Tag: Diet

  • How To Optimize Your Performance As a Freelancer Working From Home

    Every freelancer working from home always wake up in the morning with one ultimate goal; to perform optimally and give their best in in their work. When one is in a position to consistently perform flawlessly, they will be more happier and fulfilled.

    So what will it take to achieve this considering the conditions surrounding working from home?

    In order for one to start their journey to high performance, they have to first look at what led them to poor performance.

    man sitting on green chair while using laptop

    In this blogpost, I will focus on 3 areas in life that presents long term challenges while working from home.

    Solitude

    Unlike working in the office where you are able to interact with colleagues, working from home is lonely to many. It follows that the only place that freelancers interact with their collaborators is via video chat, call, e-mail or messaging apps.

    Creatives in the digital media space is one group of freelancers who go through moments of solitude as they build their brand.

    Video: Ways to Optimize Performance Working From Home

    In order to succeed in these scenarios, freelancers have to take personal responsibility. As a freelancer, you are the captain of your ship.

    Ways to Deal with Solitude

    family gathering for a group hug
    1. Set Goals – Goals will motivate you to look forward to the next day with lots of enthusiasm. Your goals must be aligned to solving the ‘solitude‘ state that you are currently in. When you have goals set, you will feel more vibrant when working from home alone.
    2. Prioritize Family time – Covid-19 Pandemic and hard times has proven to many that the ONLY people who will stand with you when everyone is gone is your immediate family. Spend more time with them when not working and build a strong bond. Having a family is a blessing.
    3. Build a Mastermind Network– If you love say travelling, hiking, or partying once a week, find responsible guys or fellow freelancers with the same hobbies. Plan to regularly meet and share. In order to achieve the best results on this, be wise in your approach and do it consistently. Use apps like meetup or join social media groups to connect and kickstart your journey.

    4. Start a Relationship – This is for the single freelancers. When working from home, meeting people physically is difficult. Be open to try different social media networks and dating platforms to meet new people. You just can never know!

    Health

    Your health is important. Sitting the whole day in your chair while working can lead to severe health problems like back pain, eye irritations, neck pain, arm and wrist pain and more. If these conditions are not diagnosed early, it may lead to serious damages to your body.

    In order to solve health issues arising from sitting most of the time while working from home, keenly establish the route cause of the problem that you are having. Here is how I have diagnosed some of these problems.

    man and woman holding each others hand
    1. Back and arm pain – This is mostly caused by the chair that you are sitting on. According to spine-health.com ”It’s important to have an office chair that’s ergonomic and that supports the lower back and promotes good posture to avoid developing or compounding back problems.” You can innovate ways to achieve this by adding a cushion behind your chair to support your back and see how it goes. Read more here on choosing the right chair for your office.
    2. Irritations on your eyes – This is mainly caused by the refresh rate of your computer screen. I recommend you acquire a modern monitor or computer as it has been optimized for the eyes. It adjusts according to the environment you are working in. Secondly, schedule breaks in between your workday of 10-20 mins after 1 hour of sitting. This will help you relax your eyes from looking at the screen for a long time besides getting little time to stretch and allow blood to flow uniformly through your body.
    3. Body Health – Lack of physical activity is the biggest of course of many health problems today. When you are working from home, your general health is at risk if you don’t exercise. It is therefore good to have a consistent schedule for exercising. You can do this from home or you can choose to pay for membership in your nearest gym.

    Diet

    Diet is directly linked to your health. Eating healthy therefore should be part of your ultimate goal. Sample different types of food to find the ones that you like.

    According to WHO, a healthy diet helps to protect against malnutrition in all its forms, as well as noncommunicable diseases (NCDs), such as diabetes, heart disease, stroke and cancer.

    What you eat will determine how you feel all through the day. When working from home, there is a tendency to feed on snacks when on breaks. Most snacks nowadays contain a lot of sugar. It is therefore necessary that you moderate the amount of snacks you take during the day.

    Of course drinking a lot of water should come in here as part of your healthy diet.

    How you deal with solitude, health and diet will determine your overall daily performance and sucess in your freelancing business.

    Conclusion

    While your financial state is another accelerator to your well being, the areas discussed above should come first. Finances tends follow a happy and healthy freelancer. Heathy freelancer does more with less effort.

    Is there any other area that freelancers should focus on and thus optimize their performance and achieve more? Share your thoughts in the comments section below.

    And if you need screencast video production services or any other services, you can request a quote for free here.

    Until next time, bye bye and take care.

    Follow me on twitter @cheptiony.

  • 5 Great Tips to Keep Your Mind Healthy While Working From Home

    As we Mark the World Mental Health Day today the 10th of October, prolonged lock downs, loss of jobs and businesses, and increasing deaths due to covid-19 pandemic has led a surge on mental health issues than ever experienced in history.

    Around 450 million people currently suffer from mental health conditions, placing such disorders among the leading causes of ill-health and disability worldwide.

    World Health Organization

    World Mental Health Day is a day for global mental health education, awareness and advocacy against social stigma.

    Creating awareness on this is very crucial according to a report released early this month by WHO.

    While treatment for mental health is available, nearly two-thirds of people with a known mental disorder never seek help from a health professional.

    Why? Because of Stigma, discrimination and neglect.

