Flexible office space company Regus asked 12,000 workers in 85 countries about their intentions to work during the end-of-year holidays and found a few of the year’s biggest occasions aren’t enough to keep Americans away from the office (or their smartphones). The company found:

• 64 percent of U.S. business people will work during the last week of the year.
• 56 percent of those working during this time will travel into the office to do so.
• Yet a hefty percentage of American respondents – 39 percent — believe workers will get very little done in this work time.

These numbers come on top of an another poll from RingCentral showing 70.4 percent of U.S. business owners, executives and independent pros surveyed expect to work more this holiday season than last year. Only 14 percent plan to take a real vacation, meaning a complete break from work, including work-related emails or phone calls. Filling in this dismal picture of vacation starvation is the annual doom and gloom from Mercer’s 2011 Worldwide Benefit & Employment Guidelines, which shocked exactly no one by showing workers in the U.S. have among the least generous statutory employee holiday entitlements (entitlements they don’t even take full advantage of).

What does this have to do with connectivity and the future of work? Simple: Constant connectivity and eroding work-life boundaries may be making it even more difficult for vacation-starved Americans (and even those in more vacation-friendly countries) to really get away. Just take the tiny percentage of workers RingCentral revealed will be taking a real vacation by severing their connection to work entirely as exhibit A. Add to these difficulties the seemingly endless pressure of a dire economic climate and the vacation complications caused by our increasingly international teams, which creates the need to decide which holidays, if any, remote employees are entitled to and you have a recipe for increasing levels of holiday deprivation-induced burnout.

Do you get the sense that our Americans vacation starvation is getting worse due to larger workforce trends?

Image courtesy of Flickr user Ed Yourdon.

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The article by Linda Carroll explains that the very employees who may desire the flexibility to work remotely the most actually appear to suffer a higher risk of burnout when their wish is granted and they start working from home. Why? Carroll explains:

That’s because when job and family are in the same place, some workers feel there is no chance for downtime —no respite or time to relax, said Timothy Golden, an associate professor of management at the Lally School of Management and Technology at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.

“A teleworker may feel conflict more because you’re being constantly reminded of your home role: whether it’s what you need to do as a parent or household chores,” Golden said. “And that can make exhaustion worse.”

The study surveyed the relatively modest number of 316 employees at a computer firm that allowed telecommuting, asking them to rate their level of job-family conflict and exhaustion. When the researchers crunched the numbers, they discovered that while those with low levels of work-life conflict got a ton out of working from home, those that were already finding the balancing act hard found it even more difficult when working remotely.

Besides telecommuting parents failing to set appropriate boundaries between work and home, another possible explanation for this increase in burnout among some parents who telecommute could be the mistaken belief that working from home is a good opportunity to cut back on child care. With additional family responsibilities and, in reality, the same amount of work as in the office, these parents could quickly reach the breaking point.

What do you think: Does the freedom to telecommute ever make the work-life juggle psychologically harder?

At Net:Work, we will explore the challenges of avoiding burnout and policing work-life boundaries. The event will be held in San Francisco on Dec. 8.

Image courtesy of Flickr use skeddy in NYC

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A recent round-up of research on telecommuting in Knowledge@Wharton brings this point home. The in-depth article notes that “as the economy flirts with a double-dip recession… the workplace for many Americans has shifted away from crowded offices to a new world of solitary work,” and then proceeds to discuss the challenges of working alone.

Some of these issues like time management and work-life balance challenges have been covered extensively on WebWorkerDaily before, but one difficult aspect of solo work studied by Susan J. Ashford, professor of management at the University of Michigan, is less often discussed: the challenges to ego and self-worth that solo work presents. According to Knowledge@Wharton, her research has led her to conclude:

… [Q]uestions about purpose and meaning come up more easily to workers who have no organization behind them. “Our argument is that your ego is very invested in the work because it’s just you,” she notes. “There’s nobody there to tell you that what you’re doing is great even though profits are going down.”

In a study recently presented at the Academy of Management, Ashford conducted in-depth interviews with solitary workers about how they stay motivated, and discovered that many needed to create a larger narrative of meaning behind their work. For some, such as a rug maker who likened her basement workshop to Picasso’s studio, the stories were imaginary projections. Others created ego-boosting surroundings, like the financial analyst who set up his office to feel like the cockpit of a jet plane. The narratives helped sustain motivation when money got tight or stress levels rose. “When you are on your own, meaning-making feels much more necessary to your work life than when you’re in an organization,” Ashford says. “The more freedom you have in your work, the more you have to do this.”

