Remote Work Best Practices: Mental Health Tips

When working remotely it’s important to adhere to some basic Remote Work Best practices. It can take some time to adjust to working in a familiar environment. When we think of our homes, we think of it as a place to relax outside of work! So when we start working from home it can feel a little bit weird at first. Work can easily blend into our personal lives and if you have kids, it can become even more stressful. I’ve compiled a list of Remote Work Best Practices that would be able to help you. Here are 5 tips to safeguard your mental health and well-being!

Set Your Working Hours

While working remotely it’s super easy for your work life to blend in with your personal life. When working you’ll want to definitely set limits on when you work and when to make yourself available to clients and co-workers. It’s great to make yourself available to people, but from my experience, you’ll really need to set your hours of availability and inform others both when you are available and when you aren’t. This is because if you make yourself too available, people will take advantage of that and hound you during your “personal time”. Imagine how stressed you would be if you didn’t set any boundaries…. you work hard for 8 hours and turn on the TV to watch Netflix and then…it happens…. “Hey, can you take care of this? No rush…but we’d like to have this done by _____.” You suddenly feel a sense of dread as you feel that you’re stuck to a ball and chain….in your own home! Because your mental health is super important when working remotely, I have listed it first among my remote work best practices that you should follow.

Take Scheduled Breaks

You’ll want to take scheduled breaks every so often. Contrary to what some people think, working yourself to the bone from sunrise to sunset is actually counterproductive. Why? Because you’ll lose focus and concentration if you don’t take breaks. Humans can’t concentrate for eight hours in a row. In fact, employees only really get two hours and 53 minutes of productivity in an eight-hour day. What you can do is take a “tech break” and detox from your devices for a while. This will help to break poor habits such as constantly checking your e-mails and texts. Take as many breaks as you need to so that you can relax. It’ll energize you enough to continue your work and still feel accomplished knowing that you’re operating at optimal levels.

Eat Regular Meals

It’s important that you eat regular meals every day to ensure that your body gets the energy that it needs to perform. It can be 2 meals, 3 meals, or even 5-6 smaller meals throughout the day. As long as it’s healthy and within your personalized caloric and dietary guidelines you’ll be happier mentally. Some of the benefits of eating regular meals are:

• Prevention of Hunger Pains
• Boosted Metabolism
• Being energized
• Promotion of Self Control
• Creation of a Consistent Routine

By eating healthy meals regularly, you won’t be lethargic and you’ll have enough energy to last you throughout your day. Not only that, but good food will also make you happy and that’s great for your mental health!

Exercise when Possible

Just because you are working remotely doesn’t mean that you can just sit in your chair all day. It’s very important to move your body. One way to do this is to exercise regularly. Since remote workers tend to be more productive than their office counterparts (According to this 2-year Stanford Study), it’s the icing on the cake to know that you can feel better and have more energy than them through regular exercise too. You can accomplish this by getting a gym membership locally or just turning your home into your own personalized gym. Amazon has a nice selection of gym equipment that you can use to stay in shape. Exercise has been proven to improve your mental health. It’s one of the remote work best practices that will potentially increase your lifespan but will definitely improve your health and well-being.

Check-in on Your Co-workers

When working remotely you’re not exactly chatting with your co-workers near the water cooler or eating out together for lunch. As humans, we crave social interactions. Interacting with our friends is great for our mental health and co-workers are no exception. Talking with friends helps to reduce stress and makes people happy because our co-workers can be an outlet for expressing our thoughts. Our co-workers are also great at exchanging ideas with us and assisting us with issues when they arise. As much as we feel like we can tackle things on our own, it helps to know that you have a group of supporters on your team that are ready and willing to help you out. Be sure to check up on your co-workers and see how they are doing too! With a positive mind there will be positive outcomes. Why not support each other through thick and thin?

Will You Implement These Remote Work Best Practices?

Your mental health is precious and no matter how much money you make it’s important to keep yourself happy and healthy. If it takes you a while to implement these tips, no worries. We’ve all been there. I sometimes find myself struggling to exercise and it’s super easy to blend work with personal time. It’s natural for this to happen. But if you are dedicated and focused you can definitely overcome any bad habits that you have and overcome them. When it comes to your mental health, you want to do anything you can to preserve it. I hope my list of remote work best practices helps you out. Good luck!

P.S. Comment if you have any other tips on any other remote work best practices that have helped you below!