Thanks to this year’s global pandemic, more people are working from home than ever before. As many are coming to realize, burnout often goes hand-in-hand with remote work. We thought that providing 3 tips to beat Work-From-Home burnout might help you. Not surprisingly, articles about how to prevent or avoid burnout have popped up all over the internet. Far fewer resources, however, address how to overcome burnout if you are already suffering.

Recent reports indicate productivity dropped 4.8% in the last quarter of 2020. This productivity drop was the largest decrease since 1981. We have written other articles on being productive from home like Insight on Work at Home and Work-From-Home Strategies – “The Finer Points.” We have talked about Tips for Starting a Home Based Business and The Rise of “COVID-prenuers.” And, we have even created Continuing Professional Education (CPE) courses on Working at Home. But with all this guidance on how to work from home or be successful from home, burnout can kick in.

How do you know if you are among the 69% of remote workers currently suffering from burnout? While the symptoms can look different for everyone, these are a few of the tell-tale signs:

• Feeling negative or apathetic toward work
• Trouble falling asleep or staying asleep
• Forgetfulness, or an impaired sense of the passage of time
  
• Using substances as coping mechanisms
  
• Decreased efficiency — for example, finding yourself re-reading the same sentence over and over

If you have noticed some of these red flags in your life lately, you could be burned out. Fortunately, there are several effective ways to banish burnout and restore your work-life balance. Consider these three ideas.

One of the major causes of work-from-home burnout is the lack of time boundaries. If you work-from-home, you are probably acutely aware of how often you let your life interrupt your work, answering a child’s question or moving the laundry into the dryer, for example. However, you may not realize how often you let work interrupt your life. You may find yourself responding to an email while cooking dinner or absentmindedly logging in during TV time.

Many remote workers report feeling as though they are never “off” work. As Dr. Heather DeQuincey put it in a now-viral tweet: “I think we need to stop calling it ‘working from home’ and start calling it ‘living at work.’”

It is not hard to see how such nonstop connectivity can lead to burnout. Inc. explains one of the most effective ways to combat this problem is establishing firm temporal boundaries and sticking to them. Create a work schedule, write it down, and let your family and co-workers know that these are the times you will be available. It may be difficult at first, but in the end, it will save you countless wasted hours, not to mention your sanity.

If your current workspace lacks physical boundaries, it could contribute to feelings of burnout. Just because you can work from anywhere does not mean that you should work from everywhere. If you pop open your laptop or check work on your phone in every room of your house, your brain eventually associates all those areas with working. No wonder you are feeling burned out!

Establish a designated workspace in your home. Try to restrict your work to this place as much as possible. Real Simple notes that ideally, your work area should be near a window where you can get some natural light, or at the very least should be well-lit and at a comfortable temperature. Choose an area that is free from visible distractions, including piles of clutter. A disorganized or chaotic work area disrupts your energy flow. Further, clutter tends to breed negative thoughts, so it should be dealt with accordingly. Any distracting objects or unfinished projects should be out of sight.

There are many apps and programs available that you can customize to automate or nearly automate a vast array of tedious tasks. These sorts of tasks can suck up loads of your time and energy. Worse, unproductive tasks leave you feeling that you did not accomplish anything.

Remember that you can pick tips and tools that our K2 team recommends. Further, remember our guidance on outsourcing. Learning to say no will make a difference in your business and work-life balance. And yes, there is an app for that!

If you have become burned out while working from home, you are not alone. These 3 tips to beat Work-From-Home burnout can help you establish a healthier, more sustainable relationship with your work.

However, if things do not get better for you, call for professional help. Unfortunately, I know of multiple people who have chosen suicide based on their stress levels in the last 60 days. Get help from places like the Canada Suicide Prevention Service at 1-833-456-4566 or from your medical professionals. While many of us offer our friendship and support, we often do not know our friends and colleagues are desperate for help. Watch out for the symptoms above in yourself, family, friends, and colleagues.

