In this solo coaching video, certified high‑performance coach Sean Butner explores the challenge of working from home without letting work consume personal life. He argues that the first step is believing you have agency over your time and then establishing clear, collaborative boundaries with both teammates and family. He proposes a communication hierarchy that matches urgency and complexity to the appropriate channel (instant message, email, video call) and suggests limiting email checks to twice daily to reduce distraction. Central to his method is the "block time" practice: 50 minutes of focused work on a single task followed by a 10‑minute micro‑break, which he claims can boost productivity by about 30%. He emphasizes shifting focus from hours logged to results delivered, allowing for a healthier work‑life balance where evenings and weekends are protected unless an emergency occurs. Throughout, he encourages listeners to experiment with these boundaries, communicate them assertively, and, if needed, seek one‑on‑one high‑performance coaching through his website to refine habits and eliminate home‑based distractions like TV or endless messaging.
Chapters
Your day with a coach. I'm your host, Sean Butner, certified high performance coach. And today we are talking about the question, are you working from home or are you living at work? Now with so many people shifting into working from home, getting away from the office, and that trend continuing out in the market, you know, I know it can feel at times a little suffocating, always to have your computer open, always to be taking questions and phone calls and, you know, emails from teammates, and always feeling like you could be doing more for your job when you're in your home office. And it can be really hard to escape or have that sense of separation between work and home. And if you're fortunate enough to be working from home, you might know what I'm talking about. This happened to me in my tech career before the, you know, working from home as a society was kind of a big thing. When people kept talking like, this is the future, well, the future's here. And, you know, the ability and the opportunity is you can get a lot more done when you don't have to commute. You can get a lot more done when you can, in between things, take care of personal things you might need to do. But the trick is, how can you do that without feeling like you're burning yourself out? Right? Because for so much of us that commute, that transition from the office to home and home to the office was, you know, that. That like, I'm gearing in, I'm getting ready for my day, and then I'm deconstructing so I can be present with my family. So really like the way that I've always thought about this, and I think it's way more important now than it is before or was before, is we need some guidelines to really help guide us in this new world. Right? And whether you're running a business from your house like I am, or you have a desk job that allows you to work from your home, these are just some things that I think of that I think are really important. And having done a work from home challenge last year, some of the things that I picked up along the way. So the first thing is we really have to have this belief that we have agency, we can control our time. And I know some folks are like, well, my job's really demanding. They have tracking software, they have. There's all sorts of weird things going on, but we need to believe that we can set boundaries and we can communicate those boundaries to our teams, to our families if they. They're at home and, you know, walking in on us or whatever, you know, our coworkers and bosses when they're home. And it might look like, okay, we need some type of operating procedure. And hopefully this is collaborative, so it shouldn't just be like, this is what I'm doing, because nobody likes to be told what to do. But posing the problem of I really want time to focus, I really want time to get traction on things, and I also want to be available to the team. How can we work out a system where we're all just aware of what to expect or what qualifies for a text message versus an email versus a Zoom or FaceTime or video conference? What type of problems are appropriate for each of these? And I think one of the weird things, I realize I've talked about this actually for a while, but I always had in my head, have a communication hierarchy where if something is on fire, really urgent or really complex, you know, FaceTime, you know, being in the same room as someone or getting on a video call where you can actually see the person, the communication and back and forth is, you know, really so much more easier. And I think it's way more productive than sending 20,000 instant messages or 30,000 emails on trying to, like, sort out where you're gonna get coffee with your boss next week for that meeting that he has to do or whatever, you know, so, you know, having that thought through in a strategic way. Right? So it's like I will answer emails twice a day right when I get in to the office, or if you're even watching the show an hour after I start work. So if I get in at 9, maybe at 10 o', clock, I'll check my emails. I'll check again at 3 o' clock in the afternoon if it's important, if it's urgent, if it's time bound, don't send me an email. It's not. I don't want to. At least I know there's customer service jobs that sometimes need to be in there. We'll address that in a second. But you know, the inbox can be really distracting, especially if you're trying to focus and there's all these things going on and, you know, so the whole idea in high performance is, you know, basically when it comes to productivity, it's like when you're in a plane and they tell you to put your oxygen mask on first. And before helping other people, you need to do that with your productivity. You need to, like, advance your projects, get your stuff done before you can help others each day. So that block time, which I'll talk about in a second. That one hour in the beginning of the day where you focus on your plan, what you need to do, and then getting some momentum on one thing is one of the techniques we talk about that. But so knowing, setting those expectations, when you're like, I