If you’re struggling to concentrate while working round a kitchen table with 3 other flatmates, or packing in all your working hours in your toddler’s nap time, it can be easy to feel anxious that you are underperforming and start stacking up the hours at unhealthy (but quieter) times.
At the end of each day write down what you’ve done for work that has really been of value. It could have been a great idea; it could be the 5-minute phone call you made to a client to head off a problem; it could be the hour you spent on the phone helping your team to cope with new ways of working. I can guarantee that you won’t write down ‘being present for 8 hours’. If you start to see your true value as what you contributed, not the amount of time you spent at your desk, you stop panicking about not being able to clock up so many hours.