Working remotely online, avoiding body aches, muscle and joint pain side effects during the pandemic.
Cramps, kinks, knots. Body health issues thanks to the coronavirus adjustment stress to living and working closer to home. More folks than ever are sticking close to home.
Flocking homeward to telecommute to their online remote jobs from Maine.
But that “bring it on home” shift for safety sake can come at a high price to the body, spirit, work production.
This blog post provides tips for avoiding body aches, muscle and joint pain caused from the strain of working from home remotely online in Maine.
Tips and tricks to make a home office run smooth and efficient. There are three parts to the approach on how to work smarter not harder telecommuting to work from your Maine home.
1) Where to do your job from home
2) The actual set up to work remotely
3) Further steps to take to limit the impact to your body when you job is now done at home
First, understand the getting ready to go to work and leaving your home to mentally shift gears to be at the office daily routine is gone. Poof. Taking care of business and slaying office dragons for a highly productive day at work takes discipline from the remote online home location.
The distinction of home for pleasure, office for work is blurred. No longer black and white easy that you are here or there.
Home distractions working online remotely from where you live are bigger for those with lots of family members. When sharing too small a living space. And everyone is under foot and in each other’s way.
Discipline to report to work online remotely. When it is now from a region of your own home repurposed and dedicated to your office job. Not everyone makes the transition as easily as others from office to home office.
But it helps when you bite the bullet and retool an area of your Maine home to be for just work.
And once set up it stays that way. No shared use and tearing down or putting back up waste of time happening.
Wherever you connect and go online better have speed of thought Internet connectivity too.
Because time is money whether you are working from your Maine home or a traditional office setting. Plan your work and work your plan. You gotta have a system in the measure twice, cut once most efficient use of your time.
Older housing stock in Maine built when families were larger are ideal for work from home office spaces.
Lots of rooms for many place settings around the big kitchens with pantries and extra stairways.
Those dens, parlors, nurseries, etc that become the home office location easily.
Or the extra bedrooms can be reworked into the perfect home office area. Where you can go and shut the door. Get undivided focus that lasts for the many tasks at hand.
All those items on your work from home list of what’s on tap today or left over from yesterday to accomplish.
Many Maine homes need more than one work from home location station carved out and trotted to for the weekly paycheck or school diploma.
The wife, husband, all the kids need their corner of the house to work online remotely from the Maine home.
Internet broadband connections are especially strong in my area of Northern Maine which is one huge blessing that allows the work from home option for all in the household. Many second vacation homes on lakes and ponds are being reworked into double duty. To suddenly become the primary home up in Maine. It is a big bonus when the Internet options at the vacation property in Maine are long, strong and wall to wall. How is your working from home remotely transition going? Tell me about your back, shoulders, lower thighs or wrist handling the pain and strain of working online from home?
New Maine homes with concrete tall wall dry cellars and not low damp and dank rock and mortar foundations.
Those work well to carve out the remote home office setting work stations. Natural daylight is key too. To help round out the lighting for those zoom meetings. Shake off that feeling that you are in a submarine. For cranking out or sliding up a window. For some much needed fresh air to enter the work from home space that can quickly get stale, stuffy, stagnant.
No windows, jammed in a closet size cubicle tight spaces do not cut it for the work from home exercise for the days, months, years ahead.
Hidden from awareness of what’s going on weather wise or no clues to estimate the time of day without glancing at the clock.
That what they do to torture someone to talk for long periods just before water boarding right? Make you disoriented and out of your normal comfort zone routine, no?
Bright, light, spacious works best in your remote online work from the Maine home office location.
Jammed and cramped does not help telecommuting from the Maine home. The awareness time is ticking by helps put you in a productive office mode instead of the let’s veg out relaxing at home down shifting to a way way lower speed gear.
Shave, fix your hair, do the make up to get to work as if you had to eat up time to drive there.
Don’t lallygag and stay in your PJ’s for the day if you want to transition into work from home mode. Telecommuting remotely online is here to stay for many in Maine. The faster you adapt, the better all the way around the results will be. Bring your job with you to Maine has helped rural areas stem the loss of population too.
So number one, feather your nest to create the space to work remotely from Maine home.
Don’t plop on the living room couch and open up a lap top balanced on one knee to begin serious work. The dog, the kids, the traffic through the living room makes it all wrong for a work station.
The kitchen table is not much better for working remotely online from home.
Too easy to get up for the fourth and fifth time to open the refrigerator and eat more snacks. Micro breaks to move around are key but roaming your home is like wandering the halls at school or work. You forget the job at hand with too many interruption starts and stops.
The best home offices have the ergonomic furniture dialed in for the custom fit for your body. Posture settings for your size and shape just like in a professional work setting.
Many rework the porch areas adding insulation, heat, beefing up power outlets. Maybe an attic is where you should head to hunker down to work from home.
Could your Maine house be modified for a long time work from home remote option in the attic or the space up over the garage?
Or do you frame in and finish off one bay of your garage to gain the separation you need for working from home that the pandemic has caused?
Kids for remote distance online learning have the same needs. If a desk in their bedrooms does not provide enough space and comfort for their education, kids do get left behind.
Which leads up to the number two section consideration for working remotely online from home in this Maine blog post.
Number two. The actual work area set up you report to like clockwork in your Maine home.
Is it missing office furniture and pretty Mickey Mouse? Make the investment into the work table that lifts so you can stand or lean on a stool and not just be folded up in sitting mode all day long.
