What happens when the lines between our family life blur with all the other aspects of our life? It’s no secret that there’s been an emphasis on working from home in recent years, and many of us love the lifestyle change. The autonomy of our schedule allowed us to prioritize ourselves in a way that had long been overlooked. We now have the freedom to re-energize socially, prioritize rest, and reconnect with family and friends – but what do we have less time for?
If we look at it honestly, working from home is a sacrifice as much as a benefit. By gaining that extra time and space, many of us lost our momentum. We have sacrificed the natural surprises and excitement of everyday life and it has become too easy to slip into a monotonous routine. While we love being home and working from home, it’s certainly possible to have too much of a good thing. We’re not ashamed to admit that living mostly virtually or staying in an environment that rarely changes gets some of us into a rut. With no outside inspirations to keep our lives in an upbeat and healthy pace, that’s when self-care becomes an even bigger priority. So how do we prioritize health while working from home?
Work from Home Challenges
As we mentioned, many like to work from home. In the beginning, the more we were at home, the more we wanted to be. What we lost in engagement and excitement – especially socially – we regained in time and freedom. Slowly though, we started to see how being home most of the time could drive us a little crazy and the scales started to tip the other way.
For those of us who have worked remotely or have recently done so, we know that the immediate need for create an adequate workspace from home was a surprising challenge. Not all of us are lucky enough to live in an environment that can accommodate an office or at least dedicated work from the reception area. Creating this space and setting it up functionally required time and money that for some of us was a personal expense. To avoid this, we end up sacrificing bedroom or dining room space to maintain the professionalism and focus needed to perform at work.
But the professional challenges don’t stop there. Once we have created a workspace, we must dedicate ourselves to working – almost – in a Following mentally consuming way. In an office, our colleagues and managers can see our presence, which often leads to the assumption that we are productive. Without this layer of presence, we feel almost constant pressure to outperform; making sure we’re online early, respond almost immediately, and work longer or harder because there’s the unspoken suspicion that being home causes employees to slack off.
Over time, this pressure to prove that we are just as productive and even more focused can often lead to severe burnout. We don’t say enough how stressful it is to be constantly afraid of how we are perceived professionally. In our quest for efficiency and over-delivery, we neglect ourselves.
This neglect makes us feel like we are living to work, rather than working to live. We feel a lack of separation between our free time and our work time, and we are more likely to work during our free hours. How many of us searched for more than 4 hours at work and didn’t take a meal or bathroom break all day? And how many times have we shut down our computers for the day only to find that dinner time has passed. Slowly we slip into that state of being completely out of balance where our life at home has become our life at work. We start to feel boring and uninspired, lacking motivation to be healthy and take care of ourselves. There’s no time for us, no structure, and all the happiest parts of being home have been swallowed up by work.
Working from home doesn’t necessarily mean working all the time; and that shouldn’t mean the job is more stressful than working in an office. Learning to properly structure our days for healthy, totally detached breaks and making time for regular social interactions are just a few of the ways we can prioritize health and maintain a healthy life balance.
Tips for prioritizing health
Our mental and physical health suffers when we start to get overworked or overwhelmed by working from home, so we have to make the effort to make room for ourselves. Although we devote more than 8 hours each weekday to our work, we as individuals also deserve time to invest in ourselves. When thinking about how we might reverse our overworked state and monotonous routines, we should first consider trading incompatible choices for healthier options, both mentally and physically.
It’s no secret that our diet, exercise, and social life are the first areas affected by these stressful work-at-home routines. There are a few small rules to follow when working from home that help us prioritize health. For many of us, making the change to be healthier and prioritizing our health comes down to changing our eating habits, exercising, while prioritizing mental health, and having fun.
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DIET
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Snack on fresh fruits and vegetables instead of relying on food deliveries or looking for packaged processed options.
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Be sure to eat a raw or green vegetable at least once a day.
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Reduce your coffee intake and opt for water, green juice or infused water.
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PRACTICE
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Allow at least an hour during the day to increase our heart rate and sweat, rather than working from bed all day.
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Start the day with even 5 minutes of movement instead of scrolling through social media or going straight to work.
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Completely disconnect at tea time by enjoying a smoothie on a short walk or enjoying a piece of fruit on a balcony.
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FUN
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Make time to talk to friends and family in real life or on the phone, rather than limiting all interactions to text on a screen.
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Invite a visitor or guest over to make the house feel like home again.
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Go to places that create opportunities for casual socializing, such as a coffee shop, fitness class, outdoor market, or sporting event.
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HEALTH
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Start an affirmation or gratitude journal and reread it during times of stress.
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Start the day with music rather than a loud, obnoxious alarm that sets the tone for the day.
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Romanticize life by wearing your favorite outfits, being pampered, and spending free time doing a fun hobby or activity.
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Whether it’s the excitement of a Friday night, the fun of a Sunday, or the general rest and recharge that the weekend affords us, for many of us the weekend is our favorite time of the week. By making a list of what we like on the weekends, we began to realize that there were many things about our days off that we could incorporate into our weekdays to prioritize health. and achieve a better work/life balance. For example, a weekend might look like this:
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sleep in
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Stretching/yoga/meditation
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Have a gourmet breakfast
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Enjoy the fresh air
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Visit a friend or go somewhere new
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Make a mask or treatment
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Read or watch something new
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go to bed early
In practice, adding just one of these can totally transform our lives when working from home. As long as we remember that taking care of ourselves is our first job and that work comes second, there are always tools to prioritize health for happiness and balance.
