Focus deliberately

One of the keys to the success of productivity, when tackling your to do list is prioritizing. When you sit down to write your list choose a few things you really need to get done and focus only on these.

Pay attention to things you manage to do and those, which you don’t. If you notice certain items tend to linger on your list, ask yourself what is the difference between what you’re crossing off and what remains?

What is the reason you are not accomplishing the tasks, which seem to stay on your list. Perhaps you just don’t know where to start?

Set boundaries

In times of isolation people have an enhanced need to stay connected which can result in longer and less focused communication practice. With that, you might find yourself wasting your time and energy on things, which are not good for you. Stop people pleasing and set yourself clear boundaries oriented around limiting your tendency of over compromising.

Practice self-appreciation

Stop obsessing about your to-do list instead find pleasure in your work. Instead of fixating on three things you have not managed to achieve, appreciate your accomplishments. Tell yourself: I worked hard today and gave it my best shot.

Be patient

It is easy to fall into the trap of expecting for everything to just happen right here right now. Things take time, especially at times when having to adapt to change.

Understand that work-related feelings of guilt will keep re-appearing and it is a mindful constant practice to tackle them.

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