How To Stay Healthy While Working At Home

Once upon a time, it was a novelty for most of us. Now, working from home has well and truly become the new normal.

While there are all sorts of benefits to the approach, with an improved work-life balance being the primary one, there are also question marks. One of these is the effect on your health. Mental health rightfully gets talked about a lot but working from home can impact all other areas of your health.

Some people will proactively take this into their own hands. It might be taking out an insurance policy to safeguard themselves or even just being a little more conscious about how they approach their days.

The days can quickly pass by for most, though, and our health starts to deteriorate. To ensure you don’t fall into the said category, let’s take a look at some actionable tips that you can turn to.

Manage your solitude

Working from home, many people feel a lack of need to socialize. It might be because they no longer meet up at work – and on some level, they’re right.

To that, you need to accept social interaction in all its forms is beneficial and not a waste of time. In fact, when you have time management skills, you can see it as an opportunity to work smarter, not harder.

While we’re still early in the year, we’d already recommended setting aside time for this. Figure out one or two social opportunities, and don’t neglect your friends.

Thoughtful planning is key

Working from home can leave you struggling to maintain your motivation. Often, this is due to a lack of structure and how that can help.

When you’re in the office, you tend to be far more rigid in your approach. More often than not, you’ll have a detailed plan for the day – a rough schedule of what you’ll do, at what time.

When you work from home, that schedule goes out the window. As a result, it’s up to you to develop your own structure to follow. You need to consider the times you’ll be working, other times you have scheduled, and so on.

Doing this can help with both your mental and physical health. You’ll know your moments of downtime, while you can also plan in exercise at set points through the week.

Consider your posture

Another key health consideration is your posture.

It’s no stretch to say that we spend a lot of time at our desks. It’s not uncommon for people to spend a lot of time sitting hunched over, staring at a screen. If you’re spending a lot of time in that position, you need to discuss with yourself; take a break and go for a walk. When you come back, stand. Again, do that several times throughout the day. It’ll do wonders for your posture and your health overall.

Let’s not forget that the famous water cooler trips are no longer a thing. It’s now not uncommon for you to be sat at your desk for hours without any major movement. This can be hugely detrimental to your posture and cause no end of issues.

Your diet matters as well

One area where you can take more direct action is with your meals.

While it may seem like an after-thought, your diet can impact your health in numerous ways. By making a few, easy adjustments, you can do wonders.

For a start, ensure you’re still drinking enough water. A gallon a day is recommended, but if you’re active, you might need more. Dehydration has a significant influence, so it’s worth paying attention to.

On the same lines, it’s helpful to start eating breakfast, even if you’re not a morning person. By getting your body prepared for the day, it has less work to do to turn on the necessary functions, like your brain. It’s tempting to jump straight out of bed and to your desk, skipping breakfast in the process. Suffice to say; this is a recipe for disaster.

The importance of a good night’s sleep

While good physical exercise is important, your sleep is key to your overall health. The ideal is six to eight hours a night, though you’ll need to play around with those timings.

Once again, rolling out of bed and straight to your desk was once the office worker’s dream. While you can almost still do this, don’t start compromising on your shuteye because of the lack of ‘real commuting’!