Guest Post Written by Cole Fitter, Intern | Work from Home Yoga
We’re thrilled to bring you another guest post from our friends at Work From Home Yoga. Wellness expands far beyond physical health. Read on for tips to reduce burnout, wrangle your digital workload and prioritize your wellbeing in a digital world.
Ask Yourself What You Need
Whenever you have a few free minutes between meetings, check in on your physical needs. Much of our stress that builds throughout the day comes from our basic needs for water, food, rest, and movement not being met.
One easy way to do this is ask yourself this question:
What is one thing that I could do right now that will help me feel at ease?
If you take a few minutes to do that thing, you will come back to your workspace feeling calm and ready for your next set of meetings.
Use the Pomodoro Technique and Chrome Extension
Use the Pomodoro Technique to be more productive and feel better within every hour-chunk of your work day. The Pomodoro Technique is an easy to use time-management technique that allows for 10 minutes of rest every hour. It goes like this:
The traditional pomodoro technique includes 4 work sessions. At the end of those 4 sessions, you have a long, 15-minute break.
It is not necessary to follow this technique strictly. Simply try it out and find which combination of work and rest serves you best. There is an excellent and user-friendly chrome extension called Marinara that makes getting started with this technique even easier.
Use a Tab Manager
This is for the person that has 100 tabs open at once and can never find what they are looking for.
If this speaks to you, first know that you’re not alone.
Your brain works fast, and you need software that can keep up with you.
One of the best Google Chrome tab managers out there is called Workona.
It helps you manage and organize your tabs into different projects. The coolest part about it is when it opens and closes all your tabs at the click of a button based on which project you want to work on.
It also has space for tasks, to-dos, and notes in each of your projects.
Try it out and reward your hard working mind with some space and clarity.
Reflect on Your Day When You Clock Out
At the end of every workday, take five minutes and write about how it went. Write one thing that you accomplished, one thing you could do better, one recent accomplishment in your work-life, and carry-over tasks for tomorrow.
It’s always a good idea to help yourself transition from work-life to home-life.
Writing is an excellent way to do this, as it uses your body and mind.
Give this a try and add your own prompts or remove any prompts that don’t serve you.
Clean Your Digital Workspace at End of Every Day
If there is one thing you take from this post, it is the importance of maintaining both a clean mind and a clean workspace.
Since our computers are staples of our workspace, it is common-sense that we should clean them every day.
Here are some simple practices you can implement at the end of your workday to keep your digital space tidy. This makes it even easier to avoid the clutter and get focused right away when the day starts tomorrow.
- If you are a frequent user of your notes app, choose 10 old notes to delete at the end of every day
- If you use Workona or any other tab manager, then go through each project and check off things that you have accomplished and delete old tabs that are no longer useful
- Use a vacuum and disinfectant to clean your computer’s keyboard
- Schedule your computer to turn off and on every night while you charge it
That’s it. Try these techniques out and see which one(s) work best for you.
Remember – work and wellness can coexist.
Written by Cole Fitter, Intern | Work from Home Yoga