I’m very introverted so it took me quite awhile to hit the cabin fever blues, 10-11 weeks roughly. If you’re extroverted working from home may not be for you. I have a friend who works in IT who is pretty extroverted. (Funny story he thought for a long time that he was an introvert but every time he goes to the store he makes new friends.) Whenever he works from home he doesn’t have anyone to talk to except his wife. She’s not very geeky and in her words whenever he works from home he gets way geekier because he has no one to talk to about cool new tech other than her. It slightly drives her nuts because she has a much smaller range of interests and isn’t very good about faking interest.
My SO and I have had similar problems in the past. He’s pretty geeky and interested in new tech but while he has a pretty high knowledge of computers for your average engineer he just doesn’t get some of the programming stuff. Meanwhile I could talk about some of the advances in neural networks and how to implement them for hours. He would probably get bored about 15 mins in. Now he’s a real sweet heart so he would listen to me talk about programming stuff for quite a long time but he would be so bored.
So what do you do to recover from/prevent cabin fever well according to WebMD’s article “How to Cope With Cabin Fever” (https://www.webmd.com/balance/features/how-to-cope-with-cabin-fever#1 ) there are a few things you can do.
1.Be careful how much news you watch (This can be a big one for many people. The world is so interconnected due to the internet that you can always find something to be sad about in the news. On the flip side there are always stories of hope too but they don’t tend to draw the viewers as much as horror and darkness.)
2. Relaxation Techniques (This is one I need to get better at. There are so many good relaxation techniques out there. It really is just finding the ones that work for you.)
3. Limit Alcohol (This is a pretty easy one for me. I don’t tend to drink much to begin with and after having a baby my alcohol tolerance is pretty much shot.)
4. talk to your friends (I struggle to do this one consistently. I’m so introverted that I tend to do bouts of very high contact with friends then get worn out from all the human contact and just not talk to people for awhile. I need to figure out how to be more consistent just for the fact that it will make it easier to have close friends.)
5. Exercise (Ohh this is a hard one. Where do gym bunnies find the motivation? I really struggle with exercising consistently. I really need to find a new work out hobby.)
So to fix my cabin fever blues I got out of the house without the baby and went and played the new Magic the Gathering release with my SO. It wasn’t the best one I’ve gone to but it was a lot of fun. I’m sure cabin fever will be a recurring problem for me but I have a few ways to beat it once I realize that it’s a problem again.
Today’s tip: Before you consider making the switch to working part or full time from home really consider how much human interaction you need every day and whether your spouse really wants to hear all your technical jargon.
The post The Perils of Working from Home:Part 1 (Cabin Fever) appeared first on Gilded Octopus.
