Why Working From Home Is So Exhausting, According To Research
Working from home has its perks, but it might be negatively impacting your health.
PR Image Factory | Canva Working-from-home challenges have become extremely common in the post-pandemic age — and they're downright tiresome. You must have noticed that being on video conference calls all day is exhausting. There are good reasons for that backed by science.
On the one hand, it's crucial — now, more than ever — to maintain the interpersonal connection and keep your video on while speaking to people. Video conferencing is as close as some people can get to mimicking a normal work environment.
According to research, working from home can be exhausting due to several factors, including lack of boundaries, increased distraction, and difficulty disconnecting, among others.
A 2024 study expanded on the work-from-home exhaustion factors, which include a lack of clear boundaries between work and personal life, increased distractions from the home environment, social isolation from colleagues, difficulty disconnecting from work, blurred work-life balance, and the added stress of managing household responsibilities while working. These factors often lead to feelings of burnout and reduced well-being.
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Still, virtual meetings are more tiring than regular face-to-face interactions. Once you better understand the reasons behind your exhaustion in remote work, you can choose which meetings to keep your video on for and which ones to use voice only.
Lack of body language also creates challenges in working remotely.
According to Dr. Albert Mehrabian’s principle of communication, we absorb only seven percent of words, 38 percent of tonality, and 55 percent of body language when communicating. We are subconsciously geared to gathering body language signals, which can be difficult to glean over video and downright impossible to discern over the phone.
In the case of a video call where only your coworker's face is visible, our physiology is desperately trying to capture more body language signals. Naturally, we are unable to accumulate these, leading to more energy expenditure and exhaustion.
Working from home presents significant challenges related to body language, primarily due to the lack of visual cues like facial expressions and gestures during virtual interactions. A study published by the Behaviour Analysis Team concluded this could lead to misunderstandings, reduced team cohesion, and difficulty interpreting colleagues' emotional states, which can impact overall communication effectiveness.
If you were to switch to voice-only calls, you know not to look for body language and focus on just the words and tonality. Hence, communication and comprehension may be better.
As a suggestion, meetings with more than three or four people can be initiated with video mode and then switched to voice only, while for one-on-ones it might be better to turn on video. We're all in survival mode.
Another work-from-home exhaustion factor to consider is that everything that has currently happened in the word has put us in survival mode.
Survival mode activates the limbic brain — the part of the brain involved in behavioral and emotional responses — and stocks up on adrenaline.
Imagine walking in the jungle, knowing a predator may spring any minute — it's the same environment for our nervous system, with varying degrees for different people, depending on their situation. Essentially, it translates to being on high alert and continually having to look over your shoulder.
The negative messages in the media are only making things worse right now. Due to all these factors, you're expending extra energy without really being aware of it.
Working from home, especially during stressful situations like a pandemic, can trigger a survival mode response, leading to increased stress, anxiety, burnout, and difficulty maintaining work-life boundaries.
A 2022 study on Canadian workers found this is often due to a lack of physical separation between work and personal life, increased isolation, and blurred boundaries between work hours and personal time. This can manifest as a constant feeling of needing to be on and readily available, significantly impacting mental health.
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Due to the uncertainty, you may also find yourself making multiple plans. If this happens, you go with Plan A or else Plan B. If that happens, you go with Plan C and parts of plan E. And so on.
This pattern is common for corporate leaders with high intelligence and planning abilities. While this is typically a strength, it can become a huge energy drain in present times. Leaders must remain self-aware and take charge of the environment.
If you feel less focused, drained, and unproductive working from home, it's essential to become self-aware of how your working methods and environment impact your energy levels.
It's a direct measure of your well-being and that of your team. Productivity is a direct consequence.
After focusing on self, communicate, and educate others on your team. This is the way for teams to truly bond.
Leaders who do not practice self-awareness will end up becoming too harsh on themselves and pushing even further, causing more malnourished energy levels. That's the last thing you want to do right now.
Bhavna Dalal is a master-certified executive coach at MCC ICF, speaker, and author of 'Checkmate Office Politics.' She helps people develop their leadership skills, including executive presence, strategic thinking, influencing and networking, and women leadership. Her work has been featured in Forbes India, Forbes Japan, and Fortune India.