Get the headset for your phone calls so no more trying to type and cradling a cell phone awkwardly between your sharply turned head and shoulder.
The height of your chair, it’s adjustable arms in your work space. The placement of your monitor(s) all adds into the right or poor alignment for your body.
If you have pain in the back of your thighs or lower back, if your shoulders and neck ache and reaching for two more pain killers is happening.
It’s not old age or just chalk it up to home work around stressors.
The being chained to your desk in a prison like setting is going to causes lots of aches and pains. Ones you never had before the memo to start working from home remotely.
Watch this video on proper tools setting up your desk to aid work posture to prevent muscle cramps and stress knots.
So takes breaks, exercise and have a min work out routine to keep everything loose as a goose and not wound up tighter than a drum.
Setting up your desk for working from home to prevent daily pain or bigger issue later in life. It’s pretty important! It’s your body. Invest in the ergonomic keyboard for a few extra bucks. The wireless mouse that you are not struggling with in the long, wrong reach or the tug of war of its tether. Wrist support is key. Headsets for phone calls, natural and added light and a window that opens for fresh air.
The work station adjusted to your height and arm and leg length.
Reaching, crouching, sitting eight hours or more a day is going to lead to pain and stiffness or worse. All chairs and desks are not a perfect fit for everyone. No adjustment means you are stuck with “wearing” the wrong set up for you struggle working online from your Maine home.
Changing it up to make it not the same repeat damaging approach to your work from home routine.
Stuck in one frozen position for hours on end is a recipe for aches and pains unhealthy. Will get you up and away from the computer screen. To send you looking for the child proof cap pill container (again). Tackle the root cause of the symptom ailment.
Those raise the work surface desk to where you could be standing and not sitting all folded up into yourself are awesome. Shaking off the cobwebs properly designed adjustable office furniture devices are wonderful ways to take care and protect yourself working from home.
I am pretty lucky because my job as a Maine real estate broker is not a stuck behind the desk one.
But now more cyber real estate video showings happening to replace and free up the physical one by one actual ones. Less miles being put on the Jeep.
Listings being done without sellers present that are out of state and not allowed to travel into Maine.
Or local real estate property owners just limiting coronavirus exposure with me, myself and I only myself at the property. Carefully measuring and collecting photo imagery, video loops. Doing follow up face time or what’s app personal video walk throughs where again, just me at the what’s for sale today on the current Maine real estate market. Going online you can see more and rewind to re-tour to squeeze even more out of the Maine real estate video experience.
Our office is really an online Maine real estate full service store now open round the clock serving up a buffet of hot and ready information.
But areas for the permanent lighting, fixed tripod video camera, sound board and background green screen. Like a broadcast facility, we are ready to go live in three, two, one, slow fade up of real estate camera one. Lights, camera, action, quiet on the set. Zoom meetings for continuing real estate education credits or REALTOR association and rotary service club meetings happening round
the clock. My home office is unique because it involves a 32′ long walk from in town home to commercial office that are side by side.
The problem with home offices many say is you work too much.
It’s too easy to hear the work calling your name to come back to the office to do one or two more tasks. And the next thing you know, where did that two hours go?
There is always work to do but shutting it off and going to get exercise, to socialize and do the running around aspects of the day to day.
Moderation is the key to a healthy happy life if you want to achieve more than work, work, work, die while here on Earth up in Maine.
Number three things to do to reduce stress on your body working from home in Maine.
To avoid heart attacks, cancer, lost of movement and added pain or suffering from just sitting for eight hours or more a day.
Take a break and use your body new ways to keep it from rusting up like the Tin Man.
Here is a video on stretching exercises to do at and away from the computer regardless if at home or the office desk setting.
Walking more in a small crime free Maine town is easier because everything is closer for what you need.
I grew up in the country on a Maine farm and was used to grocery shopping to last a week or longer. Much of what we consumed was raised on the farm to table approach to simple living. Getting lots of fresh air, community small town scenery and greenery. It’s easy when you are lucky like me to live full time in four season Vacationland.
Curbside take out for pre-ordered grocery items is offered around Maine. To limit the trips and keep you belted in with the car heater and radio going. While being re-fueled and re-stocked in the storage area of the lifted hatch back tailgate.
But living in Maine full time, I can cross country ski, hike and bike and kayak or ice skate at the lake depending on the season.
Walking to the post office, to pay local bills. To admire the Christmas colored lights is easy because my small Maine town has an off the chart walking index. The adjustment and work around procedures to play it safe and keep your distance. With well washed hands spic and span careful where they’ve been and what they touch. It is a lot easier to be socially spaced when the local population is already well spaced
and sparse.
Welcome to Maine!
No crime, lots of space and a maintained network of walking paths and sidewalks is conducive to hoofing. Leaving the vehicles with the keys in them parked in the door yard turned off and conserving gas.
Everything lower cost so pressure to make a fortune to keep the wolf from your door and food on the table. People are friendly and pitch in to help. They worry about each other and reach out to lend a hand. That’s Maine.
Merry Christmas and Happy New Year from Maine.
Thank you for following our Me In Maine Blog posts this year. Have some big plans and really looking forward to a bright new chapter of posts to create in 2021. Hope you enjoyed this blog post on how to stay fit, avoid body aches and pains working remotely online at your home in Maine.
I’m Maine REALTOR Andrew Mooers, ME Broker
207.532.6573 | info@mooersrealty.com | MOOERS REALTY 69 North ST Houlton ME 04730 USA