Overwhelmed by Work? Me too.

Yes, me too. Let me share my story and what I found to help me embrace it.

I’ve found it difficult to organize my work and other activities for the past year. From work daily in a real office and now, work from home (WFH). Back in March 2020, I feel excited at first. But after few weeks, I found that I more easily felt overwhelmed, stress, and most of us in this world feel it too. The line between work and free time at home is getting blurry.

Illustration by Irina Blok https://www.instagram.com/creativeblok/

This situation stays with me for almost a year now. It’s that should be like this? Keep questioning in my head all day. After talking with others friend of mine, read many tips and tricks on keeping productive-stress-less working from home, or take advice from the expert. I now realized that sometimes our work makes us overwhelmed because we let it be it.

We need a set of rules for ourselves. We need to create our boundaries and our own system. That’s all to make ourselves away from getting overwhelmed by working from home.

1. You’re in complete control of your work life. Yes, we all have roles we do in life, other than work, of course, and that need our attention too. And, put in our mind, “works have a nasty habit of taking these roles away from us because we let it be it.” So we need to create our own boundaries by setting the time; when we on/off for work, set the notification off by the end of the day, etc. You do have control!
2. Communicate to your boss or your co-work if you need help. In this current situation, without full realization, our employer makes us working more than we should, push us to the limit, and make us work more for the sake of survival mode. All companies in this situation have a big fear of losing their customer and profit. I found out that it’s fine; it’s okay to have a conversation with your supervisor/manager to ask for fewer hours or need an additional player to help. The key is to communicate.
3. Spent some time with yourself more. We realized together that we need a detachment when our time between work and free time at home getting blurry. We need activities that hard enough to do but prevent our mind from thinking about work again. So find some new activities or hobbies! Hobby as work detachment helps your mind in a new state of flow.