Healthy Habits When Working From Home

Working from home can take a degree of adjustment, especially for those who have never done it before. With no clear guarantees on a time scale, it’s essential you find a way of working effectively. By getting yourself into a few simple habits, the transition can be much easier and this will allow you to be as productive as possible whilst in the comfort of your own home.

The first habit is to maintain or set a constant wake time. This can be simply based around the same time you would usually get up for work or adjusted based on your own personal demands and responsibilities. Aim to wake at the same time every day in order to maintain a healthy sleep-wake routine. This is a fantastic first step as it allows for forward planning of your working days and helps to maintain and solidify a healthy routine.

It is also important to designate yourself a healthy working environment within your home. This can be an area of your choice, provided that it isn’t in your sleeping environment. A home office would be the most ideal setting, or where possible, somewhere with a good amount of natural light and ventilation. By defining this specific area as a predominantly ‘working’ environment, you can maximise your potential for productivity and efficiency whilst minimising the number of potential distractions.

During your working hours, a healthy habit to get into is to plan your recovery breaks in advance. These short and simple recovery breaks can be taken every 90 minutes throughout the day. They can also prove vital in helping to promote the maintaining of information retaining and allow for maximum levels of productivity.

Working from home is also a great opportunity for healthy diet management. With both access and time to prepare and cook your own meals, you greatly reduce your desire for fast food and can monitor your daily intake better. A healthy, balanced diet is essential for all aspects of your health and wellbeing, including the quality of sleep you get. Eating meals at regular times also reduces your need to eat late at night, enabling your metabolism to work at its optimum efficiency while also giving your body the opportunity to focus its energy on your sleep, instead of digestion.

Our final healthy habit suggestion would be setting yourself appropriate work hours. One of the main luxuries of working from home is the freedom to set and adapt your own work hours. Some companies require you to work similar hours to your office hours, whereas others may offer more freedom. If your work place falls into the latter, we recommend setting yourself a good time frame to work in. For example, you could work in the morning from 9am until 12pm, take a break to eat, relax and complete some tasks around the house, and then you could resume work around 1 or 2pm and continue until you finish the work you have set for the day. This also allows you to gain accomplishment daily from non-work related tasks, and can take the pressure off the “free time” you have when not working from your home environment. Much like our suggested recovery breaks; small tasks such as laundry and meal preparation can be completed during your CRP’s as well as in your designated breaks throughout the day.