I’m sitting here at my desk—well, it’s actually a dining table I’ve slowly reclaimed over the last three years—listening to the hum of the refrigerator. It’s a sound you don’t really notice when the house is full of people or when you’re working in a bustling office with the HVAC system whirring and coworkers chatting about their weekends. But when you work for yourself, or you’re just remote for the long haul, that fridge hum becomes a companion. Sometimes it’s a comforting rhythm. Other days, it’s a reminder of exactly how quiet things have become.
When I first started working from home, I thought I’d cracked the code to life. No commute? Incredible. Wearing pajamas until noon? A dream. I pictured myself as this peak-performance machine, churning out work while a sourdough loaf rose in the kitchen. But the reality is a lot messier, a lot slower, and far more psychological than anyone tells you in those “top ten tips for remote work” listicles. It isn’t just about having a good Wi-Fi connection and a comfortable chair. It’s about how you handle your own mind when there’s no one else around to act as a mirror for your day.
The Myth of the Eight-Hour Day
One of the first things that hit me—and it took a long time to admit this—is that the traditional eight-hour workday is a total fabrication when you’re at home. In an office, those eight hours are padded. You walk to the breakroom, you get pulled into a spontaneous twenty-minute chat about a movie, you have meetings that are 40% actual work and 60% just being present. When you remove the walls of an office, that padding disappears. What’s left is the raw work. And honestly? Trying to do eight hours of raw, focused work without the social interruptions of an office is a recipe for a very specific kind of burnout.
I spent the first six months feeling guilty. If I finished my main tasks by 2:00 PM, I felt like a thief. I’d sit at my screen, scrolling through emails I’d already answered, just because I felt like I should be working until the sun went down. It’s a weird kind of conditioning. We’ve been taught that presence equals productivity. It took me a long time to realize that at home, productivity is about output and energy, not about how long your butt is in the chair. Some days I have four good hours in me. Some days I have ten. Learning to ride those waves instead of fighting them was the first big hurdle.
It’s okay to step away. I have to tell myself that at least once a day. If the words aren’t coming or the spreadsheet looks like gibberish, sitting there for another three hours won’t fix it. Usually, a walk to the corner store to buy an overpriced orange does more for my “workday” than staring at a blinking cursor ever could.
The Kitchen Table Struggle
Let’s talk about boundaries. Not the emotional kind—though those matter too—but the physical ones. When your living room is also your boardroom, the lines get blurry fast. I remember a phase where I’d have my laptop open during dinner, or I’d find myself checking emails at 11:00 PM just because the computer was right there. It’s a trap. If you don’t have a door you can shut, your entire home starts to feel like a cubicle.
I don’t have a spare room for a dedicated office. I wish I did. Instead, I have a corner. For a while, I hated that corner. But I’ve learned that the ritual of “leaving” the corner is what matters. At 5:30 PM, I shut the lid. I put the laptop in a drawer. I know it sounds a bit dramatic, but if I can see the screen, I’m still at work. Putting it out of sight is the only way my brain knows it’s okay to stop being a “professional” and start being a person who just wants to eat pasta and watch a documentary.
The Ritual of the “Fake Commute”
This is something I started doing last year, and it changed everything. I used to roll out of bed, hit the coffee maker, and be staring at Slack within ten minutes. It was miserable. My brain didn’t have time to wake up before it was being asked to solve problems. Now, I do a fake commute. I get dressed—real clothes, not sweatpants—and I walk around the block. That’s it. Ten minutes. I walk out the front door, turn left, circle back, and walk back in. It tells my brain: You are now entering the work phase of the day. Then I do the same thing at the end of the day. It’s a psychological barrier that protects my sanity.
The Loneliness Nobody Wants to Admit
There’s a specific kind of loneliness that comes with remote work. It’s not the “I have no friends” kind of loneliness. It’s the “I haven’t spoken out loud to a human being in six hours” kind. You can be on Zoom calls all day, you can be texting in group chats, but it isn’t the same as the ambient energy of other people. Sometimes I miss the annoying things—the sound of someone’s loud typing, the smell of someone’s questionable lunch in the microwave. Those things remind you that you’re part of a collective.