Ashford’s conclusions seem sensible. If you’re required to show up at an office from nine to five every day and are paid bi-weekly for doing so, this arrangement is, in effect, a constant drip of validation. You’ve accomplished the primary goal set out for you –- attendance –- and been rewarded with a paycheck. A flash lobby and plush office functions the same way, assuring everyone who works there of the meaningfulness of their work. Plus, in an office, you’re surrounded by others who you can measure yourself against. If Stew in the next cube over is a bit of a slacker, every day you can spy him playing solitaire or bungling presentations and know where you stand in the office accomplishment stakes. Web work removes that supportive scaffolding.

Do you think web work demands inner confidence as much as organizational and motivational skills?

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1. Coworking is like a non-stop trade show. Conventions and trade shows are the perfect place to get your company’s name out there and make connections that could possibly form the backbone of your future business. Because of the revolving-door nature many coworking spaces, coworking can be like a lite version of padding the trade show floor. Connections made at coworking locations can lead to partnerships, lucrative sales contracts, or high-caliber talent acquisition.
2. Coworking provides office structure without office stricture. With coworking, employees get an office environment that encourage structures, such as offering regular office hours and a sense of responsibility and professionalism, while also not conveying the often-constraining feeling of being babysat that too many traditional offices provide. It’s a best-of-both-worlds type environment that works especially well with remote teams who happen to be co-located, since they can much more easily work together while still feeling like a fully autonomous cell of the larger company.
3. Coworking encourages work-life balance. Remote employees can actually suffer from a tendency not to put their work down at the end of the day, which, though it may provide benefits in the short term, will eventually have a negative effect on productivity and product quality. Encouraging workers to seek out a coworking space will help to divide work from home life, which will enable them to better leave work “at the office,” so to speak, and should encourage healthier work/life habits in the long term.
4. Coworking is creative. Even if coworking remote workers don’t encounter anyone who travels in the same sphere, they can still be influenced by others around them. Being in close contact with other professionals in different fields is bound to result in some creative experiences, and even generate solutions that otherwise would never have been considered. Coworking space users interact and talk, and the flow of ideas is one of the better reasons remote teams should seek out and take advantage of these opportunities.
5. Coworking is human. If you want your remote workers to be even better than those located at your physical office, the human factor is definitely something you can’t overlook. Regular, face-to-face human interaction regarding business-related matters is something that will never become unimportant for companies or individual employees; in fact, it may become what separates companies that just do well from those that truly excel as we move into a time when workforces see less and less of each other and the people they serve, sell to and buy from. Coworking ensures that remote teams remember the value of, and remain well-practiced at, human interaction, even if that just means knowing how to negotiate a shared work environment. It may seem like a small thing, but disconnection from even that most basic human experience is a very real possibility in our remote working future.

Any other benefits you can suggest, maybe from your own experience coworking as a remote employee? Please share in the comments.

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How can you switch off without appearing to slack off? How do you set boundaries without annoying colleagues (or your kids)? And most importantly how do you overcome your own impulse to check your email just one more time? These questions can be tricky, as blog Personal Dividends recently reported when outlining the downsides of web work:

I can shift some of my assignments around, but I rarely go a day without doing something related to my business. The only exceptions are Sundays and my yearly three-day camping trip. Usually, even when I’m away from home, I’m on the laptop for at least two hours day. Sometimes that means getting up way before everyone else so that I can get my stuff done before the activities of the day.

If you’ve been working remotely for a while you’re probably already aware of the trouble with vacations, so how can you minimize the guilt and stress and maximize the relaxation of your holiday? Here is a roundup of the best tips from around the Internet:

