NEW YORK - Any remote worker can tell you how office demands have invaded the home in 2020 and started creeping into every corner of the day.But Jessica DeGroot is no ordinary worker. She is an expert in work-life balance as head of the consultancy ThirdPath Institute. “Work was taking over entirely, and I was becoming less and less efficient,” said DeGroot, who is working from her home office in Philadelphia, while her husband has commandeered the kitchen as his own workspace. “I just thought, I gotta do something different here.” Almost six in 10 employees say the pandemic has made their workdays less defined, according to a Pulse of the American Worker survey conducted by Prudential Financial. Some 60% of remote workers say distractions from family, housemates and pets make it difficult to get work done, according to a study by insurers Chubb. Only a minority, 43%, say they have been successful in keeping work and family separated. That is just not sustainable, especially as the global pandemic drags on. Add in the demands of childcare or eldercare, online education, and smartphone technology which makes us constantly available, and it is not hard to see why people are stretched to the max. “We have found that generally people are doing well working from home, but the main area of concern that keeps popping up is work-life balance,” said Adam Pressman, a partner in Atlanta with workforce consultants Mercer. “Especially caregivers, and their ability to disconnect from work.” It is not that this work-life puzzle is inherently unsolvable. But it does requires you to rethink your priorities, reorganize how your day is structured, and even be thoughtful about the physical space around you. It also requires the buy-in of understanding employers, who not only need to have the right policies in place, but also have leaders modeling a healthy work-life balance. After all, it is in nobody’s interest that you are on-call 24-7, forced to mix work and family concerns into one big toxic stew and burn yourself out in the process. A few tips to handle the juggling act: