Many hours spent in a sitting position – at a desk, during mental work, negatively affects the well-being and mood of professionally active people. In the daily rush and excess of duties, it is easy to neglect proper habits. Stress does not help with concentration and focus, which can lead to a vicious circle and an increasingly worse well-being for some people.
Ensuring an adequate supply of vitamins and minerals helps to alleviate the effects of stress and high professional activity, which are burdensome especially for office workers, decision-makers or scientists who must constantly maintain good mental shape.
Characteristics of office and mental work
Office and mental work are associated with specific factors that can affect well-being and lower mood. These include:
- Work in a forced body position – a person naturally needs movement to function properly. The characteristics of the work that people most often do have changed significantly in recent decades, evolving from work in constant movement, consisting mainly of performing duties associated with physical effort – to work performed in a sitting position, which is not accompanied by additional movement activating many body structures.
- Working with a computer – is associated with making movements to a limited extent.
- Lack of contact with nature and sufficient daylight – this factor is particularly noticeable for employees in the autumn and winter period, when working in the office for an average of 8 hours a day does not allow for exposure to the sun, which sets very early in winter.
- Working in air-conditioned offices among many people – office work often involves staying in the so-called open space, i.e. a common space for many office workers who simultaneously work there mentally, answer phones or conduct meetings at desks in small groups. Working in an open space involves long-term stays in a room with dry, artificially filtered air. Being among many people, in noise, contributes to a deterioration of well-being and an increase in stress levels. Concentration in such conditions is particularly difficult.
- Stress, burden of duties – the modern labor market promotes flexibility and the ability to dynamically adapt to working conditions and perform new, sometimes unusual duties for a given job position. At first, working in such conditions is exciting and dynamic, but over time it can be difficult for the employee who is afraid that it will be difficult to meet the ever-increasing expectations and work environment.
All of these factors are normal and related to professional activity, but if they are particularly persistent or last for many months (and in extreme cases even many years), then they can lead to a decrease in commitment and effectiveness at work.
People who do their work with passion, out of love or who are seriously thinking about career development and climbing the next rungs of the professional or scientific ladder care about maintaining high effectiveness at work for as long as possible – if you are in this group, take a look at your daily habits and make changes. If you find that, for example, your supply of vitamins and minerals is too low, you sleep irregularly, and the only ways to increase effectiveness that you use are sweet snacks, coffee and energy drinks, take a look at your diet and daily habits. Maybe it’s time for a change?
Long-term stress and bad habits related to nutrition, exercise and rest have a negative impact on your well-being. Do you feel constantly tired and bored with your daily professional duties? Do you find it hard to get up for work in the morning, and in the afternoons you feel like the hours drag on endlessly, with the work still not finished and the deadline looming?
Take a look at your diet. Too low a supply of vitamins and minerals can be responsible for problems with concentration and low efficiency. In the daily rush and working under time pressure, it is difficult to take care of regular meals. If you do not eat every 3-4 hours, the level of “fuel” in your body drops – and you feel that you have no energy. If the situation lasts, it can lead to the formation of excess body weight.
Did you know that even obese people can show signs of malnutrition? By eating highly processed, low-quality food, you do not provide your body with valuable “fuel” for action – you only consume empty calories.
Lack of exercise is another cause of poor well-being and bad days at work. Studies conducted in the past have shown that regular physical activity reduces the risk of episodes of low mood and allows you to get through the autumn and winter period more easily, when insufficient daylight causes drowsiness, fatigue and lack of energy to act.
Don’t like exercise? That’s impossible! From the wide range of fitness clubs and places where you can do physical activity, you will definitely find something for yourself. Don’t be discouraged after the first unsuccessful attempts. Maybe running or aerobics are not for you, but maybe you will find yourself with Nordic walking or love dancing? All of these activities, especially when done in a group, with loved ones or friends, have a chance to have a positive impact on your well-being and effectiveness in everyday, professional activities.
When doing sports, remember to properly hydrate and replenish the minerals that you lose during intense physical effort along with sweat. If you are planning particularly intensive exercises or exercise in difficult weather conditions, e.g. outdoors in the sun and heat, take care of proper hydration.
Sometimes water alone is not enough – it is difficult to drink it often and in small sips during sports. Preparations containing additional minerals will hydrate the body in a more convenient way. You can choose a preparation from a convenient company – effervescent tablets, which are easy to throw into a sports bag.
Strengthen your mental resistance, overcome stress!
Prolonged, chronic stress is a factor that undoubtedly has a negative impact on well-being and even the functioning of individual organs and systems. Many scientific studies have proven the negative impact of chronic stress, e.g. on the functioning of the nervous system and the circulatory system.
Studies published in the journal “Przegląd Kardiologów”, in an issue published in 2001, proved that even short-term stress associated with everyday activities and duties, e.g. a visit to the dentist, causes changes in the human body and can negatively affect the physiology of the heart and the entire circulatory system.
Everyday problems and the stress associated with them are considered normal and most people who experience their unpleasant effects claim that they need to be accepted – after all, such stress is part of our everyday lives. This is not true, in every situation where you can effectively reduce the stress you feel, try to do so. Over time, the methods of reducing everyday stress will “become your blood” and you will use many of them effortlessly, intuitively.
How to fight stress? Effectively! The first step to change is to become aware of the problem that concerns you. Some people affected by chronic stress ignore the problem and their own poor well-being.
Yoga and meditation, like intensive physical exercise, allow you to control stress. For many people, this type of activity may be associated with discomfort related to the specific atmosphere during classes and the high focus of the leaders and participants on the spiritual sphere, which they do not want anyone to interfere with. A lighter form that will also allow you to deal with stress are breathing exercises. How to do them? Many forms of breathing exercises have been described in the literature.
To start with, before you find the best one for you, take care of the foundation, which is conscious breathing – all you need to do in a stressful moment is hold your breath for a dozen or so seconds, retaining the air in your lungs, and then slowly exhale through your nose. Repeating such conscious inhalations several times helps reduce stress in everyday situations – try this method while standing in line at a store, on the road, waiting in a traffic jam or during stressful situations at work, e.g. after a difficult conversation with co-workers.
How else can you strengthen your mental resilience? With diet! Regular meals are very important. Try not to extend the time between subsequent portions of food to more than 3-4 hours. Make sure that your diet is properly balanced and contains ingredients that help fight the feeling of tiredness and fatigue at work – where can you find them? In green vegetables, fruit and whole grains.
