Boundaries for working at home

My preference, as I’ve mentioned before, is a nice clear boundary between work and life.

That’s not always possible because the emails pile up if I’ve been out of the office too much, or if I need quiet, concentrated work time to write reports and such.

Which means I then occasionally work at home after supper.

However, I’m the type of person who could work too much once I get started. There’s also the lure of the internet so things might take longer than they need to.

I came up with a great solution for me:

I bring the charged laptop home but I leave the cable at the office.

Why?

This does two things:

• it forces me to focus and get my priorities done first, and
• when the battery dies, that’s it – I have to stop work.

My laptop lasts about 4 hours unplugged which is more than enough time to work after supper 🙂

When I mentioned this “brilliant idea” at work, the others looked at me like I was crazy.

However, as Gretchen Rubin says, Know yourself.  I’ve done it for about 4 months now, and it works perfectly.

I’ll admit I twitched a bit the first time when I did it because I had a proper deadline, not just my usual self-imposed ones (such an Upholder!), but when it worked so well, I kept on doing it.

Do you have any tricks to help you stick to your work/ life boundaries?

If not, consider this a Try This at Home like they do on the Happier podcast 🙂

Do you think my idea is crazy or genius?