If you work from home, it’s easy to lose yourself in isolation. You should break free, and often, if only to give your brain the boost it needs, to be better at work.
Around 16% of the whole UK workforce now work exclusively from home, according to Office National Statistics data and YouGov data found 60% of them find it more productive but even so, finding balance in the day can sometimes pose a challenge.
Remote working is standard now, especially for writers. We love the short commute to the home office in our dressing gown, we glow with the feeling of autonomy over our routine – no beady eyes over our shoulders seeing it we are typing fast enough, no ‘we’re here, but we want to be here,’ daily management pep talks with a large graph on a whiteboard, and yes, we relax with the lack of office politics, or brown-nosing or being dragged into a meeting about a meeting. And yet, it does have issues, as anyone will know who works on a laptop from their kitchen table. You are a social animal deprived of other faces and stimulating chats, and the room with just you in it, feels ever more constricting. That solitude can be insidious, gnawing slowly at your ankles like some relentless invisible Chihuahua, trying to drive you out of your chair.
Escape the home office
There have been moments where I mutter to myself, ‘What’s that Richard? You need another coffee, why yes, let’s make it six before lunchtime…” mooching toward the kettle just to get the circulation pumping again, or I find myself staring at my own garden, wishing I was standing in it, whilst stroking my unshaven chin like some Bond villain betrayed by the world. Then I suddenly realise, I’ve been in the house for three days straight and it’s no wonder some of my marbles are being lost.
Yesterday, my wife and I (who also works from home) left the house. It was a hot, hot day. We decided to stop, open the door and run. We found a beach-like pebble-strewn spot in the river under the heat of the sun. We languished there, swam in the current, and sat on the exposed rocks near the weir, and it was like my eyes opening from sleep. As a giant heron swooped overhead to land in a nearby bend of the riverbank, I said to her, “I feel like I’ve woken up.”
It reminded me, like a welcome slap in the face, you have to literally feed the senses every single day. Your senses are incredible, acutely sensitive, remarkable pieces of human equipment and not using them to their full is like having a supercar rusting in the garage under a tarp. Use them, give them food, tune them, keep them alive and buzzing and your brain will reward you with ideas, words, feelings and flow – all the things you’ve been trying to prize out of your skull whilst sitting in a dull box, with nothing but caffeine to stimulate the electricity that is your brain-you.
A study, Creativity in the Wild: Improving Creative Reasoning through Immersion in Natural Settings (yep… spoiler in the title) stated that four days of immersion in nature increase performance on a creative, problem-solving task by a whopping 50%. As they say, there is a ‘cognitive advantage’ to spending time in nature. This for me, is what I call a – ‘no shit Sherlock study’ but there it is, the science proof!
It’s not just nature obviously, it’s exercise too. Another study, Exercising at Work and Self-reported Work Performance‘, found there was a 72 percent improvement in time management and workload completed on days when the studied group exercised.
Born to be free
If you work from home, it should be your daily mission to pause, to find people, to find visions, to explore, to see nature, to see sights and to feel things. Coming out of the pandemic was not easy but some of us are still a little stuck there in reality. We understood what it was to not be under the cosh of the workplace, but we should be wary to replace that with that isolation that we perhaps became too used to. It is important not to imprison yourself; to breathe fresh air, walk outside, smile at others, and escape working all day in an environment where humans do not flourish. Working from home is a wonderful privilege, but we should beware not to fall into the trap of being a bad boss to ourselves, by not letting ourselves out.
If you want an inspired article written, a blog series conjured, or a whitepaper sorted, give me an email and I promise to complete it on deadline, whilst interspersing my workdays at home with brain-fuelling escapes.
Writer for Hire 
Very relatable Richard. It’s a skill to learn to be a good boss to ourselves too 🙂
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