will not answer emails, text messages or anything after 7 o', clock, it can wait till the next day unless someone's dying, unless the building's on fire, right? So it's those types of thinking through those, those types of scenarios and communicating that to your team, your family, to everyone around you. So you could say example too, that at seven o', clock, work, laptop gets closed, you do a transition into being home with the kids, with the spouse, the roommates, with the dog, with the cat, you know, that kind of stuff. And then you're home, you know, you don't have to have that constantly dragging down your brain and whatever that mixes for you. I'm not saying that some 7 o' clock should be your sign off time or 5 o' clock should be, or, you know, whatever works for you as long as you feel that it's balanced, that you can accomplish the other things that human beings need to do outside of work. So if you can do your chores, if you can socialize a little bit, you know, have some time to rejuvenate, that's what work life balance means to me. It's not that you have eight hours of work, you have eight hours of play, you have eight hours of sleep or whatever. It doesn't have to be equal, it just has to be the right combination for you. So, okay, so that's the first thing you need to believe that you can have those conversations, that people will listen. And if you don't, the first thing I would recommend is just try, right? If you start talking about it, hey, I'm not going to be available these times, you know, I have to take care of the kids, I have to do whatever. You can train your team on this or your co workers or even your boss. And it kind of helps everyone, you know, when you know, okay, like we're done for the day, this is time for either me to do my solo work or queue up questions to send tomorrow. Trust me, it can work. But you gotta try. And at the end of the day, if you have people that are like jerks to you, um, sorry, I really like sticklers for that. We have to be available all the time. Maybe you start to think I'll just shut everything down and eventually they'll get that, that's how it's going to go down. So, okay, so the second thing, and I mentioned this before, you know, a new behavior to have at home becomes really critical for you to do something we call block time in the certified high performance coaching process that I do and that, and I talk about this a lot. So if you've seen previous videos, you know what I'm saying? But all it is is you take blocks of time. Like take an hour. The first 50 minutes you're focused on one project, one task, getting one thing done with excellence, with, you know, being completely finished with it. And then you have 10 minutes to do a bio break, to do a little meditation, go out, walk around the block, you get some sunshine, you know, a little micro break to disconnect your brain, to, you know, rest your eyes if you're staring at a computer like I do all the time. So get your eyes some rest, get your body some rest, get your body moving, get some water, that kind of stuff. And it is proven to, you know, give you like 30% more productivity. So if you can up your productivity game with work. So it's like, okay, I know that I need to like pick up the kid at 11 from the thing. So, you know, 9, 10 and 11, I have three blocks to be a weapon to really, you know, make a difference, to really get things done. You'll feel that momentum. You can go take care of the personal stuff, then flip back whenever you get back or you accomplish your goals for the day. You know, this idea too, that time put in is productivity, but not the results, not the value that you're adding, is, I think, another kind of mind shift that people need to have. When we have jobs like coding or managing or, you know, stuff that you do from your laptop in your home office, reaching the market, that kind of stuff. So, you know, in this also, you know, at the end of the day, if you're more product productive, that means you don't have to put in as many hours, theoretically. And so you skip the whole process of wake up at seven, log on, work, work, work, work, Work till like 11 o' clock at night, you go to sleep and then you repeat and you figure out how to like, you know, nourish yourself or see people in that. Right? That's the worst case scenario, of course. But you know, as more and more people work from home, you know, we've already seen these giant shifts off campus, out of the office, into our homes, you know, we can, you know, establish some new norms on tasks to help, you know, help Us focus and realize the whole benefit of working from home, which is, you know, less commute. It is, you know, I think in a lot of ways a lot easier to focus unless you're missing that, like, social connection, which is tricky and we can talk about that in a different video. But, you know, being able to communicate norms, being able to really focus and be a weapon, being really productive in what we do every day, can really make the difference in working from home and not living at work, which is what we all dread. So that said, guys, if you are struggling with working at home and you are also like, how can I get more productive? How can I be bold enough to have the conversation with my boss to say, hey, I'm not paying attention to any type of communications after, you know, seven, eight o', clock, five o' clock in the afternoon, whatever that is for you. And you're like, I really need to figure out how to get the words, you know, I would suggest you go to SeanButter.com coaching and you can qualify for a free one on one strategy session and get a taste of how certified high performance coaching can help you have those conversations. Because sometimes you need to talk it out with someone and a coach is a really great person to talk out how to have those I need this boundary, how can we work together type situation, or hey, I really need to get rid of distractions at home. You know, you turn on the TV while you're working and then all of a sudden, you know, Netflix takes over your day kind of stuff. Like, how do I stop that? I know I need to stop it. I can't figure it out. A coach can help you with that. So hit me up there and hope to see you or talk to you soon. See you guys tomorrow.
