Saving the Bloggers Health

The New York Times had a story yesterday talking about how unhealthy bloggers lifestyles are. There is no more unhealthy lifestyle than working on a computer all day and for many bloggers this seems to be exaggerated by the crazy hours that people will put in.

I have written before about how Geeks can improve their health from their desk. Here is another contribution for those poor overworked bloggers.

Keep your body healthy so that you mind can work – You need to get some exercise. The 30 to 60 minutes that you spend a day trying to keep yourself in shape with cardio and weights will give you a lot more energy then the time you lost doing it.

Eat Regularly- Eat meals, not fast food throughout the day. Just because you are sitting at a desk and working throughout the day does not mean that you need to get unhealthy by eating nothing but junk food. Sitting at a desk will give you the opportunity to eat small meals more often then those that work on construction sites or other away from the desk type jobs.

Cut out the junk food – There are plenty of opportunities to eat chocolate bars and snack foods but if you are mostly sedentary you need to stifle those urges and eat healthy fruits orvegetables as often as possible.

Get up from your desk at least once every couple of hours – This is not rocket science but the fact is that if you are arching your back or staying mostly motionless for hours on end then your body will fight you and you will be left with lower and upper back problems and all sorts of pain that takes a lot of work to get rid of. Another advantage to moving around is that it goves your mind a chance to wander and take you away from your work. Whne I was get up every couple of hours I don’t mean go to the bathroom, I mean go for a walk around for 10 minutes or so.

Sleep, or at least nap a lot – Sleep and rest are important to stop burnout from coming and the best way that most people use is to get eight hours of uninterupted sleep every night. If this is not happening for you then make sure that you nap for 30-60 minutes once or twice a day. Find a dark quiet room and set an alarm to get the nap in and this way you do not have to think about when you are going to wake up, the alarm will do it for you. No you probably do not need to by an alarm clock for this, your Blackberry or cell phone probably has an alarm feature built into it.

Have “no work” times – Setup your daily schedule os that in a 16 hour day you have 2 hour blocks at least a couple of times a day that do not involve work at all. The only way to do this by convincing yourself that if you do stay away from work for two hours you can catch up in 5-10 minutes and be much more refreshed and productive.

So these are my ideas, next I would like to look at how a blogger or anyone that is tethered to a computer can stay sane with good productivity practices but that is a conversation for another day.

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