People who work remotely either all the time or just periodically will have to deal with anxiety that they don’t have in the physical workplace. Their home becomes their workplace, and that can create its own issues, as wonderful as the notion of working from home can be. How do these workers cope with anxiety created by their remote work situation? We have some suggestions to offer that may help.

Distractions Should Be Eliminated

When working from home, there can be many distractions that interrupt the work day. What those distractions are will depend on what an individual’s remote workplace is like, but these could include children, pets, the home phone, visitors, and more. Even the decor in the home can be distracting when someone is trying to work at home.

What helps is to arrange work hours around the rest of your life, if possible. Try to do most of your work when your family is busy and out of the house. You can also set aside some time to work in the night after children have gone to bed and after visitors are less likely to stop by and the phone is less likely to ring.

It also helps to have a designated workspace that is away from the rest of the house. It can be closed off by a door or a curtain, but there needs to be a separation between your workplace and the rest of the house, especially if other people will be at home while you are working.

So, location and scheduling can help with minimizing distractions, but you should also consider rearranging the workplace so that it is not distracting. Get rid of pictures, knickknacks, the core, and other items that could pull you away from your work or make your mind wander. The workplace can have personal mementos, but it should be mostly work focused.

Keep to a Routine

A lot of anxiety is created when there is no system or sense of order to the workday. You can get distracted or get off track if you don’t have a routine, so that is why it is so helpful to establish your working routine for each day, modifying it as necessary.

Anxiety is often created by not getting enough done, so sticking to a routine can help. You can make up a schedule for each day to keep you on track and ensure that you get down what you need to get done. This will keep you focused and ensure that you waste little time, leaving you less opportunity to feel anxious.

You may need to modify the routine as your workplace changes, but still try to have some routine that you establish at least at the beginning of the day. If you can do that, you will cut down on many reasons to feel anxious.

Get Help with Chores

When you are at home, you may think about all the housework that you would like to do. There may be things that need to be done, but you will need to stay focused on work. So, in order to stress less and feel less anxious, just get some help for some of the bigger jobs.

One suggestion would be to hire professional house cleaning services for a clean, fresh, and welcoming home. They can help you with the housework so that you can focus on your job. This is a service you may be able to use periodically to give yourself more time to work and less to stress about.

You could use other hired services as well, like landscaping services to do the yardwork for you. Mowing the lawn, cutting the bushes, raking the leaves, and other tasks outside the house could keep you busy for hours each week and really pull you away from being productive. You can get stressed about all of that work that is piling up, and to avoid that, you can hire someone to do the landscaping for you.

Look for opportunities to give some of the jobs that need to be done to other people instead of trying to do them yourself. If you try to take every responsibility on yourself, you will be stressed and be less likely to get everything completed.

Take Breaks as Needed

There are two types of extreme people who work at home- those who take lots of breaks and get very little done and those who work relentlessly and get lots done. The latter person will be productive, but they will also be stressed. They will be trying to get so much down that they fail to take care of themselves.

Because no one is there to remind them to take breaks and to urge them to be good to themselves, they will often work through lunch breaks and coffee breaks and stress themselves out by making their bodies and minds tired.

Make sure that you take all the mandated breaks and then the breaks that your body and mind need as well. If you simply take a moment and look away from your screen for about a minute once every half hour, that will calm your mind and release some strain from your eyes.

If you take a moment and just walk around outside, it will help to relax your nerves, get your blood pumping properly, and ease some of the stress you might feel. You can reduce anxiety in your work life by taking advantage of your environment and going outdoors or away from your workstation once every couple of hours, or as often as you need.

Closing Thoughts

There will be anxiety that you deal with as you work from home. It may not seem like a very stress-inducing setting, but it can be at times. These are a few ways you can reduce that anxiety and make your remote job a bit easier on yourself. We hope our suggestions make a positive difference in your life.