Now that most of us are working from home, we are having to take on new challenges that we have never experienced before. Working from home means you aren’t making a mental break from being at home to being at work. When we travel to work, our mindset changes. We’re thinking about what we’ll do first at the office, who we will bid good morning to and what kind of things we’re going to be doing. But since we don’t have to leave our home to go to work, we are not making that mental transition anymore. We have to put ourselves in a new mindset. In doing so, we entrap ourselves into becoming too focussed in our work. We begin to stop taking breaks as we normally would. But is it important? What happens if we don’t? How can we take breaks that are actually meaningful?
The Signs
What types of signs should you look out for when you are working hard at home and need to take a break? Many of you will have experienced some of these and known to have taken a break, but maybe carried on working. Some of them you might not have noticed.
- Neck pain – Looking down at your keyboard and screen all day long is going to make you want to do the opposite. So are you occasionally bending your bend so far back that you look up at the ceiling? Sit back and relax, or get up and walk it off.
- Wrists are getting tight – When you have been typing for hours on end, you will start to feel a brooding tightness in your wrists. It’s your carpal tunnel syndrome telling you to slow down or take a break.
- If you can’t stop moving around in your chair – This means you have been sitting down for too long. Get up and take a walk for about 5 minutes.
- Do you feel your eyes straining? – You know you shouldn’t be staring at a screen for hours and hours! Close your eyes for 15 minutes and just relax.
Take A Breather
When we’re at the office we take a lunch break and go for a walk or go somewhere where we can just forget about work and focus on other things. Or better yet, not focus on anything because we want to clear our mind. Well, something like a vape pen and your own selection of vape juice can aid in your drifting away from the busy-body you have become. There are so many juices and E-liquids you can select, with various strengths and potencies in flavor it’s quite a remarkable transformation of the vape market as more and more companies are making fun and exciting juices such as watermelon and ‘voodoo’. Going for a walk with a vape pen is something that is recommended over smoking any day of the week. At the very least, you get to slow your habit and not be harmed by it as you would otherwise.
Mental Overload
Did you know what remote workers are working about an hour more than their office worker counterparts? Yes, it’s true! Those who work from home actually put in more work, and do so consistently than the workers that are in the office environment space. Why? Well, since you don’t have to travel to work, you can just get to work as soon as you have had breakfast. This saves about 1-2 hours a day.
Mental overload can hit you like a ton of bricks. This can be because you are working without taking a break, working longer than usual or simply, doing too many days in a row without taking a day off. When you suffer from this, what can you do? The bottom line is, you have to take a break, work a half-day, or just take some time off. Just because you’re working at home, don’t fool yourself into believing it’s a more cosy, laid back environment. We are still in that mental mode of analyzing, creating and communicating complex ideas.
Good For Our Morale
It’s also good for morale to take a break as you aren’t among your friends and co-workers anymore. So being alone in front of your computer is going to take its toll on you. Take a break and have some real human contact. It’s good for your soul and helps you to remain in a human world, and not purely in a cyber world of emails, statistics and graphs.
When working from home, you can become used to the same environment day after day. You work exactly where you sleep. It’s not as normal as you might think. So always take breaks, clear your mind and refocus.
*collaborative post
