A lot of us are working from home due to COVID-19. After years of freelancing, I have a few tips to share with you to help your mental health.
Here's where you can find me:
Blog - https://sarastrives.com/
Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/sarastrives/
Intro and Outro Music:
Summer Vibes by Simon More https://soundcloud.com/user-73416670
Creative Commons — Attribution 3.0 Unported — CC BY 3.0
Free Download / Stream: https://bit.ly/_summer-vibes
Music promoted by Audio Library https://youtu.be/FTUkaPnYdLU
A lot of us are working from home due to COVID-19. After years of freelancing, I have a few tips to share with you to help your mental health.
Here's where you can find me:
Blog - https://sarastrives.com/
Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/sarastrives/
Intro and Outro Music:
Summer Vibes by Simon More https://soundcloud.com/user-73416670
Creative Commons — Attribution 3.0 Unported — CC BY 3.0
Free Download / Stream: https://bit.ly/_summer-vibes
Music promoted by Audio Library https://youtu.be/FTUkaPnYdLU
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Welcome to the Me, Myself, and You podcast.
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My name is Sara and I'm your host and I'm really glad to have you here today A lot of us have been working from home due to covid I know
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that I started working from home in mid-march.
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I think like most people I definitely did not expect to still be working from home in September as I'm recording this October when you're
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hearing it as of right now the stay-at-home orders in Austin are through Mid December I believe so I not expecting to be back in the
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office until 2021 at least then we'll see how that goes.
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But it's definitely been a journey and for me, I don't think it was as big of a transition because I had been working from home prior to
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this.
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I started freelancing in 2017 and I was a student at the same time for the majority of that and then did about six months of freelancing.
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Most graduating from college where I was completely working from home.
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So I have a few tips that I've definitely picked up along the way in terms of just maintaining my sanity while working from home and just
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feeling okay mental health wise also just being productive by taking care of my mental health.
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So I'm going to just run through those tips real quick and I'm definitely probably going to divulge into little stories along the way but
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we'll see so to start I think it's so so important to have Dedicated workspace when I was first freelancing.
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I was in a dorm and then I was in my first apartment with my husband and we only had a one bedroom.
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So my workspace was in my living room and that honestly was so mentally challenging because I was literally sitting on the couch and I was
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looking at my desk across the room with all the things that I needed to do and that was just very stressful and there was no like turning
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that part of my brain off which I think is what has been really difficult for people working from home during quarantine.
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So I think trying to have a dedicated workspace if possible is so critical for us.
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We have this little nook off our living room.
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That's like not even really a true broom.
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It doesn't even have its own overhead light and it doesn't have a door but it's definitely enough space to like set up a little office.
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I think other people in our complex use it for like Place space for kids or probably office space for most people.
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But just having that dedicated space even if you can't shut the door, even if it's you know a corner and kind of an odd spot something
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that is hopefully somewhat separated from your living space in one way or another just to give that mental like separation separation is
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key.
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It's very much setting a physical boundary speaking of boundaries.
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It's also important to set Healthy hours and set those boundaries within that so I think at the beginning of corn Teen it was really hard
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for me personally to set Healthy hours workwise.
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I felt like I ended up getting pulled into work stuff pretty late into the evening when it was supposed to be done.
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And that was challenging to say the least but I have learned to and I think everybody has learned to set much more true work hours like
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you would if you were going into the office and this was something I had to do when I was freelancing as well.
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I had clients that would try to call me at like 7 o'clock at night and it's like no I'm like I'm unplugged for the day.
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I'm not Hang on your stuff sorry, so it's really important to set those really clear hours.
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And you know, some of that for me with his been very difficult in terms of learning how to do that in a full-time job versus being a
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freelancer.
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I felt a little less in control of that.
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That was a hard transition for me for me.
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I work pretty much 925, you know, sometimes that trickles over into 53545.
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I'm being honest, but I really try to stick within those pretty clear hours so that I'm not but just going into my evening and ending up
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working all day.
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So setting those Healthy hours super important next.
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I think it's really important to truly unplug from your work Beyond setting Healthy hours.
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I think there's a point where you have to make sure you're actually logging out of your email not checking your work chat that sort of
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thing.
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I can't say that I'm great about it during the week.
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I often will leave my Work chat open until the weekend, but I try not to check my work email after I'm signed off of the computer for the
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day try to do that.
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It's very helpful.
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I promise to actually give yourself that mental break.
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It's another boundary of okay, I'm turning off.
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I'm walking away from work for the day on the weekends.
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I very much actually log out of chat and out of my work email so that I'm not getting notifications.
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Wish I could log out of my Works Facebook page I manage the social media.
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So I'm constantly seeing stuff on my personal Facebook.
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So I'm pretty much never on Facebook anymore.
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Because for me it just it's really hard not to be plugged into work when I'm on Facebook because there's no way to like not get those
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notifications Facebook.
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You really need to get your crap together and figure out a way to separate personal profiles from business Pages because I would really
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like to be able to like use it on a personal level.
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Will not be thinking about work makes sense.
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Does anybody else feel that way?
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Those are my main tips?
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A lot of it really comes down to setting healthy boundaries and healthy habits around work.
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Most of those habits being boundaries.
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I hope these tips help you kind of maintain your sanity while you're working from home and just feel better about working from home while
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you're working from home and granted.
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This is definitely probably a little different for you if you are a parent Parent with older kids that are not three months old and just
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sleep most of the time regardless.
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I still hope these help you.
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So definitely give me a follow on Instagram.
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You can find me at @sarastrives, S-A-R-A S-T-R-I-V-E-S.
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subscribe and follow this podcast.
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I would love for you to come hang out with me for every episode.
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I will talk at you again soon.