That's a great question because the stress of dealing with COVID-19 is certainly playing a role in diminishing people's ability to focus and concentrate when it comes to work and also when it comes to work life balance. So there's a couple of potential ways to deal with this.
The first is more pragmatic. It's what to do to set a routine that helps you capitalize on techniques and strategies that are known to aid in our ability to focus and concentrate, and these are the good old favorites, such as getting a good night's sleep, following as much as you can a healthy pattern of eating, trying to fit in a little exercise when you can, and setting up a daily routine as close to what you had in the past before the COVID-19 pandemic.
All of these things taken together have been shown to help us with aspects of concentration, like our ability to attend and to focus when necessary. So even though they may seem like extra steps, ultimately, they'll help you when it comes to focusing. When it comes to those of us that are in the position to having to do work from home, then it becomes even more challenging, because often, our personal and our professional lives blur together. The boundaries between the two aren't as clear.
So in these cases, it can be helpful to actually create psychological boundaries between the two, such as A, treating your work day as if it's a real work day and getting up on time, showering and dressing as if you were going to work, and then if you can, create a space within your home environment, which is your quote unquote workspace.
The other thing to balance in this is to know that at times, we won't be perfect. We will have family members and loved ones if they're around come in and quote unquote intrude in that space. And that's OK. There'll also be times when our work demands intrude on our family time and our personal time, and that's OK.
The goal is to be a little bit gentle with ourselves and to strive, as best we can, to distinguish the two, so that when we're in either space, we can do so without feeling guilty because we know at some point, we'll put it down and attune to the other needs. Altogether, it's a real opportunity to practice setting boundaries with ourselves and also being gentle and compassionate towards ourselves, knowing that we're not perfect. We're just doing the best we can.