Perhaps you’ve been working from home for ages.
Or maybe, like many people around the world today, you’ve found yourself pushed (willingly or not) to home-working because of Covid-19.
Either way, it’s incredibly important to pay attention to your wellbeing and weave self-care practices into each day when your professional life is playing out in the same space as your personal life. So in this blog post, I’ll look at the why and how of exactly that:
Why is self-care important for home-workers, and how can you make sure you’re prioritising your mental and physical health at home?
As well as sharing some facts, I’ll add some of my personal experience to this — because as a health-focused business owner who works from home much of the time, I’ve picked up some wisdom along the way.
The Potential Health Risks of Working from Home
I’d like to preface this with a note to say: I think working from home can be fabulous. The flexibility and personal choice it gives you can be a blessing for your health.
But if you haven’t learnt how to make choices that are good for your body and mind, that flexibility can also be difficult to manage.
Because along with all its benefits — from increasing productivity to cutting out the commute, and making more time for family — working from home does have some clear downsides.
A huge report published in the journal Occupational Medicine looked at lots of different research studies about home-working and health. It pulled up several risks that people face when they work from their home office (or kitchen table, or sofa, or bed…we’ve all done it!):
Musco-skeletal problems associated with reduced movement during the day. Even people who usually drive to work do have to do a certain amount of walking, stair climbing etc. during a typical day; so working from home often means a big reduction in movement. Neck and back pain are particularly common.
Psychological challenges or distress, linked with isolation. When you’re working at home it’s easy to go a whole day (or longer) without seeing another person — and this can have a serious impact on your mental health.
Lack of boundaries. When there’s no defined end point to the working day, or even to the space you’re working in, it becomes difficult to switch off and shift out of work mode. Even if you walk away from your desk, you’re more likely to continue checking emails, responding to text messages, etc.
Burnout. All of the above heightens the risk of exhaustion, stress, anxiety and eventually burnout.
A recent article by Forbes also highlighted isolation and burnout as two key risks for those working from home.
It might be surprising — the idea of not having to get up and leave the house to start work can sound quite romantic and relaxed, especially if you’ve always had to commute to your workplace.
But many people find it challenging to weave healthy routines and personal time into the days when the lines between work and home are blurred.
Which is why it’s vital to pay attention to your wellbeing.
So, How Can You Take Care of Yourself While Working from Home?
My top tips for introducing positive, health-supportive self-care practices while you’re working from home are:
Make sure you include movement in EVERY day. You don’t have to go for a 10k run every morning (unless you want to), but make sure you’re not stationary all day long.
Yoga is the perfect way to keep your body and your energy flowing at home. Join me for online yoga classes to feel uplifted and revitalised.Find a way to draw a line between your work time and your non-work time. I can’t stress enough how important boundaries like this are for your mental health. You might create a time boundary (i.e. you only work between X and X hour, and outside of that you log out of all work-related platforms and don’t respond to work communications.
And if you have the space, it can be helpful to create a dedicated work space too — because as tempting as it may be to work from the comfort of your bed…it doesn’t make you feel great.
Go outside at least once a day. More if possible. Even if you just step outside the front door and stroll down the street, or sit on your step; a change in perspective and a sense of connection with the outside world helps you stay steady.
I love my early morning walk before my workday starts.
Take days off. And by this I mean, really take days off — log out, switch off, and forget about work. Just because you can work all hours of the day and days of the week, doesn’t mean you should.
Communicate. Make a commitment to never go a whole day without checking in with someone else. Communication with your team or clients is great, but weave some social chat in there too. Even the introverts among us need social connection to stay well.
Use mindfulness to acknowledge how you’re doing. Mindfulness practices can come into their own during times of change or isolation. Read my blog post on five simple mindfulness practices you can do every day, and use them to check in with how you’re feeling and what your needs might be.
As always — be kind to yourself, and remember it’s perfectly normal to feel overwhelmed sometimes. And hopefully, in the not too distant future, you’ll be able to join YFTSR for a rejuvenating retreat to shake off the stress and reconnect with your heart.
For now, you may like to join me for live classes at Narrabeen or join on retreat to feel uplifted and revitalised.
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