• The obvious: inform clients or co-workers, choose your dates wisely, work ahead and prepare set email responses you can use with minimal effort while away.
• Save the money and time necessary. You save up for a new car and block out enough time for a big job. Isn’t a vacation also worth dedicating resources to? Treat your break like a client and add your holiday to your calendar. Save money and sequester it for the purpose of taking a vacation.
• Keep “remote guilt” in perspective. It’s well-documented that remote workers are often paranoid that they are perceived as lazy and work more hours to compensate. Vacations can be extra stressful because of this worry. There’s no magic cure, but knowing that you’re not at all alone in feeling that guilt can help.
• Imagine your family’s perspective. If you need help finding the right balance between work and play, it might help imagining what you look like to your kids tapping away on your laptop in your Bermuda shorts. You tell yourself about the economic complexities and that you prefer interesting work to a bad detective novel, but can you really justify your decisions to your loved ones? If you’re not sure, maybe you need to re-balance.
• Have a plan to deal with backlog on your return. No matter how well you’ve planned in advance, you will face a mountain of emails and to-do list items when you come home. Mentally brace for it and come up with a strategy to dig out. There are plenty of resources to help.
• Don’t force yourself. Burn-out is a terrible thing, says conventional wisdom, which argues that no vacations equals physical and creative exhaustion. That’s true for many, but for some people blurring the line between life and work is the whole point of the web worker lifestyle. As Gerald M. Weinberg puts it, “By my definition, a vacation is an escape from work you don’t want to do. According to my definition, I’ve been on a real vacation for a long, long time.” If you’re like Weinberg, why waste valuable mental energy fretting about how much time you take off?

Do you struggle take and enjoy vacations as a web worker?

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This got me thinking about how much my beliefs about business have changed in the ten years since I started my own company. I used to agree with the common recommendation that lines should be clearly drawn between one’s business and personal space. The advice was that you shouldn’t work from your kitchen table, and that you should have a separate space for your business.

From a balance perspective, it seemed only natural to compartmentalize, and to have clearly-defined boundaries between work and home. After all, wasn’t that how it worked with “regular jobs”? So when I created a business, I attempted to maintain clear boundaries between it and my home life.

But I began to see that my life as an entrepreneur was very different from those with “regular jobs.” For me, it was a struggle to determine where my work life stopped and my home life began. I thought that something was wrong with me for a while, but then I realized that I actually liked the blurred lines. I liked ‘living’ as much within my business as outside. Since that was true, why was it so necessary to separate the different parts of my life?

I’ve come to accept that I like having a “kitchen table business.” Like Chris Brogan, I have way more time with family and friends now than I ever did before starting a business. I have flexibility to work when I’m able: around sickness, around unpredictable bouts of insomnia, and around the even more unpredictable ebbs and flows of life. So while I used to believe that having a “kitchen table business” would set me up to become a workaholic, I now see it as a way to live my life exactly as I want.

Does my business have boundaries? Yes, but they’re more like gray areas. I’m a web worker, but I also have Internet-free days. There are days when I work eighteen hours, and other days when I work three. Sometimes I work in my pajamas from the sofa, but I can crave the structure of my office. In the end, it all evens out, and for the most part, I feel I’m able to maintain a semblance of balance.

How do you balance your life and business? Do you set clearly defined boundaries, or are you able to work successfully at the kitchen table?

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I’ve been working on several big projects in recent months, and after the whirlwind started settling down, I realized how important it was to take time away from the demands that can wear us down.

In “The 4-Hour Work Week,” Timothy Ferris talks about spending two months on big work-related projects and then taking one month off for intense training of some sort or travel. For most of us, that can seem a bit extreme, but I do think he has the right idea. It’s so easy to just plow through the work, never taking time off to reflect on what we’ve accomplished and rest after accomplishing something. Keeping at that pace will surely lead to frustration and burnout.

The problem is, the work never seems to be done. In my case, after re-launching one of my sites, I now have to think about building it up with promotion and content, which is another big undertaking in and of itself, so where does it end? I guess the answer is, it doesn’t. There will always be something to do: A big project to complete; a new client to sign; a big promotional push to get underway. For small business owners and entrepreneurs, the reality is, the work is never done, so we just have to force ourselves to respect our own limitations and take time to recuperate and rest.

So, how can we ensure that we get enough time away from our work before burning ourselves out? Here are a few ideas that might help.

