How to take care of your body as a remote worker?
Working from home, in your comfort can be less stressful than having to go to the office every day. It can also allow you to save time by commuting less or working from wherever you want without any trouble. But as for many other practices working from home also has some rules to stick to keep your efficiency or even stay healthy.
Having the perfect setup is a good start to taking care of your body, but is still not enough, you also have to take action and make sure that you are aware of what to do. There are 3 main parts of your body that you have to pay extra attention to:
Your eyes
Given the fact that you can easily spend more than ten hours a day staring at a screen checking your phone, watching TV, or working on your computer, taking care of your eyes is mandatory. To avoid any dry and red eyes, headaches or blurry vision here are 3 tips you could use:
- Reduce your screen time. Instead of watching tv or using your smartphone right after work, chose to read a book, or go for a walk for 30 minutes to 1h so that your eyes can rest a bit.
- Invest in a good monitor. Invest in better equipment by finding the best monitors to buy to protect your eyes.
- Reduce blue light. Every phone is now equipped with a blue light filter that you can chose to turn on. The same goes for PCs if yours doesn’t have an included one you can always download an app, f.lux is a good example.
Your back
Being seated all day long is not so good for your back, especially if your position is not adequate. Combining a good setup with good practices is the best thing you could do. What we’d suggest you do is:
- Buy an ergonomic chair. If you spend your whole day seated at your desk you should think about buying the right equipment for that. You can’t work from home by seating on a stool all day long. Buying an ergonomic chair sure is expensive but it should be the first item you think about when building your setup.
- Think about your position. Having the right position is important in order not to put too much pressure on your back and neck. If you use a laptop think about buying an adjustable holder allowing you to place the screen at eye height, the same goes with your PC’s monitor.
- Stretch. If you start feeling that your back or neck hurts, take a 5 to 10 minutes break to stretch. If you have no time to lose during the day, you can choose to do it at the end, the beginning, or during the lunch break, it’s up to you.
Your wrists
Carpal tunnel syndrome is quite common among software developers for example, and it can also happen to you. To avoid it there are different things you could do:
- Stretch. As for your back and neck, stretches are a good way to prevent CTS. They are a good alternative to lifting weights or doing exercises for your wrist and they are quick and easy to do. Start or end your day with a 5 minutes wrist stretch, or even include it with the ones you do for your back and neck.
- Use ergonomic positions. Make sure that your body is in a natural resting state and that your muscles are not forced into an uncomfortable position. This can be helped by the usage of adequate tools.
- Strengthen your wrists. If you already go to the gym, include a wrist exercise in your routine, it can only be helpful, allowing you to preserve them without overdoing anything.
You should always think about combining the right setup elements with good practices to stay healthy and in a good shape.
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Always on duty,
Duty Team