The Complete Guide to Avoiding Loneliness When Working From Home

Before the Covid 19 pandemic hit, it seemed like working at an office was just something we did without really questioning it. We would wake up, get ready for work, stuff ourselves into busses, trains, or rush hour traffic to go to an office to work. But when the pandemic hit, companies were forced to go remote seemingly overnight.

Although working from home has great benefits such as limiting commute time, having a more comfortable work environment, or being able to be flexible with your schedule, there is one main problem that we may be reluctant to admit: loneliness.

Feel Alone? You’re Not Alone

Even before the pandemic, loneliness was a big problem but it’s become even more common since the pandemic forced cities and countries to shut down and required people to isolate themselves from others. According to Cigna, 3 out of 5 Americans are lonely (similar stats for Canadians), with numbers being much higher for young people.

You must understand that if you feel lonely, sad, anxious, or anything similar, you are not even close to being alone. You’re not even in the minority. Most people around you are feeling something similar to some degree or another.

Does this make you feel any better about your situation? Probably not, but if you ever think you’re the only one struggling with this… you’re wrong. Just because no one talks about it or seems lonely, doesn’t mean they aren’t.

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What is Loneliness?

Although being alone and loneliness often go together, they’re not the same thing. Loneliness isn’t necessarily caused by being alone, but instead is caused when you feel alone. Feeling alone comes from a lack of connection, whether the connection is to people, a community, an idea, or an activity.

Think about it, do you feel lonely in the moments when you’re immersed in your work or a TV show? You don’t, but you do feel lonely when you are sitting there in your room when you don’t feel connected to something.

Loneliness isn’t limited to just people who are physically alone. Anyone can feel lonely. Single people, people in relationships, people with no friends, people with lots of friends, people with families, managers, company leaders, entry-level interns… anyone.

How to Overcome Loneliness?

The key to overcoming loneliness is connection. The connection can be to a person, an activity, to a task, an idea, or to yourself.

Although in the short term, connection to anything other than other people can provide temporary relief, face-to-face connection with other people is the only sustainable long-term solution.

But before you pick tactics to overcome loneliness, you must become aware of what the source of your loneliness is.

What Is The Source Of Your Loneliness?

Identifying the source of your loneliness can be a painful realization, but it’s going to be crucial because you need to know what problem you need to solve to overcome loneliness.

The source of your loneliness could be one or a combination of the following. Here are the most common problems people experience with loneliness:

Being Alone

If you spend the majority of your time alone, this can surely cause loneliness because you have such limited moments to be connected to other humans, if at all. Even if you have strong relationships with friends and family, if you aren’t in touch with them often, it can get quite isolating.

Lack of Close Friends

If you don’t have (m)any close friends, you may feel like you lack an intimate connection with people which can produce many negative feelings.

Being Single

You may have all the friends in the world, but if you are missing a romantic & sexual partner, the void in your emotional life could make you feel lonely as well.

Relationship/ Family Problems

You could be in a situation where you are surrounded by people you are close to but if there are problems in your relationship or family, the emotional disconnect could make you feel quite lonely.

After you identify the source, then you can apply the right tactics to overcome loneliness.

During the Workday

Remote or not, the priority when you’re working remains the same — doing good work.

However, we do know that employees are more productive when they are happy, and loneliness kills happiness, so by solving the latter, you get the former.

There is no way around the fact that face-to-face interaction is what builds human connection, so how do you allow for face-to-face communication when your team isn’t face to face?

Timed Coffee Breaks

One great way to combat loneliness during the workday is to have timed coffee break opportunities where employees can chat for a bit to take a break from being alone in their bedroom or home office and have some human connection. Think of it as a virtual coffee break.

If your company uses Slack, the Hallway integration works great for this. If you want to do this manually, you can schedule 10 minute or so team video calls multiple times a day. 11 am, 2 pm, and 4 pm are good times since these are typical times where employee energy tends to drop.

Potential solutions for:

• Being alone
• Lack of close friends

Virtual Lunch Breaks

Business managers, if you didn’t have team lunch breaks before Covid hit, you missed a crucial moment to create company culture and connection. There is no reason why you shouldn’t do this when your team is remote.

Some of the best interactions I’ve ever had with my co-workers came from the lunch break, and when companies I worked for didn’t have a designated lunch break where the team could sit together, talk, and eat, I felt the difference in connection with my co-workers… and your team surely does too.

The process for incorporating this is similar to the virtual coffee breaks, just make a recurring schedule in your video conference platform during your company’s typical lunch hour.

Potential solutions for:

• Being alone
• Lack of close friends

Post-Work Celebrations

Congratulations! By shifting all work remotely, you save an hour a day or so of wasted time commuting. Why not host a virtual post-work celebration in place of you and your team’s commute home?

Invite your team to enjoy a drink with your team in a virtual happy hour where you can relax and talk about anything aside from work.

Don’t want to encourage drinking? No problem. You can set up a game night instead (virtual Pictionary, trivia, Scattergories, codenames, to name a few). If you are going to host one of these, it’s a good idea to have a separate video conference going to keep the conversational aspect going.