• Schedule time off first. A business owner I know schedules her time three months out, and the first thing she schedules is her time off. She decides three months ahead of time when she’s going to be off and schedules her work and availability around that. Really, I know that I can easily lose track of time and not remember the last time I took a vacation day. There are times when it seems that the only time I get off is when I’m sick, but if I would only schedule in my time off before scheduling anything else, it would be a lot easier to stay on track in the balance department.
• Keep weekends Internet-free. For most of us, our businesses and work are largely web-based, and when we spend the weekends surfing the web, hanging around social networks, or even checking email, it’s hard to feel like we get a real break. When I go completely Internet-free, it’s actually a nice relief, and it’s an easy way of making sure I don’t spend an hour or two each day of my weekend replying to work-related emails or thinking about work projects.
• Stick to a set wrap-up time. It’s easy to work “just a little longer” to the point that we work an extra ten hours a week. Julie Morgenstern has a great solution for this problem in her book “Never Check E-Mail in the Morning.” She suggests using a wrap-up alarm to remind yourself to start wrapping things up so that you leave the office at a set time each day. If you want to be out of the office by 5:30 each day, set your wrap-up alarm for 4:30 and start winding things down when it alerts you.
• Stick to a set start time. It’s just as easy to let work start creeping in too early as it is to let it keep us working late, so have a designated start time each day. Know your own weaknesses, and if you can’t resist the temptation to respond (or even check) work-related emails early in the morning, then don’t even put yourself near the temptation. Wait to check news and blog feeds until lunch instead of first thing in the morning so that you avoid being tempted to start work too early.
• Know when you’ve had enough. When you feel yourself getting too worn down, take a day off or at least limit your working time to the “must-dos” only. Wear yourself out completely, and you’ll end up sick, burned out, or frustrated with work. If you notice yourself snapping at others or becoming easily agitated, it might be time for a break.

As small business owners and entrepreneurs, it can be easy to allow the work to take over, leaving little room for breaks and down time, but it’s important to stay balanced. We need time to rest and recuperate so that we come back to work recharged and with a renewed energy and enthusiasm. Know your own limitations and make sure to schedule enough time to take care of yourself. Without your health and mental well-being, it will be much harder to see your business to success.

How do you make sure to get enough time away from your work to avoid burning out?

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But even without such triggers, many of us find ourselves blurring the lines between work time and down time, which is easy enough to do when your home space is your work space.

If you’re the type of person who tends to find themselves working longer hours, or doing little bits of work when you have spare moments on the weekend, these tips might help you to keep the boundaries between work and personal time nice and clear.

1. Track your hours.
For many, setting aside eight consecutive hours a day in which to work can be a problem — virtual meetings with team members in other time zones, varying deadlines, and other pressures can see us keep some pretty irregular hours, which can be difficult to reconcile with a “typical” nine-to-five day — especially if your employer has certain expectations of your availability during the day.

Rather than setting a work day schedule, you might find it more workable to track your hours to ensure that, overall, you’re working an appropriate amount of hours, and keeping aside enough personal time for yourself.

2. Protect your personal time.
It can be a challenge to keep your down time as down time, but it’s important if you’re going to recharge the batteries and be at the top of your game when you’re at work.

Value your personal time. If you track your time, you might be equally able to block out hours for personal time around the work time. Try to pursue interests that take you away from the computer, leave your PDA and work phone at home, or simply make a rule with yourself that you won’t turn to work during your personal time (incentives and rewards, like going to the movies, or paying a visit to friends, may help you kick the habit).

3. Shut the door.
If you’re fortunate enough to have a separate room as your home office, keep your work things in it, and shut the door on it when you’re having personal time. This physical indicator that you’re not at work can make a big difference to your state of mind, and your ability to let go of work at the end of the day, without your having to leave the house.

If you don’t have a separate room for your home office, you might try to physically dislocate yourself from your work in some other way: pack your laptop and other work tools like diaries and PDAs in a drawer, or cover your desk with a drop cloth, for example.

4. Use triggers to tell yourself when it is work time.
If you want to go all-out to differentiate your work time from your personal time, dressing in certain clothes, playing certain music, or having certain objects on your desk during work time can help you form mental associations about the way things are during work hours. They can help you to define the “work you” separately from the “at home you”.

For example, my workstation doubles as a desk in my house. When I’m at work, my desk looks a certain way: it’s littered with papers, my phone, pens and reference books. The reference books, in particular, tell me it’s work time. When it’s not work time, they live in a cupboard, which frees up the desk for other, personal pursuits.

5. Get outside motivation.
I’m sure that someone close to you would love to help you delineate work from personal time. Ask those people for their help — make plans to spend some of your down time with them, or if you’re getting particularly obsessive about work, ask them to tell you when you start talking or thinking about — or doing — work in your designated personal time.

Consider taking up a new hobby, sport, or other pursuit in your non-work time. Taking your mind off work and applying it to other things might take some practice, but it’ll be worth it.

What are your tips for delineating your work time from your personal time?

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I plan on participating by shutting not only turning my computer off, but my cell phone as well.  My work/life balance will most likely be vastly improved as a result.

Could you do without your computer for a day?  What other devices would be hard for you to go without?

Perhaps with the trend to always be connected and ‘in the loop’, these occasional days where we are encouraged to shut everything the world off can be very beneficial.

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