‘Work from home’ is bliss. Only a few people get such an opportunity in their life where they could be their own boss and where they could work according to their own wish.
But as I always say, each coin has two sides and so does this ‘work from home’ thing.
While you would catch lots of jealous eyes for you are earning from home (Read- doing nothing according to those jealous people), only you know how much hard work you have been putting in. Only you know what it takes to work from home.
And if you do work from home, you know that with all the ‘be your own boss’ advantages, you meet the biggest disadvantage of this work from home concept – HEALTH ISSUES.
Thanks to my blog for it introduced me to a bunch of people who are now earning their living while working from home and are the inspiration for today’s post.
All the people who work from home at present have been facing one or other health issue and this post has been written to help you to prevent those issues for prevention is always better than cure. Isn’t it?
So, here are the five tips to stay healthy while you work from home –
1. Build an Office
I know this is a big contradiction for the people who practice this concept. If you wanted to work in an office, then why did you adopt work from home concept at first place?
But tell me one thing, don’t you have a favorite spot in your home where you like to sit and work, where your productivity at work increases manifolds?
All I want you to do is mark that spot for your work time. Get a comfortable office chair and reserve the spot for work.
Now, when you have your office, you must watch your sitting posture for that creates major health issues. A bad sitting posture is clearly equivalent to back pain. And I am sure you don’t want to befriend back pain at such a young age. Do you?
2. Take breaks
Yes I know that you want to work according to your own time preferences but that doesn’t mean you should skip the essential breaks. No matter how important and close the deadline is, you must take breaks.
Working for more than an hour at a stretch is very bad for your health. So, make sure you take 5-10 minutes break after every 1 hour (I prefer 45 minutes) and during this break, you aren’t supposed to use Facebook or even your PC or mobile phone. You are supposed to roam around in your house. Yes, you read that right!
And for the people, who work on computers for long hours, use 20:20:20 rule which requires you to look at a 20 feet distance for 20 seconds after every 20 minutes of work on computer. Is it too difficult to do to prevent yourself from extra strain on eyes
3. Plan a routine
Working from home isn’t an excuse for not having a routine. In fact, every person who earns a good sum of money follows a strict cum flexible schedule and you should do it as well.
Plan the tasks you need to do every day and go for them. Be realistic and punctual. Don’t procrastinate!
4. Have Craving-busters
I know everyone of us likes to have some snacks while working for long hours. But you know what; the choice of wrong snacks is what makes you fat and unhealthy. So, make sure you keep good and healthy craving-busters ready for yourself.
Go for fruits, nuts, green tea instead of chips, chocolate and coffee. The effect of green tea is similar to the effect of coffee, so why not green tea?
5. Stretching exercises
When you sit for long hours, you do face several health problems. While maintaining a good posture is very necessary and effective to be healthy, stretching exercises are really important.
You must take help of Youtube to learn some good stretching exercises. I would recommend 15 minute yoga workout by Shilpa Shetty which really works. I have tried that myself and have experienced a good improvement in my overall productivity towards my blog. You can try it too.
During my research, I found tones of points but I decided to go for only five of these. Why? Because these are the tips which I practice myself, though I don’t work full time from home but most of my day is spent working on my desktop at home.
Check this video for work from home options in India
I hope these points help and do add more points to this article for this has been written for everyone who works from home or who is looking forward to do that.
Hi Manpreet, I work from home but have a proper set up on the ground floor of my house including a office. I love to be there. Your post is indeed helpful. I do four of the five things you have mentioned except ‘ the craving buster’ I am addicted to having tea after every three hours. Thanks a lot for sharing this. Will try to get rid of this.
Hello Gaurav,
As you’re a writer, it’s a must to have setup like that. I can imagine how tough writing can be. If you’re a creative person, you would automatically prefer to have your own small space where nothing exists but your work, art!
It’s nice that you follow all the tips.. and I hope the tea is ‘green tea’ 😛
If it’s not, try switching to green tea. You don’t need to completely skip the regular one.. but try to have more quantity of green tea. It has numerous benefits. I am really thinking about writing a post on benefits of green tea 😛 I really need such a compilation for my parents for I am always convincing them to have green tea.. hahaha
Thanks for reading my post and leaving a comment. your insights on my posts really matter 🙂
After going through this article I felt like you personally met me and wrote this post.. ha ha..
This is exactly same which happened in my life.
When I quit my job 2.5 years back then the very first happiness for me was “work from home.” Now I could do whatever I wanted to do and live my life like a king. But once I started working, I started observing my health deteriorating day by day.
As Steve Jobs said, “The only way to do great work is love what you do.”
As I was doing what I loved, so there was not time frame. I worked 14-17 hours in a day as I wanted to see my blog growing as soon as possible.
I started having back-pain, but as the work load was too much so I never paid attention to my health. Things went worse when one day I was not even able to get up from my bed. Literally I was unable to move. I was not even in a condition where I could go to doctor myself.
