Humans are creatures of habits and compartmentalization.
- Get a different computer (use a mac if you are a windows guy for extra separation).
- Work in a different room (DO NOT work from the room you sleep or play in!).
- Wear different clothes (business casual is great, and if you have to do a quick errant outside, you feel like a professional instead of a lazy guy working from home in his underpants).
- Do not visit NSFW websites (you are working, and we both know that porn and/or reddit can eat up your time).
Indeed, I had a separate room for my office, and tried to work a strict 8am->5pm schedule Mon-Fri.
However, that all fell apart during a major crunch time where we were trying to ship a chronically late product, and for that period of time, my work life balance was essentially destroyed.
While crunch time are necessary sometime, you should do your best to balance things out. Worked extra hard all week? Take half the next week off and go camping.
It was more like a 14 month death march of 100+ hour weeks, so there really was no "next week", as there was no end in sight for most of it. That's what it is like with hardware, especially late hardware that the entire company is riding on.
After the thing finally shipped, most of the team effectively took off the next 4 months, working ~4 hours or fewer hours a day, etc. But those 14 months were hell.
- Get a different computer (use a mac if you are a windows guy for extra separation). - Work in a different room (DO NOT work from the room you sleep or play in!). - Wear different clothes (business casual is great, and if you have to do a quick errant outside, you feel like a professional instead of a lazy guy working from home in his underpants). - Do not visit NSFW websites (you are working, and we both know that porn and/or reddit can eat up your time).