Remote working, or working from home, has become increasingly popular for employees around the world. Many companies have begun to offer remote work for their employees to take advantage of. Remote work is very appealing, as it offers a flexible schedule and other positive things, such as little to no commute.
Unfortunately, working from home can sometimes negatively affect your daily routine. A lack of structure is incredibly common when working from home, especially when you’re first starting out. It can even end up disrupting your sleep, which can negatively affect your health.
Luckily, this impact on your sleep can be easily avoided. Below you can learn how to get the best sleep when working from home to improve your productivity and your health and well-being overall.
Keep Your Workspace and Sleep Space Separate
This should be fairly obvious, but if you’re new to working from home, it might not be. You want to keep your workspace and sleep space separate from each other. In fact, you should have a designated workspace in your home to be the most productive.
Ensure that your bedroom is relaxing and made for sleeping. You want comforting objects in there and a nice bed that you can get comfortable in, such as an adjustable bed from FlexiSpot.
Your workspace should be where all of your work-related items are set up. This way, you don’t feel like you’re combining work and rest by doing both things in the same place. Even if you can’t set up your workspace in a separate room, try to make a designated space for work that’s simply away from your bed.
Figure Out Your Ideal Sleep Schedule and Stick to It
Working from home changes the timing of your daily routine. Now that you aren’t commuting, you probably won’t need to wake up as early in the morning. This is great, especially because the REM sleep stage typically is concentrated at the end of your sleep period in the early morning hours.
Allowing yourself a little extra time to sleep will enable your body to fully take advantage of REM sleep and have you feeling more energized and productive throughout the day. While the flexibility of figuring out when you want to sleep and wake up is nice, you’ll want to find a schedule that works for you and then stick to it.
You don’t want to keep changing your routine, as it’s likely to throw off your day and lead to stress and frustration. You want to get out of bed around the same time each day, even if that means setting an alarm or laying in bed awake for a bit.
Avoid Screen Time at Bedtime
Devices are well-known to affect your sleep when used at night. Screens actually affect your sleep in two different ways.
One way is that the blue light emitted from the screens disrupts your circadian rhythm and also suppresses melatonin secretion, which greatly affects your quality of sleep. Also, social media and news sites can be almost addicting and will have you losing track of time and keep you wide awake.
It’s best to stop using computers, tablets, and even televisions a couple of hours before bed. Then, around an hour before bed, you should set your smartphone down for the night and leave it there until morning.
Get Moving Throughout Your Day
You may have a daily workout penciled into your everyday routine, but that doesn’t mean you’re getting quite as much movement in as you were when you were going into the office. Now that you’re working from home, you’ll want to ensure that you’re getting additional movement throughout your day.
One great way to do this is to invest in a height-adjustable or standing desk, which will help get your blood flowing and promote movement and stretching throughout your day. You’ll also want to make sure your daily breaks involve movement of some sort, whether that’s taking a short walk around your yard or just stretching in your kitchen.
Some of that movement should definitely take place outside, as you’ll want to make sure you’re getting enough vitamin D each day. Sunshine helps to keep your internal clock stable, which greatly benefits your sleep quality.
Conclusion
There are so many things you can add to your daily routine to ensure that you’re still getting the best sleep when working from home. Your daily routine will definitely change when you begin working remotely, but you just need to make sure that any changes are compensated for so that your sleep schedule won’t be affected.
Remember to keep eating healthy, stay hydrated, and get outside each day. You’ll also want to watch how much caffeine you’re ingesting because that can easily affect your sleep.
Once you’ve learned how to get the best sleep when working from home, you can adjust your daily and nightly routine as necessary to ensure that you’re getting the best sleep you possibly can each night. This way, you’ll feel better, more energized, and more productive each day.
