When COVID-19 forced most office workers into working from home, no one could have predicted how long it would last. Six months later, here we are, many of us still working remotely for the foreseeable future.
If you’re like me, the pandemic threw a wrench into your healthy practices. Pre-COVID-19, to stay healthy and manage stress, I biked to work and took yoga classes. I also walked more during the workday – inside my office, on afternoon coffee breaks, and during in-person 1-1’s. Post-COVID-19, there were fewer options for exercise – health clubs, gyms, and yoga studios were all closed. I had to figure out new ways to prevent burnout and stress, without leaving my home.
In this post, I’ll be sharing healthy practices that I’ve adopted, which have supported me while working from home. My intention is not to try to convince you to adopt these practices. Instead, imagine we’re sitting in a coffee shop together. I’m sharing these practices to encourage and spark ideas for practices you could adopt in your own life.
Before we get started, I want to make one thing clear: throughout the post, I refer to the daily actions I’m taking as practices and not habits. Practices are actions done intentionally to improve one’s skill in that activity. Habits are actions done regularly, without any conscious thinking involved. I intend to perform these actions consciously, and allow them to evolve over time, so therefore I consider them to be practices.
Three Healthy Practices I’ve Adopted While Working from Home
1. Morning practice
Until developing a morning practice, it was hard to imagine the multitude of benefits this would have on my life. For example, sometimes, I don’t get a good night’s sleep, but just because I wake up groggy and unrested, doesn’t mean I need to suffer all day. A morning practice helps me recalibrate my energies (similar to yoga), no matter how I sleep, and start the day off fresh.
Each morning, I’ll wake up and make my way to the bathroom, where I turn the shower on. I’ll start with warm water, get in, and after warming up, I’ll switch it all the way to cold. I’ll close my eyes and feel the cold penetrate my skin, for at least 2-3 minutes, taking each splash of cold water in. The first few weeks of this were challenging, but over time, I’ve learned to look forward to cold showers. Why do I do this in the first place? I learned about the benefits of cold exposure from Wim Hof, a Dutch extreme athlete and creator of the Wim Hof Method (learn more in the link at the end of this post).
After the cold shower, I return to my bedroom, do a few yoga stretches, and sit on my meditation cushion. For the next 15 minutes, I do a morning meditation. A technique I’m experimenting with right now is simply counting to 20, incrementing on each inhale, and focusing on my breath. I remind myself, the purpose of my life is to continue to grow and evolve, to let go of any “stuff” I’m holding onto inside. If my counting goes beyond 20, I realize I got caught up in my thoughts, and start the counting over. This meditation helps me build mindfulness into other parts of my day, stay focused, and learn to accept life’s events as they unfold each day.
After my meditation, I write in my journal. I use the 5-Minute Journal, which asks you several questions for the morning, and several at bedtime. The morning questions are, to list 3 things you are grateful for, 3 things that would make the day great, and an intention for the day. I find it a great way to flex my gratitude muscle and set a positive intention for my day.
2. Exercise practice
When I exercise, everything else in my life gets better – I start eating healthier, sleeping better, and handling stress more effectively. Exercise also gets my blood flow moving and improves circulation throughout my body. And most importantly, it makes me more motivated to take positive action in other parts of my life.
In April, I started the You Are Your Own Gym exercise program, through the iPhone app (linked further down). This is a 10-week program that has varying difficulty levels (you have the option of starting a new program after you complete an easier one). It’s 4-5 days a week, 20-30 min per day. I noticed that doing these exercises helps me better handle the stresses of the workday, and gives me extra energy. I also noticed that these exercises help me build confidence in my body’s natural abilities. Aches and pains that I felt in the past (e.g. walking home carrying bags of groceries), and are common for office workers (e.g. back and neck pain) no longer are a problem for me, and I attribute this to the bodyweight exercises. And as you would guess, I’m sleeping much better after these workouts.
The great thing about You Are Your Own Gym is that you can do these exercises anywhere. Sometimes I’ll exercise in the apartment, other times, the outdoor deck area, and occasionally (e.g. when the exercise called for lots of jumping), I walk over to the nearby park, to exercise in a socially-distanced outdoor space.
3. Eating practice
Working from home, I’m not getting nearly as many steps as I used to, even if I make time for an afternoon walk. And I’m no longer biking to work. So overall, my body is using less energy on a daily basis. To adjust for this, I started doing daily 16-hour fasts. I do this by skipping breakfast, eating my first meal at noon and my last meal by 8 PM. I find that, during the morning, I rarely get hungry, and I enjoy the focused energy that comes from a fasted state (I still drink water and green or herbal tea during the fast).
Once a week, I’ll also do a 24-hour fast. To do this, I’ll finish dinner by 8 PM, then skip breakfast and lunch the next day. I find that usually, my energy stays high until the last 3-4 hours of the fast. Longer fasts put my body into a state of ketosis longer, and there’s a multitude of health benefits there, in terms of cancer prevention and healing/cellular repair that only happens when you stop eating for an extended period of time (see research linked at the end).
More recently, I’ve also started eating a primarily whole foods plant-based diet, after reading The China Study. This way of eating aligns more with my personal values, and is healthier than my former diet, which was more animal-based. And it’s been fun taking on the challenge of learning new recipes that are delicious, nutritious, and plant-based.
Putting It All Together
Adapting your own healthy work-from-home practices takes time and experimentation. It’s important to listen to your body, how you’re feeling, and adjust. The benefits are tremendous, in terms of your energy flow throughout each day, not to mention the personal growth that comes with these practices. With so many of us working from home much longer than we ever anticipated, with loved ones in close quarters, and less boundaries between our “work” and “home” lives, it’s especially important now.
My practices are continually evolving, as they should be. I always remind myself that the reason I do these is to give myself energy throughout the day, and continue my path of personal growth. If I’m ever doing a practice from a place of guilt or self-judgement, as soon as I become aware of that, I take a step back to reflect and recalibrate. Doing something for this reason is an unhealthy fuel, which would lead to burnout (which is exactly what I’m trying to prevent).
It’s important to remember, when you find practices that work for you, do them consciously, and let them evolve over time. Don’t do them from a place of “have to”, but from a place of “these give me energy, align with my values, and make me a more resilient person.”
Your Turn to Share
What health practices do you miss the most from pre-COVID-19 days? How have you managed to supplant them with other practices while working from home? If you’ve already discovered some healthy WFH practices that have worked for you, I’d love to hear about them, so that they might influence my own practices.
Article References
- You Are Your Own Gym- iPhone App, Book on Amazon
- Wim Hof- Known Benefits of Cold Showers
- 5-Minute Journal- Book on Amazon
- Fasting
- The China Study- Book on Amazon
Credits
- Thanks so much to Jason Divis, Joanna Chan, Indeep Kaur, and Marve Ralston for reviewing this blog post and providing your valuable feedback pre-publication!
- Photo by kike vega on Unsplash
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