Hybrid Workplace and Mental Health

Lockdown has made mental health issues the next epidemic. Humans are social animals. Restricting their mobility and interaction will make even the introverts to wish lockdown to end soon. With the other waves and variants of Covid expected to hit us, it is important to understand how lockdown affects our mental health.

Mental Health, an issue ignored by society or even overused at inappropriate places, has become a sensitive issue in every professional’s mind.

Coping with a sudden shift in the environment, socialization, lifestyle is difficult. Lack of personal interaction with peers will also lead to the false notion of loss of job security.

Below are some of the tips to work things out to get through this chaos in a serene manner.

Talk To Others

The first few days of the lockdown might seem fun. You are free to think and work at your leisure, there is nobody to monitor your activities, everything is fine and dandy as far as you are showing results. If you’re in a creative field, lockdown might prove to be a boon to perform better.

Isolation sets in after a few weeks. Many professionals who thrive on interaction get their productivity hit down due to isolation. Even the loneliest introvert of the office might not feel comfortable when he/she experiences isolation due to lockdown.

How do we manage this? As soon as you feel isolated/uncomfortable, talk to your friends, family, or colleagues about it. Try talking to them about anything and everything you usually talk to them.

Face-to-face interaction is unique and can never be replaced. But lockdown can’t stop you from interacting with others by digital means. It may seem frivolous at first. Soon, you will realize that by maintaining communication, your mental health remains unaffected by isolation.

Divert Your Thoughts

Let’s address why productivity decreases during the lockdown and why we feel miserable afterward.

During the lockdown, it is not uncommon to feel trapped at your home. But when you have time to think about it, then you get distracted. This leads to a lack of motivation, laziness, procrastination of important work at hand.

These thoughts keep recurring and you keep procrastinating, thereby, affecting your daily life. On one hand you feel lazy to do any task. On the other hand, you feel bad that you were lazy. Feeling lazy and miserable simultaneously will lead to a dent in your mental health.

Now, how to avoid it? Well, get distracted from those distractive thoughts.

Keep a to-do list and stick to it. Reward yourself when you accomplish your goals, no matter how small. In your spare time, don’t give yourself time to think about those negative thoughts. Rather, engage in activities such as reading, paining, writing or even gardening. Keeping yourself engaged will help you have the unwavering focus to perform all your tasks on time.

Hear Your Needs and Heal Them

A gym freak might have spent hours in a gym everyday before lockdown. A person traveling to work would have enjoyed his/her journey to the office. Some might prefer going for a walk with friends or family in the evening.

All these physical activities have been restricted due to lockdown. A simple walk in the evening might seem trivial but when a part of your daily routine which you enjoy is suddenly stopped, it affects your mental health in every way possible. It decreases your self-esteem and you slowly seep into depression. You may be confined by space, but are you confined by will? No!

At one point you might find yourself questioning your physical health, it may be due to lockdown but don’t let that affect your mental health.

Remember when you can work at home, you can workout at home.

• One of the best and oldest form of physical activity to provide physical and mental fitness is Yoga. Doing yoga requires less space and offers more benefits.
• Another powerful tool to heal your soul from the COVID-19 chaos is meditation. There are several techniques to meditate. Find the one that suits you best and start meditating.
• There are plentiful cardio and bodyweight exercises that can be done without any gym equipment, and help maintain your BMI(Body Mass Index) too.

Get Some Sunlight

Remember what you studied in your school? Sun is a great provider of vitamin D. Oh it provides Vitamin B also and much more. The biological clock of the human body is maintained with the help of the sun.

Often time, people who work night shifts complain about health problems or the famous phrase ‘night shift taking a toll on our bodies’. Technology might have given us light around the clock but it is not natural.

Not getting enough sunlight on our bodies create vitamin deficiencies, unprecedented eating patterns, and inconsistent sleep patterns.

Acquiring these physical ailments make you prone to acquire covid or even worse, affecting your mental health.

Get some time out in the sun once every day. Keep your house well ventilated and let the sunlight come inside your house. Looking at the sun in the early morning and letting the sunlight hit your body in the morning and evening will do wonders for your physical and mental health.

Plan Ahead

Work from home stress is real and you might not even notice it until it becomes too big to be unnoticed. One way to identify it is to self-introspect your productivity.

Ask yourself whether you are lagging behind in your tasks despite having enough time during the lockdown. If you were lagging behind, then work from home stress has induced subconscious procrastination.

Some professionals even work longer hours at home and procrastinate the other tasks such as daily chores, spending time with family, exercise, etc. Work burnout is also a by-product of work from home stress. Inability to plan and divide their work life from personal space is a common issue when your work from home.

There is only one solution to this problem and it is the best. Plan ahead of your schedule. Set time slots for each activity in your daily life and stick to it. It will help you keep yourself motivated in an instant and gives no room for mental health problems.

If you don’t stick to your planned schedule, the repercussions of it might be difficult to handle.

Sort Yourself

It is perfectly normal to feel like you’re mired in chaos right now. But even the greatest leaders of the world sail in the same boat. No one is a superhero.

Having an unfading hope that everything will turn out fine and adapting to changes in the scenarios will help you sort yourself.