Potential solutions for:

• Being alone
• Lack of close friends

Work Outside Your House

If your work allows you to, spending at least one day a week working outside your home office would do well to combat loneliness. A change of scenery around people could be just what you needed.

Setting up shop at a local coffee store, park, library, restaurants, college campuses, or hotel lobbies are great places to do work.

If you are going to work remotely, look into using a VPN to remain secure on public wifi.

Potential solutions for:

• Being alone

At Home

Do Things You Love

Finding new ideas, activities, or projects to connect to could be a great way to help overcome loneliness when you’re alone at home. Even if you have a fulfilling social life, you will likely spend a decent amount of time alone.

For those who spend most of their time alone, connecting with things that are not human to human interactions can provide a short-term relief of loneliness, however, the only long-term sustainable solution is human, in-person connection.

When you’re alone, you can do one of two things: find something you enjoy doing, or do the things you already enjoy doing, but this time does it unapologetically.

Potential problems solved:

• (Feeling) alone

Connecting With Friends

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Have One Friend You Can Meet Up With at Least Once a Week

Do you have a close friend in your life you can meet up with at least once a week? Having at least one close friend will give you a sense of social stability as you will have at least one person you can express yourself fully to and who would support you.

Whether it be a coworker, a friend, a family member, or a significant other, it’s important that you have at least one person or prioritize building this relationship if you don’t already.

Potential solutions for:

• Being alone
• Lack of close friends

Video Messaging

Texting is a terrible way to keep connected with others. Texting forces you to interpret the other person’s entire communication through a short sentence on a screen. You get no sense of the other person’s non-verbal communication which is the majority of communication, if you’re lucky you get an emoji.

Instead of texting, try video messaging with apps like Marco Polo. Video messaging apps allow you to send video messages instead of texts so you get the entire communication including vocal tonality, facial expression, and other visuals. Video messages are far more pleasing to receive than texts since you can feel their expression through the phone.

Unlike Snapchat, Marco Polo videos don’t disappear and there isn’t an addictive social media presence.

Potential solutions for:

• Lack of close friends
• Relationship/ family problems

Meet New People

Meeting new people can help you avoid loneliness since you are opening yourself up to new opportunities for connection.

You can meet new people virtually anywhere: at work, out and about, at the coffee shop, when you’re shopping, at social events, through friends of friends… or anywhere with people.

When you want to start a conversation with someone, the best way to relieve the tension on both ends is to show you’re not a threat. The first thing humans need to assess before they let their guard down and have a friendly interaction is to know you’re not a threat. To accomplish this, smile and acknowledge the fact that you’re coming up to them out of the blue.

You can use the following underlined phrases to show you’re acknowledging the potentially awkward social context:

• Hey, I know this is kind of random but I saw you earlier and wanted to say hello.
• Hi, I know this is out of the blue but that’s a pretty cool jacket you have on, where did you get it?
• *if at a social event* Hi I don’t think I’ve met you yet, I’m Tak.
• Hey I don’t usually do this but I thought you were really pretty and I just had to come over and say hi.

Potential solutions for:

• Being alone
• Lack of close friends
• Being single

Play With Friends

Play is not something that only kids do, it’s something that adults forget to do.

Play is great for building connection because the only point of the play is fun. No attempts to try and impress each other with fancy ideas, brag about our accomplishments or complain about life events.

Here are a small collection of play ideas:

Sports

• Basketball, soccer, tennis, football, frisbee, bowling, golf, martial arts, baseball, hockey, volleyball, archery, kayaking, hiking, rock climbing, skateboarding, ski/snowboard, swimming, shooting

Games

• Billiards, darts, card games, poker, board games, paintball, laser tag, mini-golf, escape rooms, arcade, video games, virtual reality, amusement park

Art

• Painting, drawing, creating music, freestyle rap, dancing, cooking/baking, making films

Exploring/ adventuring

Potential problems solved:

• Being alone
• Close friends
• Relationship/ family problems

Get Your Co-worker Friends Together

Just because you spend 8–9 hours together in a professional setting, doesn’t mean your relationship with them stops when you clock out. If your co-workers live in the same location as you, get them together for a meal at a restaurant, house party, social night, play session, or on a trip.

Potential problems solved:

• Being alone
• Close friends

Dating Life

Online Dating

Online dating apps and websites give you access to hundreds of potential partners that you wouldn’t have ever met otherwise. Take advantage of this great amazing innovation. Keep in mind that people evaluate differently online than in person, so take the time to take good pictures, write interesting bios, and practice your online verbal courtship.

Don’t stick to just Tinder and Bumble. Try a wide variety of apps and sites like Match, Hinge, OkCupid, Coffee Meets Bagel, Facebook Dating, and Plenty of Fish to name a few.

