How to Prioritize Your Health When You Work From Home

What happens when the lines between our home life blur with every other aspect of our lives? It’s no secret that there’s been an emphasis on working from home for the past few years, and so many of us love the shift in lifestyle. Gaining autonomy of our schedule has created space for us to prioritize ourselves in a way that had been long overlooked. We now have the freedom to socially recharge, to prioritize rest, and to reconnect with our family and friends - but what do we have less time for?

If we’re looking at things honestly, working from home is a sacrifice as much as it is a benefit. In gaining that additional time and space, so many of us have lost momentum. We’ve sacrificed the natural surprises and excitement of everyday life and it’s become all too easy to slip into a monotonous routine. While we love being at home and working from home, it’s definitely 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 has some of us falling into a rut. With no outside inspirations to keep our lives in an upbeat and healthy rhythm, this is when self care becomes an even bigger priority. So then, how do we prioritize health while working from home?

As we mentioned, so many enjoy working 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 gained back in time and freedom. Slowly though, we started to see how being at home nearly all the time can drive us a bit stir crazy and the scales started to swing back in the other direction.

For those of us that have been working remotely, or have recently gone remote, we know that the immediate need for creating an adequate work from home area was a surprising challenge. Not all of us are blessed enough to live in an environment that can accommodate a desk or at least a dedicated work from home zone. Making that space and setting it up functionally required time and money that, for some of us, was an out of pocket expense. To avoid this we end up sacrificing bedroom space or dining space to maintain the professionalism and focus needed to perform at work.

The professional challenges don’t end there, however. Once we’ve created space to work, we have to dedicate ourselves to work - almost - in a more mentally consuming way. In an office our colleagues and managers can see our presence, and often that leads to the assumption that we’re being productive. Without that layer of presence, we feel a near constant pressure to over-perform; ensuring that we’re online early, responding near immediately, and working longer or harder because there’s the unspoken suspicion that being at home leads employees to slack off.

Over time this pressure to prove that we’re just as productive and even more focused can often lead to some serious burnout. We don’t talk enough about how stressful it is to be in constant fear of how we’re perceived professionally. In our pursuit of being efficient and striving to over-deliver, we neglect ourselves.

That neglect has us feeling like we live to work, rather than work to live. We feel a lack of separation between our off time and work time, and we’re more likely to work in our off hours. How many of us have looked up 4+ hours into work and we haven’t taken a meal or bathroom break all day? And how often have we closed our computers for the day only to realize that it’s past dinner time. Slowly we slip into this completely lopsided state of being where our home life has become our work life. We start to feel dull and uninspired, lacking motivation to be healthy and take care of ourselves. There’s no time for us, no structure, and all of the happiest parts of being at home have been swallowed up by work.

Working from home doesn’t have to mean working all the time; and it shouldn’t mean work is more stressful than working in an office. Learning how to properly structure our days for healthy, fully detached breaks and making time for regular social interactions are just some of the ways that we can prioritize health and keep a healthy life balance.

Our mental and physical health suffers when we start to become overworked or overwhelmed while working from home, so we must make the effort to make space for ourselves. Although we dedicate 8+ hours each weekday to our jobs, we as individuals deserve time to invest in ourselves too. When thinking about how we could turn around our overworked state of being and our monotonous routines, we should first look at swapping incompatible choices for healthier options, both mentally and physically.

It’s no secret that our diet, exercise, and social life are the first areas impacted by these stressful work from home routines. There are a few small rules to live by when working from home that help us prioritize health. For many of us, making the change to be healthier and to prioritize our health looks like changing up our eating habits, exercise, while prioritizing mental health and having fun.

• DIET

  • Snack on fresh fruits and vegetables instead of relying on food deliveries or reaching for packaged processed options.

  • Ensure we consume a raw or green vegetable at least once a day.

  • Cut back on coffee and opt for water, green juice or infused water.

• EXERCISE

  • Carve out at least an hour over the course of the day to increase our heart rate and work up a sweat, rather than working from bed all day.

  • Start the day with even 5 minutes of movement instead of scrolling through social media or going right to work.

  • Disconnect completely during snack time by having a smoothie on a short walk or enjoying a piece of fruit on a balcony.

• FUN

  • Make time to talk to friends and family in real life or on the phone, rather than keeping all interactions to text on a screen.

  • Have a visitor or guest over so that home feels like home again.

  • Go places that create opportunities to be casually social, like a coffee shop, fitness class, outdoor market, or sports event.

• HEALTH

  • Start an affirmation or gratitude journal and reread it during times of stress.

  • Start the day with music rather than a loud, obnoxious alarm that sets the tone for the day.

  • Romanticize life by wearing favorite outfits, pampering, and spending quality self-time doing a fun hobby or activity.

Whether it’s the excitement of a Friday night, the fun of a Sunday, or the overall rest and recharge the weekend affords us, for many of us the weekend is our favorite part of the week. When making a list of what we love about the weekend, we started to realize that there were many things about our days off that we could incorporate into our weekdays to prioritize health and achieve better work/life balance. For example, a weekend might look like this:

1. Sleep in

2. Stretch/yoga/meditation

3. Eat a gourmet breakfast

4. Enjoy some fresh air

5. Visit a friend or go someplace new

6. Do a mask or skincare treatment

7. Read or watch something new

8. Go to bed early

In practice, adding even one of these can totally transform our life while working from home. As long as we remember that taking care of ourselves is our first job and work comes second, there are always tools to prioritize health for happiness and balance.