    Mental should be the first Priority

    World Health Organization (WHO) says this has prevented care and treatment from reaching people with mental disorders.

    My Story

    This leads me to the question I am going to ask you today from a personal level of a freelancer and Entrepreneur working from home. Are we able to manage our mental health before it becomes a crisis?

    Before the covid-19 pandemic hit the world, I was working from home for close to 8 months. I decided to close my company office so as to adopt a new business model of operating legitimately from home with my team working from wherever they are.

    At the early stages of this process, I struggled a lot because I worked alone from home. I was used to waking up every morning and going to an office within the Nairobi CBD.

    One of the biggest hurdles in my early days was the missing social life. I felt separated. My girlfriend left me because of my decision to work from home. Her breaking up with me made the situation even worse.

    I went through the solitude alone. Sometimes, I resorted to go out and drink in order forget about my troubles.

    While at it, I was always cautious not to abuse whatever I was drinking, else, it could have gotten me into more trouble than the one I was feeling I was in at the time.

    Glasses of Beer

    The process opened up my mind. I learnt how to drink responsibly. I learnt that Yoga and meditation has set of spiritual rules based on Hinduism, Buddhism and Jainism and you cannot combine it with Christianity.

    Therefore, you have to decide if you are a Christian or a Yogi under the above mentioned religions.

    Moreover, I learnt some important brain science. That mind is made up of the conscious mind and the subconscious mind.

    When you are able to control your subconscious mind, your future is lit.

    The subconscious mind is the ‘god‘ in you as quoted in biblical story of creation. Read Genesis chapter 1:26.

    You should culture of Drinking responsibly

    By the time Corona came, I was never lonely when I am alone. I had known myself better than never.

    While all this took place, I started becoming more conscious of my health. For example, if I get a stomachache, I could immediately do ‘contact tracing‘ like they do for Corona virus but now on the food I ate.
    Where did I buy them? Where did I eat last? What ingredient could have caused my problem?

    After repeatedly following this process of ‘tracing’ either what I ate last, and where I was last’ each time I got sick or felt stressed, my life changed.

    In this blog post, I will share the top five things that leads to poor mental and body health to anyone working from home. Mind and body is one. When you are sick physically, you mental health is affected as you are worried.

    Your Diet

    What do you eat? Where do you buy your food from? What you eat matters. For example, eating food with too much sugar can result in slowed cognitive function and deficits in memory and attention.
    If this pattern repeats over and over, your productivity is depleted and hence anxiety then depression.

    The same thing is with where you purchase your food.

    Some outlets are dirty and don’t observe recommended health standards.

    Depending on your body immunity, the effects of bacteria from the food may not emerge immediately, but it will eventually. Some bacteria may change your body hormones’ resulting in anxiety and depression.

    If not keen, by the time, you go out and seek for treatment, you will have suffered enough.

    Digital Well Being

    How well are you in control of your digital gadgets? The technology industry is becoming sophisticated day by day. Phones, computers, laptops, TV’s, Sound systems are being designed in a way that you become addicted to them.

    happy asian couple doing yoga in bed
    Photo by Miriam Alonso on Pexels.com

    The recent Netflix movie, Social Dilemma paints a picture on the motive that drives the designers of these digital gadgets and apps. They aim to fuel user addiction.

    While all these tech gadgets are made for the good of the users, it’s important to be in control of them. Know when to use what and for how long.

    If you are in most social media networks, use the free Digital Well Being app by google to see which app is addictive to you and set time usage on it. This way, when the time set elapses, the app is frozen and will activate the next day.

    As you progress, see a way to be in control of your gadgets without relying on the digital well being app.

    Exercise

    We love to talk about exercising but do we really exercise? It doesn’t matter where. It can be jogging outside, or doing aerobics indoors.

    It has been found that frequently exercising is good for your brain. It optimizes your blood circulation and cell degeneration on your brain.

    In an article published by www.dana.org, when you exercise, your body releases chemicals such as dopamine (pronounced doh-pa-meen) and endorphins (en-door-fins) in your brain that make you feel happy.

    Not only is your brain dumping out feel-good chemicals, but exercise also helps your brain get rid of chemicals that make you feel stressed and anxious.

    Friends and Family

    Many a times, when we are stressed and anxious, our friends and family never comes to mind as the source of our stress. This is because they are the ones that we first run to for help.

    But have you ever ‘traced’ back to who you were with before the stress hit you?

    If you are conscious each time you feel stressed and anxious; you will realize that the source of your problem maybe arising from a conversation or interactions you had with a friend or member of your family.

    Being able to look at it this way is the key to finding solutions on your mental health.

    Spiritual Well Being

    While not all of us belong to or believe in any religion; in one way or another they acknowledge the role religious and spiritual institutions play in the well being of its people.

    They are the masters of positive energy. They offer a shoulder to lean on.

    In fact, religious institutions are the most sort after for counselling and rehabilitation. This is owing to their compassionate nature.

    It’s therefore important to find a religion or a school of thought to belong to. There is much to gain through this than when you are alone.

    And that’s it from me.

    Do you have any other tips on mental health that you recommend to freelancers or anyone working from home? Please share in the comments below.

    Until next time , bye bye and take care.

    You can follow me on twitter @cheptiony