With the move to working from home, one of the restrictions for many organizations is the reliance on paper. When an organization looks at moving to a paperless office the decision is made to postpone the process due to costs. These costs are easy to calculate and include scanners, multi-monitors, PDF editing software, and electronic document management software.

However, a paperless office may cost less. To make the decision a calculation of the cost of paper in your organization is needed.

Using our spreadsheet let’s calculate the cost of paper for your organization.

How many boxes of paper does your organization use a year?

With the volume of paper, we can calculate the total pages and estimate the cost for the paper and printing.

Using the spreadsheet, input the average number of pages per document, time to file a document, and hourly staff cost.

For many, this time is considered equal to filing electronically; however, the time to file paper can be much longer when you include the walk to and from the filing cabinet. Electronic document management may also provide automatic filing of documents.

How long does it take someone to pull a document? For many offices, this time can be even longer than the time to originally file it.

Consider the case of the paper document that you can’t find. How long did you spend yesterday looking for a document? Moving to paperless allows for all documents to be indexed and found with a quick search.

Purging of paper documents can be very labour intensive as you locate, retrieve and document the files being purged. A paperless system can do this function automatically.

Purging of paper documents can be very labour intensive as you locate, retrieve and document the files being purged. A paperless system can do this function automatically.

When you calculate the square footage used for filing cabinets it quickly adds up to a significant cost.

After completing the spreadsheet, the cost of paper documents may surprise you. Reducing the use of paper and the related cost of paper can often cover the costs of moving to a paperless office. A paperless office will also provide the benefits of improved workflow, improved document sharing, quicker access, and an improved working from home experience.

To learn more about the advantages of eliminating the cost of paper, consider participating in K2's Paperless Office.

There are many benefits to starting a home-based business. These tips should save you some effort. First, you can go after something you are passionate about rather than following someone else’s dreams. Second, you call the shots and determine where to take your business at each junction. Third, working from home means that you have more flexibility in when you work and how you make money.

Nonetheless, starting a business is not easy. Running a firm that has long-term success is even more difficult. Along with unwavering dedication, managing a business requires several disciplines. First, you must understand how to fulfill your daily responsibilities best. Second, you must strategize how you grow your business. Third, recognize that things beyond your control happen, and you must remain willing to adapt when necessary.

If you are throwing around the idea of starting a home-based business, here are some tips to keep in mind for making it a successful venture.

Right now is a challenging time to start a business because of the COVID-19 pandemic. You should not let the COVID-19 pandemic discourage you from following your dream. However, you also need to make special considerations and understand the unique challenges that lay ahead. And for the record, all times are challenging to start a business. There will be unexpected issues to deal with now.

For instance, research possible scenarios that you could face in the coming months and years. How can you remain adaptable in uncertain times? And how could the current global economy affect your business? Additionally, be sure to make time to brainstorm how you could create alternative streams of revenue if needed. Investigate the various financial assistance options that can help you along the way. Project your income and expenses for the six to eighteen months. You can make these projections on paper or in a spreadsheet. Also, you can use cash flow and business planning tools like LivePlan or ProfitSee. Spend your money wisely. And if you are fortunate enough to have a severance package, reflect on how those resources can become your seed money and start-up capital.

No matter what kind of home-based business you start, communication will play a vital role. Communicating will it be necessary for maintaining healthy relationships with your clients and partners. If you work with a team of remote workers, you will need to make sure you have the right tools at your disposal. For example, apps like Microsoft Teams, Slack, or Zoho Connect can help ensure effective communication among your team. These tools even allow you to create a newsfeed to present essential company information, as well as channels to communicate and share work specific to each project.

Also, consider how you might market your services. Do you have a referral network? Can you leverage your social circles, social networks, and business contacts in the community who know you and recognize your skills? How much effort do you need to spend to make your home-based business known? Does your website communicate your capabilities? Please see our article on outsourcing tasks to recall that experts can help with your website, social marketing, and other critical tasks.

