“You feel both pressures at the same time, and that’s why you lose your mind,” says Danna Greenberg, professor of organizational behavior at Babson College and co-author of Maternal Optimism. In other words? It’s easy to lose your cool with the kids when you’re working from home. You don’t want to, but it can feel like they’re the car in front of you and you’re 10 minutes late. “When you see your kids as obstacles, it creates a lot of stress,” says Art Markman, professor of psychology at University of Texas at Austin and author of Bringing Your Brain to Work. So, the question becomes, how do you work from home with kids and keep both your focus and your cool? Well, you need to reframe your outlook and do what you can to reduce stress and feel like you’re getting work done within limited windows of time. The basics can’t be ignored: exercise, sleep, get some sun, eat well. But there are other work from tips to remember as well, those that help ease your mind, get you focused, and feel productive. Here are 32 strategies to help you do just that. Will they work for everyone or solve every problem that occurs? God no. But we hope some of them make the chaos of working from home a bit more manageable.
