Rest is an indispensable part of life. When you are at the school taking classes, there are breaks between the classes. When you go to see a movie, there will be a break after the first half. When you live your daily life, there will always be a sleep break every night. Most people sign up for a meditation class to move away from the distress of daily life, to have a mental rest for a period of time. So it is inevitable to have a rest day in order to have a healthy remote work-life.
Suppose you enjoy sports in your daily life. You go to a gym regularly and do not hinder your weekly cardio time. And rest day is one of the best things you can do to your body if you enjoy sports and want to do it for a lifetime. Rest day provides your body with a recovery time, prevents potential muscle fatigues, reduces the chances of getting injured dramatically, improves your performance at sports, it helps to have a healthy sleep which eventually helps your body to perform a good performance during the sport days.
The same process also applies to mental health. It doesn’t matter how much you like your remote job; work-time contains stress factors. And these stress factors pile up over time and start to affect your mental health, and eventually your daily life. To stop the accumulation of the effects of these stressors, having a good mental rest is the key. Having a rest day from remote work relieves you from the bad side-effects of work stressors, increases your motivation, and helps you have a decent sleep pattern, which again, will eventually help you to perform better at your remote work-life.
Why Taking a Break Is Important For Those Working From Home?
Working remotely is as challenging as office work-life. You need to take efficient and regular breaks so as to boost your productivity. Having a day off will provide your body and your mental health with a resting period, which will eventually help you to perform better at work. The following are the reasons why it is necessary to take a break for a healthy life both physically and mentally:
1. For a Healthier State of Mind And Body
You can use breaks so as to improve the condition of your physical health as well as your well-being of the state of mind. 30 minutes of reading would help you to relieve most of the work-life-related stress.
2. For an Improved Memory
As you provide time for your brain, it uses this time to process newly learned information, and this recently processed information would stay in your memory for longer than compared to the information that is not processed during a break. So, if your workload involves learning and remembering things, having breaks could be helpful to do the process.
3. To Enhance Creativity
If your job involves creativity-related tasks and duties, during breaks, you might end up finding innovative ideas. Because during break time, you probably feel more relieved, which eliminates the negative effects of stress that hinders creativity.
4. To Sustain Your Alertness
You might be a person who rarely gets distracted, but sustaining it for a workday or for a week is a very challenging task to do. Also, it is not healthy for your brain. By taking break times, you can give your mind a break and make a fresh start.
5. To Have a Better Work-Life Balance
To have a balance between work and your daily life is crucial for your mental health. An unbalanced work-life duo could end up with workaholic behavior, which is a disease that causes people to cut from their sleep and social actions in order to keep working compulsively. You can avoid it with a good balanced work-life by taking proper breaks.
6. To Be More Productive
After short breaks, there is an inclination for productivity to be enhanced. Long-term workloads will distract you and eventually decrease your productivity. So, it would be wise to have short breaks with a proper schedule.
7. To Sleep Better
Having well-scheduled breaks during work time will improve your sleep quality. And eventually, it will help you be more productive at work.
8. To Get Better at Problem-Solving
After a hard day of work or during a challenging task, taking a coffee break would help you think more logically. Therefore, you can analyze the problem in a more proper way, which will lead to a decent solution in the end.
9. To Increase Motivation
When you work hard and earn a break, you are advised to take that break. After the break, you’ll probably feel more motivated to complete your tasks.
10. To Boost Your Energy
As days pass by, the tasks and duties will consume your ATPs (or energy), which makes you feel more tired than before the work. So, simply to regain your energy, you can have a break, providing your body and your brain to regain consumed energy.
Some Useful Tips to End Your Day When You Work From Home
The work-life balance shall be arranged very carefully. You can not miss the life behind you while you were struggling with the work all day. You shall know that you need to have a personal life. As the pandemic changes the traditional way of working, people are trying to adopt the new methods with the new normals. Most people start to work remotely at their homes instead of going to a physical office. Here are some tips related to ending a remote working day:
Trick Your Mind
Mind is a tricky thing. Even though we still do not know what exactly is this or how exactly it works, we still know some beneficial facts related to it. The mind tends to think more about the things that are mentioned more and more. It is a well-known fact, and most people use it to trick their minds. At the end of the day, writing down ten positives related to your day, and therefore making your mind exposed to more positive things will cause your mind to think more positively. So, you can apply the same method to your end day of remote work. Take a pen and a piece of paper, and write down ten positive things related to that working day or accomplishments completed duties and tasks. The exposed mind will be tricked and will be more satisfied and motivated for the next day’s workload as it is overflowed with positive motivational events.
Schedule Tomorrow’s Workload
To prepare for tomorrow’s workload and get your mind ready for the upcoming tasks, you can spend 15-20 minutes planning tomorrow’s tasks. Knowing that everything is on track and tomorrow’s schedule is already set, you can relax. Because, most of the time, the uncontrolled part of the brain struggles with the upcoming tasks and jobs, trying to set tomorrow’s agenda. When you sit and write down a plan, your mind will be saved from all the stress.
What Is A Good Work-Life Balance?
When you say a good work-life balance, it is not about splitting your time into two between the work time and the time you spent for yourself. However, it is not about splitting time into two. For everyone, a good work-life balance would mean something different. However, a proper work-life balance should more or less look something like this:
- Meeting all the expectations, duties and tasks, and deadlines at work, at the same time, still having time for your personal life, such as meeting with your friends, watching a movie, or painting.
- Sleeping enough and having a proper diet. A good balance of work-life should contain a proper amount of sleep. You can not have a balanced work-life if you cut off your sleep so as to have more time for work.
- As our aim is to separate work and life from each other, you can not think or worry about work-related issues when you are out of work.
How do you manage time effectively when working from home?
- Always keep a schedule of work and make it a daily routine
- To be ready mentally, wear like you are actually going to work; it will help you to be more focused.
- Create an actual workspace in your home so that you can trick your mind as it is an Office
- Avoid any object or thought that might distract you during the work
- As we have already mentioned in this article, take breaks according to your schedule.
- Prioritize your sleep time and hygiene
- Assess the necessity of meeting
- Do not forget to reward yourself; each day is a challenge, and you accomplish each one of them.
When should I end my workday when working from home?
When working remotely how do you manage your day?
What is work-life balance?
How do you manage time effectively when working from home?
Originally posted on November 26, 2021 @ 12:47 pm
