6 Ways To Rejuvenate And Restore Yourself After Working From Home

Working from home has a lot of perks. You can shower at any time you like, wear the comfiest of clothes and not care about who’s watching, switch between the study table and couch as per your convenience and decide your own meal timings. Having said that, this culture has blurred the lines between personal and professional life for many. While some find themselves sleeping through work hours, others end up working late into the night.

As a result, there is a lack of order and structure to people’s schedules. When this is allowed to go on for a long time, it can lead to a burn-out, as we’re commonly seeing nowadays. It’s imperative to find a balance, so that you’re only working during work hours and only relaxing during the remaining. If you find it hard to unwind at the end of the day, AskMen India shares six effective solutions:

Keep your gadgets aside

After an entire day of sitting at a desk and staring at a screen, your brain and body deserve some rest. Once you finish your work, make it a habit to keep your electronic gadgets aside for at least an hour or two. Those Instagram and Facebook notifications can wait. Spend this time stretching. A few shoulder, ankle and wrist rotations can go a long way in preventing joint stiffness. Moreover, you should wash your eyes with cold water and exercise the eye muscles to relieve the strain subjected to them all day.

Meditate

A long day at work should be followed by not just physical relaxation, but also mental relaxation. They work hand in hand. A hundred thoughts may be occupying your mind after answering so many phone calls, writing a tonne of emails and preparing for that presentation due tomorrow. In order to clear your head after working hours, you must leave everything aside and sit in silence with your eyes closed for at least half an hour. Regulate your breathing pattern during this time and reflect on your day. Think about how the next day can be made better.

Engage in a light exercise

If your job requires you to be glued to a desk and hunched over your laptop all day, it is your responsibility to make up for the lack of movement in the remaining hours. You can’t blame the quality of your life on anyone else but yourself. Whether you make time for exercising or make excuses is your choice, but then the repercussions are yours to face, so choose wisely. It’s super important to do a full-body stretch after spending an entire day sitting in one place. It boosts the circulation of blood across the body. A little bit of resistance training, moreover, can go a long way in keeping the strength and flexibility of your muscles intact.

Listen to calming music

Music can be an amazing antidote to stress. If you find yourself feeling too worked up at the end of the day, calm your mind by listening to songs that are soft and soothing. In fact, we recommend you to curate a playlist for every mood: sad, angry, happy, anxious. It’s a healthy way of taking charge of your emotions and feeling better in an instant. Make sure these songs are played in the background and you’re not constantly on your phone shuffling from one to the other. Lie down with your eyes shut and pay attention to the lyrics and composition, so as to take your attention away from other things.

Read a feel-good book

We’re living in a world of diminishing attention spans. Given how indispensable a part of our lives social media has become and that most people’s jobs revolve around it, we end up spending most of our day scrolling through our phone screens and switching from one app to the other. This makes it hard for us to concentrate on any repetitive activity. It stalls our growth and development as individuals, because in order to learn anything new, we have to do it over and over again – whether it’s playing a guitar or cooking. Reading is one habit that increases our attention span. If you can read a lot of pages at once, without dozing off or getting distracted by something else, it’s a sign that we’re focused.

Catch up with friends and family

Most jobs these days require us to work in isolation. We’re all at home, keeping in touch by exchanging text messages with our colleagues and emails with our clients. This leaves us with no chance to engage in meaningful conversations in real time. But man is a social animal and there is only so long we can go without having face-to-face interactions. A prolonged absence of human contact can hamper our mental and emotional health. That’s why, we recommend taking some time at the end of your day to talk to your family, friends in the neighborhood, roommates, siblings or spouse. And remember to keep your phone down while doing this.

Make work-life balance a priority!

Cover artwork by Dhaval Punatar/AskMen India

By Ritu Ailani