Sometimes, you just don’t want to share what you did this weekend with your coworker—especially if it led straight to this morning’s secret hangover.
In an ideal world, we’d be able to draw a clear line between our home and work lives. However, the reality is that it’s never that simple. Your boss follows you on Twitter, family members frequently call you at work, and your colleagues constantly overshare or ask prying questions.
It’s important to be on good terms with your coworkers. But there's a balance. If you allow your work relationships to spill over into your personal life, you may spend your working hours on office drama.
And then there's the work-from-home balancing act that many of us are trying to perfect.
So, where do you draw the line between being sociable at work and keeping your private life private? And how can you do this without seeming like an insensitive jerk? Can you work from your sofa in your living room and binge bad tv there later on, too?
If you’ve struggled with this issue at work, here are a few tips for maintaining a healthy balance—no matter where you're at work.
Table of Contents
- Identify Your Boundaries
- Assert Those Boundaries
- Keep Your Professional and Personal Social Accounts Separate
- Accept That Work-Life Balance Will Always Be a Balancing Act
How to Keep Your Personal Life Out of The Office
Whether you're working in an office, a hybrid work environment, or completely remotely, set your boundaries and work hard to maintain them.
Employees who never "turn off" are at an increased risk of burnout. While home offices and remote working have become the norm for many folks, the laptop needs to be shut down once in a while. The same goes for your devices and notifications.
A healthy work-life balance can be achieved no matter where you work—whether it's your apartment or an office job that requires a daily commute.
1. Identify Your Personal Boundaries
Protecting your personal space and setting clear boundaries at work can benefit your mental well-being, reduce stress, and even improve office social dynamics.
Before you can separate your private life from work, however, you’ll need to know where your personal boundaries lie. We’re all different. What makes one person uncomfortable might seem trivial to another. What’s comfortable (or uncomfortable) for you?
Start by identifying some of the main things people do at work that make you feel uncomfortable or cause you unnecessary stress. Would you rather not be called at home after a certain time? Does it bother you when your colleagues gossip about other employees? Would you prefer not to discuss your religion, finances, or personal relationships at work?
Boundaries to Set While Working in Office
- Create set working hours. If you are open to communicating in your "off-hours", designate what work-related issues constitute off-hours contact.
- Avoid the temptation to engage in office gossip. To be frank, this is a healthy boundary that everyone should have in place. If a gossipy coworker tries to engage you in a quick chat, tell them you're busy with your work.
- Take your lunch break. Especially if you work in an office, take your midday quality time to shake off stress or anxiety, vacate your work area, and actually eat your lunch! This is a boundary to set for yourself, to take care of yourself.
Boundaries to Separate Work and Home Life While Remote
- Create set working hours. During working hours, if possible, move to a separate room or a dedicated workspace. If your space doesn't provide that, noise-canceling headphones can help cancel interruptions. Headphones can also serve as a visual signifier that you are in work mode.
- Communicate the set schedule to your family or housemates and to your coworkers. Use a digital or physical calendar to share daily routines, meetings, lunchtime, and the end of the workday.
- Dedicate personal time in between work and "home work" to reconnect with yourself. This is especially important for working parents or caretakers. Use this transition downtime to go for a walk, listen to your favorite podcast, or simply flop into your couch.
2. Next, Assert Those Boundaries
Creating boundaries is the easy part. Keeping them in place is much more difficult.
If you’ve never set boundaries at work before, you’ll probably feel a bit uncomfortable or even guilty at first, but as long as you remain polite and professional, clearly outlining your boundaries will help prevent any misunderstandings in the long run.
Try this: If you notice that you’re being drawn into a conversation that makes you uncomfortable, communicate your boundaries by saying something like “I’m sorry, that’s personal,” or “I don’t feel comfortable discussing this at work.”
Or if someone is constantly interrupting you with small talk, you could politely but firmly inform them that you need to get back to work.
The sooner you assert the boundaries, the stronger they will be. It will likely be awkward the first few times, but it will eventually leave to respect. Heck, maybe your coworkers will set boundaries of their own.
3. Keep Your Professional and Personal Social Accounts Separate
If you’d like to separate your work relationships from your personal ones, it’s a good idea to keep them separate online as well. The easiest way to avoid overlap is to use different social networking sites for different purposes.
For example, Twitter and LinkedIn are excellent tools for developing your professional network, whereas Facebook is often better suited to sharing photos and news with your family and close friends.
Of course, it’s important to communicate these preferences to your contacts as well. So if a work colleague or client sends you a friend request on Facebook, you could politely explain that you use your Facebook account to stay in touch with close friends and family, then invite them to connect with you on LinkedIn or Twitter instead.
Similarly, if friends or family members share personal information or photos of you on the networks you’re trying to use for professional connections, you should let them know that you’d prefer to use Facebook for personal interactions.
4. Accept That Work-Life Balance Will Always Be a Balancing Act
Because our work and private lives are so interconnected, fully separating them isn’t always a realistic goal. Research shows that enforcing overly strict rules about when and where to think about work or deal with personal issues can lead to unnecessary stress in both areas of our lives.
Instead of separating your private life from your work life completely, make it your goal to find a comfortable balance by maintaining professionalism in your personal life while also setting realistic boundaries at work.
Inevitably, questions about your kids, marital status, or personal hobbies will come up occasionally when you’re at work. Rather than letting this stress you out, decide in advance how much you’re comfortable sharing with your coworkers or which topics you’re willing to discuss.
Once you accept that the two will occasionally intersect, you’ll be better able to manage your responsibilities in both areas and enjoy healthier relationships, too.
