Stress is an ever-present influence in our daily lives. There’s meetings, projects, and clients to keep up with at work, family members to care for and a household to manage. Everything can pile up all at once and when that happens, stress takes over. Higher levels of stress can cause a decrease in health, happiness, and overall quality of life – which ultimately impacts your work productivity.
We all require and deserve a good quality of life and access to the tools to manage stress appropriately. When it comes to the workplace, one tool that has become more widely embraced is a telecommuting work arrangement. Working from home is now commonplace, with flexible schedules replacing the traditional 9-to-5 burn. Video conferencing plays a role in this, too, allowing for remote meetings that participants can attend from any location – their home office, a coffee shop, or even while traveling.
Telecommuting reduces stress by making it easier to attend to the other areas of our lives that deserve their due. By working remotely, there’s more time for our personal lives and needs – you even call it a means of self-care. Here are five ways that telecommuting is making life less stressful all while maintaining productivity at work.
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Say goodbye to agonizing commutes
One of the most stressful aspects of work can be simply getting there. Long commutes, whether you brave street traffic or take the metro, take time from your day and can end up leaving you feeling stressed before your workday even begins. Telecommuting lets you come to work fresh and makes your mornings easier to bear.
Cultivate a more balanced home life
When you’re driving back and forth from an office on a strict schedule, employees have to work around their employer’s time. Telecommuting gives employees more leeway with their work hours, allowing them to better accommodate the needs of their family and tend to home matters. If there’s a meeting in the middle of the day, you just need to connect to your videoconferencing software to attend – nothing is sacrificed, and you experience all the benefits.
Find time for healthy eating
Rushing around in the morning and then in the evening to get to and from work leaves little time for preparing healthy meals. When telecommuting, you can start the morning with a balanced breakfast without having to scarf it down before hitting the road. Healthy lunches also become more of a possibility – when you’re at home, you can have all the ingredients for making something delicious and nutritious available to you. Eating a good diet and not rushing through your meals can help keep stress levels down.
Stay fit by fitting exercise into your day
Getting to the gym can be a challenge when you’re in the office all day. The time before and after work is for commuting and adjusting to and from work; leaving in the middle of the day from the office to work out isn’t always practical. Those who work from home have the advantage of fitting in a workout in the morning or at the end of the day, as a commute doesn’t factor into the equation. A mid-day jog, bike ride, or quick trip to the gym is also possible during break times. Regular exercise contributes to lower stress levels and higher life satisfaction.
Flexible schedules mean time to breathe
Being committed to a 9-to-5 work schedule in an office building is binding. Those set hours (or more, depending on your company’s needs), plus the commute to get there, is a lot of time spent away from home and other responsibilities. Working away from home can leave us feeling frazzled with too much to do and not enough time to do it. While it’s important to fulfill your responsibilities for work, if you do it at home or remotely, you ultimately have more time to yourself so you don’t feel as crunched. A little flexibility goes a long way, and that’s just what telecommuting provides.
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