Edition: May 21st, 2021
Curated by the Knowledge Team of ICS Career GPS
Excerpts from article by Kc Agu, published in entrepreneur.com
Students and working individuals are by necessity busy creatures. More often than not their packed days leave little time to focus on the self.
While success definitely follows hard work, its joys won’t last long if we ignore taking care of our health and wellness as we pursue our goals.
While the goal is to be successful in your studies / career, the primary one should be to stay healthy. The things we neglect accumulate and form unhealthy habits that could cause us harm.
Here are 5 health tips to help students and working individuals maintain the best daily practices during their busy schedules:
1. Drink more water
The benefits of water are immense and well known. For people who don’t know it yet, water helps in reducing weight gained from sitting down for long periods. It boosts your energy. It helps with stress-related headaches, sleeplessness and more. There are literally hundreds of reasons why water is good for your body’s proper functioning.
Health tips:
- Use water apps and set reminders to help you drink more water.
- Take a glass of water the last thing in the night and place another by your bed for first thing in the morning.
- If you tend to forget to drink water in the morning period, put a water bottle directly on top of your phone. No water, no phone!
- While working you can have a bottle of water beside your desk with a cup for easy access.
- If you are on the road, make sure you have a water bottle and paste a ‘Drink Water’ sticky note somewhere to help you remember.
2. Eat right
Many people are too busy to eat at all, let alone eat right! Grabbing a candy bar or a tray of junk food and washing it down with a can of diet soda may be quick and stave off hunger pangs, but in the long term, it will cause damage to your body and your mind. Here’s how to make sure you eat right despite your busy schedule.
Health tips:
- Schedule into your calendar a time where you can research quick, tasty and healthy options. Know what you should eat.
- On the weekend, try to create time when you can prepare your meals in advance for the coming week. This is where the refrigerator becomes every busy person’s best friend.
- If you can afford it, employ the services of healthy food providers to deliver to your home or office.
- If you have to eat out, pick a healthier alternative to your usual spots. If you cannot make that choice, stick with healthy options on the menu.
3. Exercise daily
Of course, we cannot talk about health without including exercise. Exercise has been proven to boost critical reasoning, confidence, retentive memory and enhanced general well-being. The benefits of exercise are well known by everyone, including workaholics. However, creating time for exercise and actually doing it is a totally different ball game.
Health tips:
- Set time aside and just walk around in the morning and evening. Walk if you are on your lunch break.
- Ditch the elevator and take the stairs.
- Plan walking meetings with your staff instead of sitting around a conference table.
- Take advantage of fitness apps.
4. Leverage different working positions
Sitting for long hours has been linked to numerous health challenges. Apart from the usual weight gain or obesity, it causes back pain and other serious health related issues.
Health tips:
- If you have to sit to work, do it properly – upright, back straight, feet flat on the ground. Adjust your chair to properly align with your desk, or vice versa.
- Work your core muscles by using an exercise ball or stool.
- Get up and walk every hour of full scale work.
- Switch between sitting and standing positions regularly to avoid tendon stiffness.
- For those who sit all day, you can hack it by assigning different work postures for different types of work.
5. Disconnect from study / work
It is so easy to get engrossed in your studies or work. You can, unconsciously, get mentally tense and lose overall focus. Too much mental tension is counterproductive.
Health tips:
- Refresh and refocus your mental and intellectual concentration by totally disconnecting from study / work for 15 minutes every 3 hours.
- Work in blocks. Set out a particular time to shut off the system and take a walk.
- These short breaks will clear your mind and sharpen your focus when you return to what you were doing.
(Disclaimer: The opinions expressed in the article mentioned above are those of the author(s). They do not purport to reflect the opinions or views of ICS Career GPS or its staff.)
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