by Since the pandemic started, more people have been working from home. This has taken a little getting used to. While working from the comfort of your own home comes with benefits, it’s also easy to fall into bad habits. Snacking, sitting for long hours without getting up, or sleeping in can start to become common occurrences.
To help combat the stagnation that working from home can bring, we’ve compiled several tips on how to stay healthy while putting in a few hours at your house. Don’t worry – it’s nothing too radical. It’s all a matter of setting guidelines for yourself and starting a few, useful new habits. Now, let’s uncover these tips on staying healthy while working from home.
Practice Breathing Exercises
It’s easy to become stir-crazy while working from home for long periods of time. To break up the monotony of your workday, try adding breathing exercises to your routine. There is power in your breath. If you feel stressed or anxious, breathing exercises can help calm down your system.
Somato Respiratory Integration is an effective breathing exercise for decreasing anxiety. With the rise in anxiety due to social distance requirements, getting a breath of fresh air through this practice can make all of the difference. Somato Respiratory Integration involves a set of 12 different breathing exercises. Each one helps you channel the natural rhythm of your body, which helps calm your nervous system down. Through these breathing exercises, we can squash anxious thoughts and emotions while increasing our overall happiness.
Invest In A Standing Desk
One veteran work-from-home trick helps to keep you from being inactive all day. A big problem with working from home is that it’s quite easy to just sit around all day at your desk or even in bed, with a laptop propped on your knees. While this is kind of a treat (since you can’t get away with that in an office), staying still for so long isn’t great for your health. With that said, what’s the best solution?
Invest in a standing desk. A standing desk helps to keep you active while you work so that you aren’t being completely inert for the whole day. There are even adjustable varieties so that you lower the desk and sit when you like. You can completely personalize and customize the height to your liking. Try different variations of standing for the first half of your workday and relaxing for the second half.
Create A Fixed Schedule
Another pitfall when you are working from home is the temptation to work crazy hours. With some jobs, you are only required to work a specific number of hours per day and they aren’t really picky on time, and this leads to people working in the morning and then switching to an evening schedule a few days a week. Balance is important in both work life and leisure life. Even worse, you might work crazy amounts of overtime because you’re at home.
While this seems harmless, it’s not necessarily healthy for you to have your schedule all over the place. By setting a fixed schedule and sticking with it, you will be able to maintain mental alertness levels more easily. This means that your productivity is always going to be at its best. As far as that overtime, even if you are home, fatigue can add up. You will have to pay for it eventually. Put in a few extra hours of work, by all means, but don’t let yourself overdo it!
Maintaining Good Health While Working From Home
There’s no denying that there are benefits to working from home. You can often make your own hours, work in your jammies, and not worry that the boss is going to be looking over your shoulder. That said, you still need to take care of yourself, because it’s easy to get off track when your office and home become one. Take advantage of these tips to help promote a healthy environment for work at your place. You can have the best of both worlds. All it takes are a few new habits and consistency to stick with the structure you create for yourself.
