What does being close to the kitchen while working from home change?

What changes is not hunger but distance. When the kitchen is a few steps away, opening the cupboard stops being a decision and turns into a movement you make in passing. And what reduces it comes from the same place: a small obstacle placed between the work area and the kitchen, and a meal time fixed within the day.

What is there at home that is not there at the office?

At the office three things set a boundary by themselves: the kitchen is far away, the hours are set from outside and the number of options within reach is small. At home none of the three exists. The kitchen is a few steps away, nobody draws the rhythm of the day and the whole contents of the house sit in the cupboard.

This is why the pattern that shows up while working from home is not a personality trait but the natural result of the setting. When the setting changes the pattern changes too; and that also tells you where to look for the answer.

Distance and visibility

What sits within reach is what is reached for most. The open package on the desk, the jar on the counter and the shelf at eye level in the cupboard decide most of the day's choices on their own.

Changing that does not take a big rearrangement. Clearing food off the desk, putting open packages away in a closed cupboard and taking the things you reach for often out of eye level each place one small step in between. Every one of those steps opens a short moment for you to think about the movement again.

Visibility can be set up inside the kitchen as well. Putting something prepared on the first shelf you see when you open the cupboard lets you use the same closeness in the other direction; the ease does not disappear, only its direction changes.

Fixing the meal time

At home the day looks boundless; the lunch break does not arrive by itself, because there is no outside signal to start it. Writing lunch into the calendar as a block puts a definite stop in the day and makes some of the small visits in between unnecessary.

Getting up from the desk to eat does the same job. A meal eaten at a screen usually does not let you notice what you ate and leaves you needing to go back to the kitchen soon after. Eating the meal in a separate place at a separate time sets it apart from the rest of the day and makes it clear that it has ended.

The work area itself is a boundary marker too. For someone working at the kitchen table those two areas have already run into each other; moving the work to another room, or to another side of the table if possible, sets up the most concrete obstacle.

Breaks and hunger get mixed up

What comes up at the end of a long block of work is not always hunger; it is often the need for a break, and at home the nearest break is in the kitchen. When that mix-up is not noticed, every break turns into opening a cupboard.

Tying the break to something other than food separates the two: a short walk, looking out of the window, standing up for a few minutes. The break itself is a real need and not something to be given up; only its address does not have to be the kitchen.

Working from home has an advantage too, and it is usually overlooked: you can cook the meal hot, use your own kitchen and use the lunch break as an actual break. The same closeness that makes an unplanned cupboard visit easy makes a regular meal easy as well.

What can you do today?

Take the food that sits on your desk away and keep nothing there through the day. Write lunch into the calendar and get up from the desk at that hour. At your next break try something else that takes two minutes instead of going to the kitchen; you will have seen once whether what you needed really was food.