Working from home mental health: The importance of good habits whilst working from home
In working from home, mental health is so important.
Read how to build and maintain healthy habits when working from home to support your mental health.
Working from home mental health: In lockdown one, the country was baking banana bread, hosting weekly zoom quizzes and exercising 3 times a day. As the time has passed the slump has kicked in and maintaining a healthy structure and consistent motivation has been difficult. Nobody anticipated the longevity of this newer way of living.
For me, incorporating useful, proactive and healthy habits has had the biggest impact on my physical and mental wellbeing. It is important to create and embed a healthy routine, especially in this virtual world.
Some of the most effective habits for me have included walks, fresh air, yoga, mindfulness, exercise, cooking and yes, Netflix.
Another good habit is to actually incorporate some screen-free time in to your daily routine. In essence, make time for fun, rest and movement.
Separating the day between work and your personal time
Separating your time before and after work is important to maintaining routine in your work from home day. When working from home, your home is your office and your office your home.
On travelling in to the office, or your place of work, your commute is the time before and after work that defines your hours & your structure. In working from home, it is so easy for these lines to become blurred.
One way of overcoming this is creating a new routine. This then becomes the equivalent of a commute to start and finish work. An effective way of doing this is going for a morning walk. I tried walking 4 out of 5 days in January and February. I walked to the coffee shop to pick up my morning coffee (it’s the small things that help you start your day right).
In going for a morning walk, it means that when you wake up, your first thought or activity isn't doing the chores, thinking about meetings, your to do list or your workday ahead. Your focus is on getting your body moving & clearing your head. If you are able to, then I find that listening to a podcast or audiobook whilst on your walk is a really effective way of clearing your head & focussing on something other than work. This is also creating an even better habit as podcasts & audiobooks can be/are educational, make you feel good or can simply, just make you laugh.
The struggles of creating habits when working from home
Of course, there are struggles in creating habits. Especially ones like morning walks, which rely on the introduction of an earlier morning. Plus, if you are a workaholic or worry about work a lot, then focussing on something other than work can be difficult ahead of the work day. This said, I urge you to please try this. It is so worth it, & the clear head & clarity before a day of sitting at home working, can be motivational in itself.
...& finishing your working day with good habits too.
Additionally, separating your day when you finish your work is equally as important. You need to set a clear boundary of time that you will work to. Do not work beyond this.
For example, if your hours usually finish at 6pm maybe set a deadline of no later than 7pm to give yourself flexibility, but a clear deadline.
Close your laptop or even put it away if you can (especially if this a space you use for other things, like relaxing or cooking food) & if you have one, then put your work phone away. If you have paperwork or other work remnants, then keep these elsewhere when you are finished. For example, you can have a 'work' box that you pack up and get out each day. The purpose of this is to change the space physically to help mentally switching off.
You then need to leave the space you work in, even if you can only do so for 15 minutes.
Stack your habits
'Habit stacking' was developed by James Clear, who wrote Atomic Habits, which is a must read!
Habit stacking is when you do one activity at the same time as another, or you ensure that you do the same habit before or after another every day. For example, completing your gratitudes whilst brushing your teeth. As you already brush your teeth (well, hopefully you do), it is much easier to pair a habit with this one that is so routine for you.
Habit stacking can be extremely useful in increasing productivity, as well as making it much easier to build habits. So, you choose a habit that you already do & choose another habit that you could do at the same time, before or after it.
P.s. I am not talking about Instagram whilst watching Netflix here. Choose things that will help you to improve your well being.
Track & plan your habits
Planning habits is vital to completing them with ease. The more decisions you have to make in a day the harder it becomes. Then, the worse you become at even making a decision. This is called decision fatigue.
When you're working from home, planning all of your meals, attempting not to binge on Netflix, deciding whether to work out, do yoga, cook a healthy meal, pop to the shop or call a friend... This can actually all end up being tiring, especially after a long day at work!
You can reduce this by bulk cooking, for example, or planning what you're going to eat ahead of time. You can also plan when you're going to do exercise, or which audio book or podcast you want to listen to on your morning walk. This means that even if you feel sleepy when you wake up (or your brain is tired from a long day at work) you don’t have to use brain power making these menial decisions.
Planning is vital during the early phases of tracking and planning habits... It is a way of training your brain in to creating routine. Decisions take place in a part of the brain that requires a lot of energy. Therefore, even making the choice to adopt this new habit may be tough at the start. It will take around 30 days to embed these habits & begin working in autopilot, occurring in a different part of your brain, which uses less energy.
How to track your habits:
Make a note of what you want to do every Sunday night, ahead of a new week.
Set an aim of how many times a week you'd like to do each one.
Keep track of how well each habit is going at the end of each week.
By following these steps, you will feel rewarded when you have successfully created habits. You will also then know where to focus your attention when certain habits fall by the wayside. Also, by doing this weekly, you will save yourself the mental capacity even of having to keep check on habits.
Working from home mental health & habits.
In summary,
Choose 1-3 new habits to start with.
Make it easier for yourself by stacking, tracking and planning.
And don’t change EVERYTHING at once... One small change at a time is much easier to do, easier to embed, and will be much more sustainable in the long term.
Feel free to reach out to me if you'd like some further support on how to do this.
Sarah is a Career Change Coach. She helps women breakthrough and pivot in their career. Whether you're not networking, developing your own work or side hustle! Stop feeling like you don’t know where to start and reach out!
Sarah has a Masters in Psychology and is both accredited by and a member of the British Psychological Society. She has experience working with the military and corporate sector in recovery, transition, leadership, and mentoring.