Since the first confinement in March 2020, many employees have been forced to work from home. To successfully combine several days into one, and avoid mental overload, you need to know your limits and apply certain tips. 

 

In an Opinion Way survey conducted during the first containment, 44% of respondents confined and working from home said they felt ” psychological distress »And 18% of them had mintux troubles severe, even depressive. 

 

If we are no longer totally confined today, many companies continue to practice teleworking to limit exchanges and thus curb the spread of Covid-19. 

 

One might believe the recent phenomenon as we have heard about it in recent years, but the mental charge was first identified in 1984 by sociologist Monique Haicault. It is defined by the fact of having to simultaneously think about things belonging to two physically separate worlds.

 

The mental load is like a thousand sheets of tasks to be done, a load that weighs on us and forces us to think about everything, at the same time. If teleworking can save us time and be more productive, beware of mental overload when family life, household chores and work are intertwined! 

 

When you are not working at home, there is a physical boundary between work and the private sphere. The context generally makes some tasks possible and others impossible: you can’t cook dinner when you’re at the office or you don’t take business calls when you’re with family.  

 

This separation establishes a natural hierarchy between all our priorities, which is no longer the case in teleworking. All the tasks you have to do are theoretically possible at any time of the day. We may be tempted to do a machine while working on a file or cook while taking a phone call. The solicitation is then continuous, which encourages mental overload. The border between the private sphere and the professional sphere is limited. 

 

To avoid this, it is important to have a place dedicated to the professional sphere. If you’re not lucky enough to have an office, at least make sure you have some space allotted to work. This space must also exist in terms of time slots to avoid mental exhaustion. Otherwise, you take the risk of chaining days that follow one another and are alike, punctuated by the number of tasks to be done, whether private or professional, and not take the time to ventilate yourself (physically and mentally). 

 

According to a survey published in September 2019 by the Directorate for the Animation of Research, Studies and Statistics of the Ministry of Labor (DARES), reproaches formulated within the family unit, mainly directed against women (because more often in charge of domestic work), could be accentuated by teleworking. 

 

To avoid mental burden of one of the spouses, it is important that the tasks related to domestic activity do not rest on just one of the spouses. 

 

At every moment of work, your attention should be focused on a single task. When we tackle one task at a time, we are calmer and more focused. 

 

Of course, easier said than done when you have to reconcile family life and work at home. 

To ensure you stay focused on a task, identify times of the day when you tend to be distracted, either by nature or by circumstances. At these times, only plan short tasks, which require little concentration. 

 

For that, you will need fragment your tasks in advance in order to separate the “light” tasks and the complex ones, in the form of a series of small missions. Breaking down into small tasks allows you to keep continuous attention throughout a task and identify which ones you can carry out while the children are busy around you, for example.