One of the struggles of working from home—something many more of us are doing for the first time—is a constant pressure to be present. Your Slack dings, and you feel a nagging sense of guilt if you can’t contribute an answer or participate in a discussion. Conversely, it’s easy to get annoyed when people aren’t being responsive with you.
Even though it’s easy to slack off when working from home (pun unintended), I find that it’s just as easy to keep working, and working, and working, and forget to take any moments for yourself.
This isn’t a problem in a normal office setting. You’d walk out to get lunch, take a lap around the building while waiting for your coffee to cool, or wander over to talk to your favorite colleague about new Animal Crossing strategies or turnip prices. You aren’t chained to your desk eight hours a day, nor should anyone get mad if you act like a regular, social human being every now and then.
But digitally? You still need to shoot the shit with your teammates, because they’re normal people, too—possibly even your friends.
Use Slack to schedule small breaks for everyone
If your workplace uses Slack, and assuming your manager is a reasonable and fun person, I recommend setting up a bot that reminds everyone to take a quick water-cooler break at regular intervals. Whether this is once an hour (yes!) or a few times a day (still fine!), getting your team to put down their not-critical work and engage in some delightful social banter, even if it goes longer than the “allowed” break time, can do wonders for everyone’s morale. To put it in early-2019 terms, this kind of practice sparks joy.
Read the full article @ Lifehacker
Photo by Zachary Nelson on Unsplash