I’ve had to become intentional about being social. It feels forced at first. I’ll message a friend just to say, “Hey, are you alive?” or I’ll make a point to go to the library just to work in a room where other people are also working. We aren’t meant to be silos. If you stay in your silo too long, your perspective starts to warp. You start taking every email too personally. You start overthinking a comment your boss made because you didn’t have the context of their body language or the casual follow-up in the hallway.
If you’re feeling that itch—that sort of low-level irritability—it’s probably because you need to go interact with the world. Go buy a coffee. Talk to the person behind the counter about the weather. It sounds cliché, but those tiny micro-interactions are the grease that keeps the gears of our mental health moving. Don’t underestimate the power of a “hello” to a stranger when you’ve been staring at a screen for two days straight.
Finding Your Own “Noise”
Everyone has a different tolerance for silence. I have a friend who works in total, deafening silence. I can’t do it. It makes me feel like I’m in a sensory deprivation tank. I need something. But the “wrong” kind of noise is just as bad. I can’t listen to music with lyrics when I’m writing, and I can’t have the news on because it’s too distracting.
I’ve found a few things that work for me over the years:
- Lo-fi beats: It’s the classic for a reason. It’s basically digital wallpaper.
- Rain sounds: There are websites that just play the sound of a thunderstorm. It makes the house feel cozy instead of empty.
- Cafe ambience: Sometimes I play recordings of actual coffee shops. The clinking of spoons and muffled chatter makes me feel like I’m part of society without having to actually put on shoes.
- The “Old Movie” trick: Sometimes I’ll put on a movie I’ve seen fifty times. I don’t need to watch it, but the familiar dialogue is like a comforting background hum.
The point is to curate your environment. In an office, your environment is chosen for you. At home, you’re the architect. That’s a lot of pressure, but it’s also a huge opportunity to figure out what actually makes your brain click into place.
The Guilt of the “Unproductive” Day
We need to talk about the bad days. Because there will be days when you do absolutely nothing. You’ll sit down, you’ll try, and it just won’t happen. You’ll end up cleaning the baseboards or looking at old photos or researching the history of the stapler. And the guilt will be heavy. When you’re at home, there’s no one to tell you it’s okay to have an off day. You become your own harshest taskmaster.
What I’ve learned is that those “unproductive” days are often just your brain demanding a break that you’ve been refusing to give it. Instead of fighting it and sitting at the computer for eight hours of misery, I’ve started leaning into it. If I can’t work, I’ll just call it. I’ll go for a long hike or do the grocery shopping I’ve been putting off. Usually, by the next morning, the “fog” has cleared and I can do three days’ worth of work in five hours. You have to trust yourself. That’s the hardest part of working for yourself—trusting that the work will get done, even if it isn’t getting done right this second.
The Importance of Physical Movement
I never used to have back pain. Then I started working from home. It’s amazing how little we move when our commute is twenty feet. In an office, you walk to meetings, you walk to the parking lot, you walk to get lunch. At home, you can easily spend twelve hours within a thirty-foot radius. It’s bad for the body and worse for the mind.
I’m not a fitness person. I don’t go to the gym at 5:00 AM. But I’ve had to incorporate “movement snacks” into my day. A few stretches while the kettle boils. A quick walk after lunch. Sometimes I just stand up and shake my arms out like a weirdo. If my body feels stagnant, my thoughts feel stagnant. There’s a direct connection there that I ignored for way too long. If you’re feeling stuck on a project, don’t reach for more caffeine. Reach for your sneakers. Get some blood moving to your brain, and the solution usually shows up on its own.
Closing the Laptop
At the end of the day, working from home is a craft. You’re not just doing your job; you’re managing a workplace, a cafeteria, and a mental health facility all at once. It’s okay if you haven’t mastered it yet. I’ve been doing this for years, and I still have weeks where I feel like I’m failing at all of it. I still have days where I stay in my bathrobe too long and days where I forget to eat lunch.
But there’s a beauty in the quiet, too. There’s the ability to see the way the light moves across the floor in the afternoon. There’s the joy of being able to throw a load of laundry in when you need a five-minute break. There’s the freedom to be exactly who you are without the performance of the office. It’s a trade-off. You lose the community of the workplace, but you gain the chance to build a life that actually fits who you are.
So, if you’re struggling with the silence today, or if you’re feeling guilty about a slow morning, take a breath. It’s all part of the process. Shut the laptop when you’re done. Go outside. Look at a tree. The work will be there tomorrow, and the fridge will still be humming. You’re doing just fine.