Your health, productivity, and wealth are very much interrelated. Hence, what affects one invariably affects the other, one way or another. It is for this reason that it is pertinent to maintain optimal health and productivity at all times, or at least the majority of times.
A report by Monash University Prof. Alex Collie for Collaborative Partnership examined the cost of sick days in Australia. It was found that 786,000 workers accessed income support from a private or government source in the 2015/16 financial year, in addition to at least 6.5 million workers who used sick leave which came to a direct cost of $37.2 billion for the year.
According to QualiTime: “One of the obvious direct costs is the need to pay remuneration for an employee who does not work. During the first 33 days of sick leave, the employer is obliged to pay remuneration for the period of inability to work. Following this period, the obligation to pay the sickness benefit rests with the Social Insurance Institution. Since there are 251 working days in 2018, 33 days of absence due to sick leave amount to 13.15% of the total annual working time.”
For extended sick leave, employers may need to hire and pay extra hands, which adds to the indirect cost of sick leaves.
For employees in countries or regions with poor social infrastructure or health insurance, the total cost for sick leave is borne by the sick and can be astronomical. In some cases, it can even lead to the loss of jobs without any benefits.
For freelancers and solopreneurs, being sick and unhealthy can affect their work, productivity, and of course income, because client work may be time-bound and cannot wait for them to recover fully. For this reason, I’ll be highlighting tips to help you maintain your health, productivity at work, and wealth or income as a result.
Tips to Improve your Health and Productivity
1. Create a Morning Routine
A morning routine is a set of activities or things done or to be done every morning. It can be thought of as a morning ritual or habit. A great morning routine can set the tone for the rest of the day helping to keep you healthy, fit, and motivated throughout the day.
Some morning routine ideas include:
- Waking early (which implies sleeping early)
- Meditating, praying
- Working out
- Morning bath (something many works from home entrepreneurs ignore)
- Breakfast
- Writing a to-do list
- Saying hi and bye to family and loved ones
- Listening to uplifting music or audiobooks while driving through traffic
- Clearing your office desk
- Checking emails, etc.
Doing these every morning can help you clear your head and declutter, exercise your mind and muscles, create a sense of achievement and supply all the fuel you’ll need for the day. Missing an item like breakfast can cause hunger and lack of concentration. It can also worsen a stomach ulcer.
2. Know and Abide By Occupational Safety Regulations
Most jobs carry more risks than others. Ignoring or flouting safety requirements and regulations while on such risky jobs may result in damage to health, injury, or even death in extreme cases. Whether you’re an employer or employee it is important to always stay and play safely in such environments.
People who work with radiation, for instance, face a high risk of exposure to harmful radiation. In regions with poor supervision and enforcement, workers may unwittingly expose themselves to extremely high levels of radiation. If these workers know relevant ALARA (as low as reasonably achievable) regulations they can better hold their employers accountable plus take steps for their personal safety.
Below is a table showing some dangerous jobs and their fatality rates.
These rates may seem small until you ask or encounter one of the casualties. So do everything to stay safe while at work.
3. Take Breaks
Some of us are workaholics and just can’t stop working. But for the sake of your health just stop already. Okay, not stop, but you get the point. You need to take a break before you reach your breaking point and break down. It is unwise to ruin your health because of work or money then spend all that money trying to recover your health.
Are you working too much, too hard, and too long? You need to watch it. Overwork is real and can kill, so is stress. People who work around the clock stand a higher risk of experiencing burnout which is bad for productivity and for your health, especially considering that productivity goes beyond producing more to include producing better.
For instance, some freelance writers churn out several 1,000-word articles a day but they’re poor quality (law of diminishing returns) which may not be able to compete with a single well-researched 500-word article that may have taken more time to create or produce. So, for the sake of your health and productivity, take frequent breaks from work. Also, learn to use your time more efficiently.
4. Eat Right
Sometimes we can be in the thick of busy and resort to fast or junk food. This is okay as long as it is not a daily habit. At some other times, we wake up late, skip our morning routine plus breakfast and hurry off to work. This can have a negative effect on your productivity at work if you work an intensive job.
Constantly eating junk food is bad for the health and can lead to bloating and puffiness, extra calories, blood sugar spike, insulin resistance, high blood pressure, heart disease or stroke, headache, dental distress, depression, weight gain, high cholesterol, acne, among others.
It is, therefore, necessary and advisable to eat right while at work. To facilitate this you can strive to prepare your breakfast the night before to avoid the morning rush. Otherwise, you can order more healthy food instead of junk food all the time. Good food and a lot of water will help your health and productivity at work.
5. Exercise
If you spend a lot of time working at a desk or PC you could be compromising your health by working long hours non stop. Your eyes could strain, your back could hurt from the poor sitting posture, blood circulation may be hampered, etc.
Taking intermittent breaks and engaging in little exercises will benefit your overall health and productivity. Stand, take a walk, stretch, squat; do something other than just sit down all day behind a desk.
If you live close to your office you could also decide to walk home some days. Walking to and fro will keep you active as you go and productive when you arrive or leave the office. On tired days you can always roll on tires and drive home.
Conclusion
Doing these will help you maintain optimal health and productivity at work. What other ways do you maintain your health and productivity at work?
Author Bio:
Amos Onwukwe is an AWAI trained Business and Ecommerce Copywriter who has been featured in scores of blogs including Huffington Post, Dumb Little Man, Ecommerce Nation, eCommerce Insights, Understanding Ecommerce, Result First, Floship, Successful Startup 101, Small Biz Club, Small Business Bonfire, among others. Twitter: @amos_onwukwe
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