Potential solutions for:

• Being alone
• Being single

Get Good Dating Advice

If you’re going to be successful in dating, you would need to understand dating and what both sexes are attracted to. If you type in “men’s dating advice” or “women’s dating advice” into Google, you’re going to get flooded with tons of dating advice, a lot of which are inaccurate, manipulative, toxic, or straight up suck.

Here’s how to screen for high-quality dating advice:

• Science-based: If the information doesn’t talk about human mate preferences, human sexual psychology, human evolution, and the like, it’s probably bad advice. The books should be full of scientific research and literature you can validate the information with.
• Cross-sex insight: Dating is a two-person process. You’ve got to know what and how the other sex thinks when it comes to dating so you know how to effectively deal with them. Does the author talk about the other gender sex with respect and honesty or do they address them in a condescending, man/woman-hating manner?
• Authentic human connection: If the information centers on games, manipulation, power moves, indirect signaling, get rid of it. Even if you do date someone through those tactics, do you expect them to be emotionally healthy individuals?
• Realistic: How do the authors talk about the real-world implications of their writing? Do they talk about how you can “sleep with any girl you want”, “how to make him beg for more”, or “get your dream partner”, or do they focus on the practical steps required in hitting your goals?
• Emotional aspect: Dating is not a logical sequence of steps, it’s an emotional one. How do the authors talk about the emotional aspect of dating? Do they get real with you about how you can expect to get hurt and rejected, then give you practical ways to work through those feelings, or do they promise you’ll never experience a single negative emotion ever again? Do they talk about your emotional growth and maturity or do they focus on “tactics” and “seduction techniques”? Dating is an emotional process, and it’s going to be scary and suck sometimes, how real is the author about those parts?

Potential solutions for:

• Being alone
• Being single

Relationship & Family

Spend Electronic-Free Time

Not looking at our phones every few minutes may seem like a foreign concept to some, but not being distracted is critical to developing deep connections. Keep in mind, these people are the closest people in your life, they deserve your undivided attention don’t they?

Spending electronic-free time with those you’re closest to will give you plenty of time to have a good conversation, enjoy yourselves, and bring up problems you haven’t shared with the other person yet. If you have 2 hours of interruption-free time with your partner, this would be a perfect time to bring up the fact that they didn’t invite you to their friend’s bowling night has been bothering you for the last few days.

To avoid torpedoing the relationship with your bowling night concerns or other issues you may have with your partner/family, learn the best research-backed tactics to address problems.

Potential solutions for:

• Relationship problems

Mental Health

Practice mindfulness

Mindfulness is the practice of acknowledging and accepting one’s thoughts in the presence. Being mindful is a powerful technique to dealing with negative thoughts and emotions that come your way, including when you’re lonely.

Practicing mindfulness is about becoming aware of your thoughts and emotions as they come up, accepting them without judgment, then either letting them go or investigating as they come. The idea is to be conscious of your thoughts.

Meditation is a great way to practice mindfulness. If you’re a beginner, you can either follow along to guided meditation videos on YouTube or download apps such as Headspace, Calm, or Mindbliss.

Potential problems solved:

• (Feeling) alone

Visit a Therapist

I’m a firm believer that everybody needs a therapist. Not because everybody has crippling mental health problems, but because everybody needs to be mentally healthy. Keeping mentally healthy means solving the big and small problems that are bothering you.

Solving mental problems on your own can be a difficult task because you’re looking at it from the first-person view, your emotions almost always get in the way, and you’re probably not skilled enough to solve it.

Being lonely can create a whole host of mental issues and you would probably need to overcome these problems in order to become social again.

Luckily, therapists are becoming far more accessible now. You can visit a therapist’s office in your local area, you can sign up for online therapy through BetterHelp, TalkSpace, or other services, or you can call 24/7 mental health support lines (they vary by location).

Potential problems solved:

• (Feeling) alone
• Lack of close friends
• Being single
• Relationship/ family problems

Vulnerability: The Key To Overcoming Loneliness

Regardless of the strategy, you choose to solve your loneliness problem with, you will need to practice vulnerability. I define vulnerability as being willing to address uncertainty to achieve a goal. You can also define it as being willing to expose yourself, or expressing your true desires.

The reason why vulnerability is so important is that everything you need to do to overcome loneliness and be social has a degree of uncertainty to it. Going to lunch, sending the first text, asking someone to meet up, introducing yourself to someone you’ve never met, bringing up a problem in your relationship, signing up for an online dating app, or visiting a therapist all have uncertainty you will need to take on in order to do it.

If you struggle with taking on vulnerability, break it down into smaller, more manageable steps. If introducing yourself to someone you’ve never met is too big of a leap for you, break it down. An example of breaking it down could look like this:

1. Practicing opening conversations by yourself in front of a mirror
2. Practicing it with low-risk people such as cashiers, baristas, retail workers, or friends of friends
3. Start conversations with new people without worrying about the outcome
4. Have full conversations with people you’ve never met before

If you’re interested in creating a rewarding social life, get my book Outside the Box to Box: Experience the Joys of Connection by Creating a Rewarding Social Life: https://rocketshippublishing.com/giveaway/