It took me 4 months to get back in action, and my business was in complete mess for those 3 months.
After going through this worst phase of my life I started paying attention to my health and observed my daily routine.
With god grace I have my own office with very comfortable chair having 2 guys working in my office. 🙂
I have carved my daily routine in such a way where I am taking regular brakes, and most of the times doing automation with tools where my presence is not necessary.
You can use this application to set alarm on regular intervals.
http://monkeymatt.com/bigstretch/
I am a visual human being who just write down everything in the notebook or Evernote app, so to-do lists plays huge role in my life.
I will suggest to do atleast 5 minutes stretching everyday either at morning or evening, as these 5 minutes will help your body to do proper blood circulation and ultimately giving you more energy.
This is an eye-opener article for people who are into online marketing or thinking to enter.
Thanks for putting efforts to give us actionable tips.
PS: I tried your dividing a day into 3 parts strategy today and it looks like working for me. (Y)
Hello Kulwant, I am glad that you recovered and at the same time, thanks for sharing your experience. This shows how much health is important, especially when you’re working from home.
And seriously, it’s been two days since I know you and you have shared lots of blogging tips and tricks with me. That’s really generous of you 🙂 Thanks
About stretching exercise, five minutes is too less. You should do at least 15 minute workout like the one I suggested in morning and evening and stretch for five minutes after every break. That’s how you can actually stay healthy and fit.
you’re the second person appreciating me today for the tips and acknowledging that they really work .. hahah.. That feels awesome.. 🙂
Yeah, I took the quick action and rescued myself.
Blogging is all about sharing your experience and knowledge, if you are not doing so, you will not survive in this industry.. So I just did my duty to share the things which I know.
15 minutes?? :O
You know what I mean.. ha ha..
For an internet marketer 15 minutes cost too much, so I go for 5 minutes only.
Glad to hear that other people are also following your suggestions.
All the very best.. 🙂
You are right about that.. blogging is all about sharing.
And when you share articles of your follow bloggers, you don’t harm your own business. In fact, you build trust among your readers for they would be assured that you’re serving them the best, not just your own creations.
And it’s a serious suggestion, 15 minutes isn’t that much when it comes to health. Try to take out fifteen minutes at least… you will see the difference! Try it!
I Work with 2 monitors simultaneously and due to my extra long working hours, I started getting vertigo’s. Then i adopted the 20.20.20 thing and trust me, world seems to be stable than before. I am also working on planning a routine to minimize the workflow and maximize outputs.
Lol, 5 minutes ago, i was trying to comment from my phone but unfortunately I failed, maybe a technical issue. But, I was so curious to comment right now that I woke up from the bed and got my laptop.
Thanks for the valuable information.
Wow! you really did that? 😛 I would have been too lazy to go and pick up my laptop 😀
Thanks a lot Raunak. Comments like these where you guys tell me that you like my work makes me feel motivated and force me to work harder on my blog.
How do you manage to work on two monitors simultaneously? Once I wrote some articles for a client and he used to do the same.. I was astonished at that time.. looks like this is the new generation of Einstein or that principal (Boman Irani) in Three Idiots 😛
Good that you started taking care of your health at right time. 🙂
Using two monitors helps in managing your work in a much better way, you don’t need to minimize and maximize again and again. Both monitors can be connected together and they act as one.
I usually keep all my reference stuff on one and work on the other.
Also i have to deal with my Graphics work. I keep the output result on one and work on second monitor so that i can see the results simultaneously.
I never thought about that 😀 Maybe because I never got into such techie stuff except for trying to make some silly C programs 😛
Atleast you can make C programs.
hahaha.. nowadays even an eight year old can do that 😛 and he can do that better than me, I am sure 😀
Hi Manpreet,
Good to meet you,
Work from home is indeed these days many do, but at the same time that leads to lot of health issue too as mentioned in the post, continuous sitting creates lot of trouble
and the break in between is a must and that helps to improve the health and work ability too. Though I am not a work from home person, but my work is related to the system and at office eight hours and the rest at home without any break sometimes even up to midnight and after. That is surely being showed in my health. Though i read many such articles like this which talks about issue related to health and work, i still neglect it, now i feel that i must be more careful in these aspects, as Kulwant mentioned here his experience is a great ALARM to people like me, his relentless hard work put him down to the bed for almost 4 months in fact that was a great lose of manpower! Thanks Kulwant for the testimony, yes its like a caution not only to the people who work from home but also the people who work continuously even neglecting their sleep.
Thanks Manpreet for this timely note.
Keep informed
Best Regard
~ Philip
Philip, as you yourself mentioned, reading won’t do what it takes to be in good health. Whatever you read, you must be ready to implement it in your life, if it works for you.
Thanks to Kulwant whose comment might help you take up your health seriously.
Best of luck for your next blog.
Thank you for such a wonderful article and sharing.God bless you.!
Thank you 🙂