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Procrastination

Work from Home – Revisited

October 12, 2020 by Claire Brandon

A woman working from home during 2020

This week, let’s check back in about working from home. You might be hitting your 7-month mark of working from home and many of us are experiencing burnout from the redundancy of working from home. I’m putting together a few tips on ways to stay refreshed while working from home.

How To Deal With Working From Home

Feeling grateful for working from home.

As a physician, I feel very lucky every day to be able to help my patients. I also feel incredibly grateful that I can do this work from the safety of my home without being in the hospital or having to wear PPE every day to protect myself in the hospital. It’s worth taking a moment when you feel burned out to feel grateful about the benefits and safety of working from home. 

Creating the atmosphere that makes you most efficient. 

  1. Define your workspace. Even if you don’t have a desk, pick one or a few spaces where you’ll plan to do the majority of your work. Define them as places where you’ll be at peak focus for especially tough tasks versus 
  2. Not working in relaxing places. Avoid your bed and couch, where you tend to relax if possible. By avoiding these spaces of relaxation we preserve them as places to wind down, which you especially need when you’re working from home.
  3. Take breaks as you would have at work. Snack break, fresh air break, coffee break. Try to keep up with taking some breaks even if that is just stretching or getting a glass of water. At home we’ve lost some sense of that and it’s worth planning that out between your meetings.

Plan your day accordingly. 

It might feel tough to plan out your day especially when random meetings and calls pop up. However, if you at least try to sketch out your day, by the hour or half hour, you can try to schedule things out in a way that helps you feel that you can keep progressing in your day, even if timing gets a little or a lot off track.

Take advantage of healthier habits. 

Do you remember thinking to yourself, I wish I didn’t have to get take out for lunch/dinner all the time? Maybe you wished you could have coffee from a ceramic mug or focus on finally trying to eat a lower inflammation diet (low/no gluten or dairy).

Now is the time to try this out. Meal planning even if you’re at home is still worthwhile by making things at the start of the week and putting it into containers can save time and make healthy eating a no-brainer. At the same time, planning your workouts remains incredibly important. It might feel that you don’t need to wake up until right before your first meeting of the day, but if you were a morning workout person, try to get back to that, even if it’s at home.

Could you fit in a 20 min workout at lunchtime now that you don’t have the commute back and forth? Pick a health goal and try to focus on it every time you consider not following through. 

Pick a cut-off time.

Just because you’re working from home, doesn’t mean you need to work from home 24/7. Know when your last meeting is and plan something that causes a cut-off time. Maybe you’ve signed up for an online workout class that you’ve prepaid, or you have a facetime or in-person dinner date with a friend.

Having something that forces you to cut off work is incredibly important to continue not just a physical space difference from work at home, but a mental difference so that you can unwind and relax, preparing yourself mentally and emotionally for the next day.

Follow these ideas and create some of your own. We can breathe life back into working from home and make it our conscious choice rather than something we feel relegated to doing for an unknown amount of time longer. 

If, after reading this, you still feel like you need some help coping with working from home, consider reaching out.

Filed Under: Anxiety, Happiness, Mental Health, Procrastination, Psychiatry, Self-Care, Wellness, Work From Home, Work-Life Balance

Procrastination Station

February 27, 2019 by Claire Brandon

Signs that depict the corner of procrastination and homework

Often find yourself burning the midnight oil? We use it a lot, the idea of procrastinating, sometimes to joke about habits we think we cannot break and sometimes to make ourselves feel better. But what exactly is procrastination and can we break it?

Procrastination by definition is a delay or putting off something we probably know we should do.

It can encompass a wide array of things from going to your doctor’s appointment to finishing a work project. We put it off, try not to think about it, or tell ourselves we have plenty of time, so one more episode of that show we’re watching won’t hurt. But the truth is, at least partially, procrastination usually is found in scenarios that often require a significant amount of work to get the eventual payoff. Defining goals that are really important to us can help keep us on track. If your goals seem difficult to reach, it may be necessary to redefine the outcome or the path to regain motivation.

What thoughts might cross our minds that we tell ourselves to pursue delayed gratification? Maybe some of the following thoughts sound familiar. 

  • You think that you work better under pressure. 
  • You give up believing that you get easily distracted.
  • It’s difficult to prioritize.
  • You blame perfectionism.
  • Estimating the amount of time needed for the task is always a little off.
  • You believe the task will take too much effort. 

These are all examples of distorted thinking. Try calling yourself out on these excuses and ask the questions about how much you actually want the goal you’re going after. And then take steps:

How To Deal With Procrastination

  1. Write down your goals. Putting goals down on paper helps to make them real and easier to visualize. 
  2. Schedule your goals. Schedule time to work on your goals, whether that is going to the gym or spending time practicing a foreign language, putting it in your calendar and setting alarms helps reinforce that you are making it a priority. 
  3. Break it down. Figure out the smaller pieces of your goals so that you don’t feel overwhelmed by the big picture. One step at a time.
  4. Pick a goal that makes you happy. Working on goals is hard. Working on a goal that you think other people would admire or that you think makes you feel more important versus one that is actually meaningful to you is harder. Pick something that excites you and even through the hard work, you’ll have fun.

**This blog is not to be treated as medical advice, please discuss with your physician if you have any concerns.**

Filed Under: Coaching, Mental Health, Procrastination, Psychiatry, Self-Care, Wellness

Personalized NYC Mental Health · Dr. Claire Brandon

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