These days, work can take more of a toll on our minds and bodies than ever. We’re seemingly always connected to the office whether we work from home or not, and this “always on” landscape can break us down and lead to eventual burnout.
To avoid letting those workday blues get you down, we’ve compiled some mental and physical health habits that everyone can adopt to improve focus, energy level, and overall efficiency no matter where you work.
Mental
Establish a Daily Routine
Whether you work from home or have returned to the office, it’s important to establish - and stick to – a daily routine when it comes to work. Many influential people from Albert Einstein to Steve Jobs have credited their commitment to a daily routine as a factor in their success, and it will allow you to develop patterns that will make getting through your day much easier.
When the pandemic hit, all of us had our normal lives uprooted in some way, and in the process of trying to adjust to what was taking place, we abandoned our regular routines. Work from home may have begun with getting showered and dressed every morning…but by month three, many of us were simply rolling out of bed, firing up our computer while still in our pajamas, and placing a delivery order for McDonald’s breakfast from our phones to start the day. For many of us, morning coffee was the only part of our routine that remained.
That, however, is a recipe for starting your day on an unproductive note, so it’s time to make some changes. Come up with a schedule that works for you, but make sure it involves some of the following:
- Take a shower
- Put on pants (not what you slept in)
- Schedule breaks and lunch hour
- Work a commute into your day
- If you work from home, make sure you have a dedicated workspace and “commute” to it every morning to signal the start to your day.
Set Focus Blocks on Your Calendar
Once your day gets going, the work can come at you at blinding speed. We all know that the modern-day workplace is a fast-paced one, so it’s important that you set time on your calendar to think, to take breaks, and to be productive. Meetings, emails, requests needing your immediate attention – there will never be a lack of things taking up your time and space on your calendar, so make sure you’re also scheduling time to focus – if not only to maintain your sanity.
Schedule “focus blocks” on your calendar and mark the time as Busy so nobody can contact you or schedule meetings during - and, as a bonus, close your email program to avoid any notifications.
We all get so caught up with the things that come up at work, that we often find ourselves buried by the work that we should be setting time for. Setting these focus blocks will allow you to take breaks when you need them, and designate time for you to catch up on all of those projects you’re worried that you’ll have to wait for the weekend to complete.
Establish Boundaries – and keep them
On that note – do not work on the weekends!
You need to be able to set boundaries at the office in order to maintain a healthy work/life balance and avoid that pesky burnout thing we mentioned earlier.
You need to keep one very fundamental rule in mind: You should always work to live, not live to work.
Make sure that you work as often as you must, and if that amount of time is getting to be too much for you, or you feel like you’re becoming bogged down, speak with your leadership or your co-workers. Nobody should have to leverage their physical, mental, and emotional health for a paycheck, but it starts with you standing up for yourself. Any company will want to get the most of you as an employee, but they are almost always just as compassionate about you as a person and will lighten your load if you speak up.
Think Positively and Don’t Catastrophize
The office can be a stressful place – no matter where that office may be. Our jobs can trigger anxiety, nervousness, anger, sadness, happiness – a whole roller coaster of emotions, but it’s important that you keep perspective and try to focus on the positive to keep yourself from creating a bigger problem where none exists.
Overall, studies have shown that positivity can be beneficial to our health, lowering blood pressure and setting a pattern of focusing on the good things in your life to help navigate the difficult times. This is especially important at work where we can tend to feel exceedingly vulnerable. We all have bad days, and we all have experiences on the job that don’t go exactly how we hoped, and in these situations, it’s easy to let our minds get carried away with negative thoughts of “will I get fired?” or “am I good enough for this job?”, but in those situations, it’s important to practice positivity, remind yourself that you are worth it, and convince yourself that things aren’t as bad as you may have thought.
Physical
Focus on Your Posture
If you’re a young professional who sits stationary at a desk for most of your workday, you need to read this next sentence very closely: Your back and neck will get worse as you get older, so start promoting back and neck health NOW!
We’ve all heard the warnings and most of us ignored them, but when we find ourselves on the wrong side of 30 years old, we curse ourselves quick for those years of slouching and trying to look cool by not sitting up straight. If you want to avoid a world of pain as you age, make sure to pay attention to your back and neck before it’s too late. That means sit up straight while you’re reading this!
This includes:
- Investing in a good ergonomic desk chair (shoutout to the Lenovo.com store which carries many top brands in ergonomic office supplies)
- Maintaining good posture throughout the day
- Do not crane your neck forward toward the computer screen
- Take notes of the following tips regarding stretching and regular breaks
Observe the 50/10 Rule
A good way to build scheduled breaks into your day is by observing the “50/10 rule” which means that you work for 50 minutes and then do something active for 10 minutes every hour. This allows you to remain productive, but also ensures that you’re getting up and moving around every hour to keep yourself loose and avoid injury.
Yes, it can be tough to carve out 10 minutes when you have back-to-back meetings and a lot of work to do, but when you make it a goal, you’ll find out how easy it can be. Co-workers won’t mind if you take a video meeting while walking around your house (or the office) or going up and down some stairs (and they will likely understand if you want to turn off the camera while doing it). In the modern work landscape, people are understanding of efforts to be more active and will applaud your initiative rather than criticize it.
Commit to Stretching
One way to make good use of those 10 active minutes every hour is by stretching to keep yourself limber. As you sit at your desk, your muscles and joints are clenching up and tightening, and unless you get up and stretch them out a bit, it could come back to bite you later. Make sure you’re doing the following regularly:
- Stretch Your Back - Sitting at a desk all day is not how humans were meant to function. If you’re stationary for long periods of time – especially if you’re not sitting with good posture – you’ll eventually feel pain in your back, shoulders, and even your legs. Get up often to stretch your back.
- Stretch Your Neck - Craning our necks forward to look at small details on a computer screen can cause herniated and slipped discs in your neck – which are not fun to deal with. If you want to avoid persistent pain, and potentially, a serious surgery, tackle your neck pain as soon as you can.
- Stretch Your Hands/Fingers - Carpal Tunnel syndrome can cause immense pain that will prevent you from being able to type, so if typing is a big part of what you do – don’t forget about stretching your wrists, hands, and fingers regularly. Here are a couple quick stretches that you can do at your desk right now:
- Rotate your wrist up, down, and side to side.
- Stretch your fingers far apart (as far as you can), then relax.
- Pull your thumb back slowly on each hand until you feel the stretching sensation. Hold for 10 seconds, and release.
Don’t Forget Your Eyes
While you’re sitting at that desk all day, your back and neck aren’t the only thing at risk. Staring at screens all day can do some damage to our eyes, especially over the long term.
Blue light is part of the visible light spectrum that is considered HEV, or high-energy visible light. With mobile, computer, and television technology, people are now more exposed to blue light than ever before.
Blue-turquoise light is important to help influence the body’s clock, helping us to awake and sleep. Light from a little farther up the spectrum, however, can have negative effects, impacting eye health and sleeping patterns.
- Avoid looking at your screen for extended periods of time
- Look away from your screen occasionally and focus on something else in the distance
TÜV Rheinland, an independent provider of technical testing services for product safety and quality has awarded Lenovo with the world’s first low blue light certificate for All-in-One desktop computers.
The Lenovo All-in-One systems listed below have been certified “low blue light” by TÜV Rheinland, a leading provider of technical services worldwide headquartered in Cologne, Germany.
To learn more about what Lenovo is doing to make things easier on the eyes, click here.
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What do you do every day to help promote your own physical and mental health at work? And what do you do to promote healthy habits among your co-workers or those that you manage? Leave your tips and questions in the comment section below to get the conversation going!