Work-life balance is a misnomer. You aren't balancing or creating boundaries between your whole life versus your work. Work is a part of life. When I have the luxury to be nuanced with my words, I much prefer to call it work-personal life balance.
For most knowledge workers, the challenge of balancing work and personal life in a way that's healthy and productive isn't new. It didn't start during the COVID-19 pandemic, and it isn't exclusive to people who work remotely. It's been relatively pertinent since business email became easily accessible away from the workplace. If you can access business email, work messages, or other information when you're off the clock (nights, weekends, while on vacation or home sick), then you probably know the deepening worry that you should cut yourself off, but you don't want to let down your coworkers or have a big project fail just because you weren't available.
Total Separation Isn't the Answer
Creating total separation between work time and personal time isn't typically the right answer for most people (though for some, it may be). It's not practical, and it leads to additional stress and worry about work, not less. Plus, keeping work completely out of personal time negates key benefits of remote work, like flexibility. Being able to choose when to work lets remote workers take care of other obligations when they arise. Deciding to get a few work tasks done after a sick kid falls asleep lets you take care of the sick kid when they're awake. Data from Microsoft employees suggest that around 30% of its remote workforce takes advantage of flexibility in time on a regular basis.
The flip side, though, is that work can creep into people's personal life and time more than they want. When you're always available, it's hard to say no and draw a line when you need to. How do you know what's the right balance to strike for yourself and how do you actually do it?
I write about all these issues in my book The Everything Guide to Remote WorkThe Everything Guide to Remote Work. Here, I'm going to share some of the strategies that relate specifically to technology.
Tech-Based Tips for Better Work-Personal Life Balance
1. Disable or Severely Limit Notifications
Hands-down the most important way I protect my time is by disabling most notifications and customizing the ones I need to be helpful but not distracting. My work email does not chime or flash a notification on my screen when a new message arrives, not when I'm off the clock, and not while I'm working either. I let Slack show a notification badge when I have new important messages, but most Slack channels that I'm in are muted. I do allow calendar notifications to chime and remind me of upcoming meetings, but even there I limit them to an on-screen alert usually five minutes before—not a reminder email.
The reason I disable almost all notifications is not only for maintaining a healthy work–personal life balance but also to manage my attention. Very few apps on my phone have permission to send a notification at all. I want to be in control of when I choose to look at work email, personal email, Slack, and other apps. I don't want my phone to tell me when to do it. Disabling or at least severely limiting notifications prevents work from asserting itself into your personal time. It puts you in control of your time and your attention.
In Slack, if you go to Preferences > Notifications and scroll down a bit, you'll find options for automatically silencing notifications during certain times of day, which is equally helpful.
See my other tips for using Slack in remote work to make communication better.
2. Use Multiple Browser Profiles or Separate Computer Users
In an ideal world, you'd have a work computer and a personal one, a work phone and a personal one, and maybe duplicates of other equipment. That way, your personal computing never gets intertwined with your work stuff and vice versa. Few people have that, but you can replicate it by separating your work and personal computing in other ways.
One method is to use two different browsers, for example, Chrome is for work and Firefox is for personal use. You don't even have to go that far, though, as some browsers let you create two different profiles that remain separate. For example, on Chrome I'm logged into all my work accounts in one profile, where all in tabs are color-coded with a white and light gray background. I'm simultaneously logged into my personal profile in a separate Chrome window where there's a light blue color scheme. The different colors send an immediate cue to my brain about which is which.
If managing two browser profiles doesn't feel secure or separate enough, another option is to create two user profiles for your computer log in. That way, you can fully log out of your work identity when you don't want to work anymore but still want to use your computer for personal reasons.
3. Schedule Messages to Send During Business Hours
Sometimes you choose to work outside of your normal business hours, but you don't want to draw anyone's attention to it. You don't want to give the impression that you're working at 8 p.m. because you're behind on your work, when the real reason is you spent the afternoon at a family function and are making up the hours when it's convenient. If you appear to be working overtime and people don't know why, they may think something's wrong or that they're expected to burn the midnight oil as well.
To avoid all that, schedule messages to send during standard business hours. You can write emails and team messages now, but don't send them now. Look for a function called schedule send, and use it.
4. During Time Off, Mark Yourself Away in Multiple Places
One way to not get hounded with messages during your time off is to remind people when you're taking time off. In remote work, over communicating can do wonders for making your job more successful. Over communicating means intentionally repeating yourself or duplicating information, stating the obvious, and very often getting rid of sarcasm and other jokes because it's easy to be misunderstood when you use them.
So when you take time off, tell people you'll be away during any routine meetings you have, then remind them of the dates via email, and post a message the day before you're gone in your team's chat app. Additionally, anywhere it's relevant, mark your status as "out of office" or "away" and include graphics, like an airplane or a palm tree, where available. You can also schedule another reminder message to send a few days later if you'll be out for an extended period.
More importantly, if you have any urgent or highly important work and you do want people to reach you during your time off, clearly communicate under what circumstances someone should reach you and by which method, such as a phone call or a text message. Be sure to over communicate that point, too!
5. Close Your Computer When You Finish Work
Whenever I give people tips for working remotely, I always tell them to create a routine for ending their day. Routines reinforce messages to your brain and body. If you always do the same actions when ending your day, your brain and body will start to expect work to end when you do those actions, making it harder for you to get sucked back into work when you don't want to.
Part of your end-the-day routine should be closing your computer. If you have a laptop, shut the lid. If you have a desktop, put it to sleep or at least turn off the monitor. Getting that lighted up screen out of your face will help you move on from work and do something else, whether it's taking care of kids, walking your dog, working out—whatever. If you can't think of routine actions to do at the end of the business day, try setting an alarm on your phone or smart speaker, and when it rings (or plays a song, which might be more fun), close the computer, get yourself a glass of water, and drink it. It might sound like next to nothing, but going to get a glass of water physically gets you away from your working area and into the mindset of doing something besides work. Sometimes a little nudge is all you need to protect your personal time better.
For more work tips, see PCMag's productivity page.