A reasonable approach is to consider what tasks waste your time and where you can utilize tech. Then, hire out the rest of the work. Ultimately, you will find that the time you save will be money saved. This will help your business be in a better position to grow.

A lot of small business owners start by doing everything themselves. Depending on the size of the company and what it offers, this might work out fine at first. After all, software and technology solutions can help you with a variety of tasks (e.g., accounting, project management, marketing). If you need a complete small business solution, Zoho Corporation may have the answer. Zoho One has everything you need to run a small business from word processing and email to eCommerce and recurring billing.

Further, if you are a professional, you will have complete suites of tools that provide you, as a small business, the same technology as a massive operation. As an example for accounting professionals, AccountantsWorld Power Practice, CCH Axcess, and Thomson Onvio all have the capability of running your practices with no locally installed software.

However, you also must keep a growth mindset—not just for five years from now, but for this moment. And frequently, the best way to grow is to hire freelancers to handle the tasks that don’t come naturally to you or where you simply don’t have the time. Outsource where you do not have the expertise. Leverage other people’s labors that are also looking for work. Outsourcing could mean the following:

• hiring a web developer to create a high-quality website
• a writer to provide engaging content for your website and social media pages
• a virtual assistant to handle phone calls and invoicing, or any other number of hires
• intentionally locating and contracting for skills like tax, client accounting services, or financial statement preparation

Working from home can provide you with flexibility, but it can also be very challenging to get work done, especially if you have kids at home. Create a workspace, complete with any equipment, furnishings, and decor that will help you stay productive. Also, set work hours, and make sure everyone in your household is clear on when those hours are. Doing these two things will help you to achieve a healthy work-home balance.

Remember that we have guided you on home workspaces in our article on Advantages of Starting an Online Shop and Easy Ways to Start. Further, we discussed many other tools in Insights on Work At Home.  But our main reminder is to separate work life from home life and maintain a reasonable work-life balance.

Running a home-based business is hard, but it can also be one of the most fulfilling ways to make a living. Hopefully, the tips in this article and the suggestions in the linked articles provide useful guidance. Remember to take cash flow into account when planning your business. Make sure you have all the communication tools necessary for your business to succeed. Consider hiring freelancers for the tasks that you cannot do efficiently. Create a dedicated workspace. Finally, set consistent work hours to maintain a work-life balance. With these steps, you will likely be glad you made the best business decision of your life.

During the first half of 2020, workers everywhere have had to come to grips with the COVID-19 outbreak. Not only did the pandemic impact our personal lives, but it also caused severe disruption for virtually all businesses. It also forced many individuals to work from home. For some, remote working is second nature because they do it every day.  For others, transitioning to this new environment was challenging at best, and it remains that way for many. However, with current technologies, working remotely does not have to mean working differently.  Further, productivity need not suffer! Organizations of all sizes should learn from the challenges the pandemic presented and create better remote working arrangements for the future.

Traditional remote working arrangements involve using a browser-based tool to access a computer at the office from a distant location. Tools such as LogMeIn, TeamViewer, RealVNC, and others all provide adequate capabilities at modest price points. Remote workers simply access their office computer through their web browser. Then they can generally perform any action remotely that they would otherwise undertake on their computer.

Some Issues With Browser-Based Remote Access

While this arrangement is adequate is some cases, issues can arise. First, the “host” computer must be running 24/7. Otherwise, in the absence of “wake-on-LAN” technologies, the team member will not be able to connect to the host. Second, audio and visual performance sometimes is less than ideal, which creates a negative experience for the remote worker and could hamper productivity. Third, depending on the browser-based service used, the team member may not be able to work in a multi-monitor environment, further affecting productivity. Fourth, while browser-based tools support accessing a computer from a remote location, generally, they do not support other necessary elements of a successful remote work strategy including communication and collaboration. In sum, while these types of tools might be adequate for occasional remote work environments, they generally do not offer all that is necessary for working remotely over extended timeframes.

