Work from home healthy habits and helpful links

During these difficult times, it’s important to maintain your mental and physical health. It’s easy to get caught up in the variability of work from home, losing site of any structure you had to your usual office day and often it’s your personal wellbeing that can suffer. Here’s a brief guide on work from home healthy habits for you to consider and some helpful links.

Look after your mental and physical wellbeing

It’s hard to comprehend how your mental health may be impacted by the isolation of working from home. Everyone is different in this regard and obviously circumstances are different depending on your isolation status (on your own, with family etc). Taking time to take care of your mental wellbeing benefits those around you too.

It’s also well-known that physical activity supports a healthy mind, so take time to focus on your physical health at the same time and your benefits are multiplied.

Maintain a routine

When working from home, it’s all too easy just to jump out of bed when you’re due to start your day and getting straight to work. Consider getting up as you would normally as if you were heading to the office and follow a morning routine focused on you prior to starting work. This routine might include exercise, perhaps getting out of your loungewear into some form of day clothing, spending some time with family or personally with your thoughts. Everyone is different so it’s important to identify what works best for you.

Maintain social connection

There are countless tools out there that will allow you and your colleagues or friends to stay virtually connected whilst you work from home. If you would often catch up with friends for a lunch once a week because you worked nearby, consider maintaining that date with a virtual lunch over your favourite video chat tool.

Take breaks and get moving

You may not want to start your day with exercise (some of us aren’t morning people) but you should consider the amount of time you’re sitting at your desk. It’s easy to lose track of time when you don’t have the usual queues around you, or you think I don’t have to battle traffic so I will spend that time on work. Taking some time out for yourself during the day is vital and using some or all of this time to get moving is a positive option. There are enough studies out there that show that by sitting all day you increase your risk of various health complications. What better reason to break up the sitting with some activity or exercise.

Go for a walk outside (if you can)
Follow an exercise training routine in your living room or backyard
Consider completing some desk exercises, using your desk and chair for various movements
Simply walk around your home and listen to some music or a podcast