How to Prevent Burnout When Working from Home | by Olivia Bennett | Medium

Remote work creates a specific trap that office workers never face: when your living room is your office, your brain never gets the signal that work is over. You close your laptop but you're still sitting in your workspace, and that lack of physical separation breeds a particular kind of exhaustion. The article makes the case that burnout in remote settings isn't about working too hard - it's about never truly stopping.

The practical strategies here focus on creating artificial boundaries where natural ones don't exist. Set specific work hours and actually stick to them, not just on paper but in practice. Designate one space in your home for work and never use it for anything else - when you leave that space, your workday ends. Use the 5-5-5 rule: 55 minutes of work, 5-minute break. These aren't feel-good suggestions, they're structure you need when structure disappears.

The piece emphasizes that remote burnout looks different from office burnout. It shows up as feeling isolated even when you're messaging all day, or working longer hours to prove you're productive when no one can see you. The fix isn't just time management - it's actively building in the social interaction and movement that used to happen naturally when you walked to meetings or grabbed coffee with coworkers. Turn off notifications after hours, create wind-down rituals that signal the end of work, and set realistic goals using task management tools so you're not constantly feeling behind. The core insight: you need to deliberately engineer the breaks and boundaries that used to come free with a physical office.