I chatted to a chap recently who had just resigned from his job of thirty years.
When I asked him why he had decided to leave, he said “I realised that WFH had become LAW”.
LAW? Living At Work.
This really made me sit up, and wonder how many other people also felt that they’d somehow lost the balance and were now effectively living at work. Homeworking always came with a health warning around the importance of distinctly separating work and domestic time. But during the lockdown, when the number of people working from their homes increased exponentially, did this message get through to absolutely everyone?
And even those of us who heeded the advice and carefully and consciously separated our work time from our family time, are we still as stringent with our rules, or over time have bad habits started to creep in?
There is an abundance of advice and opinion available to help us to achieve a good balance. But perhaps now – as WFH and hybrid working are becoming the new normal – it’s a good time for us to just review our own lives.
Ask yourself, has working from home started to feel more like living at work? If so, maybe this is a good time to restore the balance.