For many, a better option is to consider an end-to-end approach that creates a productive environment for remote working. Such an approach does not focus on piecemeal technologies. Instead, it takes into account all the needs of all team members – including traditional and remote workers. Then, management selects a unified technology platform that addresses these needs. In this environment, there is only one way of working. Therefore, when team members need to work away from traditional office environments, they use the same tools as when they work in the office. Of course, this means that working remotely does not translate to working differently.

Better Ways To Access Your Computer

Taking a holistic approach to accessing your computer means that you will always work from a remote computer. However, instead of using a browser-based method, you could use hosted virtual computers. Some of the leading providers in this market include AbacusNext, Ace Cloud Hosting, Cetrom, and Right Networks. In this environment, you access your computer and all your applications from a remote, virtual computer that you “lease” from your service provider for a monthly fee. This type of arrangement provides professional management of your device, data, security, and application updates. Moreover, it created a unified approach for accessing your computer, no matter the location from which you are working.

Also Consider In-House, Virtual Computers

Alternatively, you could deploy an “in-house” hosted computer option. In this scenario, you and your team would still access hosted computers. However, instead of them being hosted by a third-party, they would be hosted on your servers (or servers you lease in a data center) and managed by your team members (or external service providers with whom you contract.) In either case, these in-house, hosted computers would again provide a single approach to accessing your desktop.

Reduce Your Dependency On Desktop Applications

For many professionals, the need for a traditional computer is still present. However, for many others transitioning to Cloud-based services and suites could be all that is necessary to facilitate a productive remote work environment. For example, using a Cloud-based application suite such as Microsoft 365/Office 365, G Suite by Google, and Zoho One is a terrific option for staying on top of email and working with spreadsheets, presentations, and word processing documents – all from Cloud-based applications. Further, you can store these documents in secure, Cloud-based storage environments. Then you can access them from virtually any device with an Internet connection. Additionally, you will be able to collaborate with other users at the same time on the same document, further increasing productivity.
Other Cloud-based applications will also reduce your dependency on a traditional computer, and enable your remote work strategy. For example, Zoho One provides an alternative to Microsoft Office applications such as Excel and Word. It also provisions Cloud-based accounting, customer relationship management, marketing tools, and website analytics. In total, Zoho One offers over 40 integrated Cloud-based tools to create a complete solution for small to mid-sized businesses.

One of the biggest challenges a remote worker faces is staying in touch with key customers/clients and other team members. When in-person meetings are simply not practical, you can communicate with others effectively using one of many options. Among the better ones are Microsoft Teams and Zoom – both Cloud-based tools. Both facilitate multi-participant meetings, including screen sharing and video options for those who need them. Further, recognizing the reality that, for many, working remotely means working from home, both tools allow you to add a custom background to your video meetings, increasing your perceived professional appearance.

DON'T FORGET YOUR INTERNET ACCESS

Of course, all the approaches outlined above depend upon consistent, high-speed Internet access. If you do not have this type of access available, you should investigate your options for switching service providers. Further, if you do not have any viable options available, stay alert for the availability of 5G cellular connectivity. When that does become available, you may find connection speeds up to 20 times faster than fiber connections today!

The first half of 2020 will go down in history as one of the most disruptive in the history of the world, and no technology available today will change that fact. However, there are many lessons to be learned, and one of these is that working remotely does not necessarily equate to working differently. 

By strategically considering the options available today, you can create an environment in which you and your team always use the same technologies to get your jobs done, no matter the location from which you are working. Not only does this environment work well in times of emergency, it also works well for other situations such as auditors and consultants working at client locations, salespersons visiting customers, and tax professionals working from home during tax season. You simply need to carefully consider how a holistic approach to accessing your applications and data can improve your efficiency. Then decide the appropriate mix of technology to help you meet your objectives. Once you do, you will notice that your productivity need not suffer because you are not working in the office.