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With a sore neck and pans in the eyes, unable to concentrate (who could, with the children watching TV at full volume?), You feel reviled every time they take you off the dining room table, even if it's lunchtime , and you know of no better rest than putting a washing machine. Welcome to the age of telework , you already own your time and organize your happy day. Or not ... The house is not an office and taking advantage of time is not easy, here are some solutions to the most odious problems of this way of giving the callus.
Work in the kitchen? It's ok if you're a cook
If you have to work at the kitchen table, try to find a better place for yourself. In addition to being uncomfortable, it is a place with sudden changes in temperature: from the heat when the stove is full blast to the direct cold when you open the window to ventilate. The National Institute for Safety and Health at Work establishes that the ideal temperature should be between 20ºC and 24ºC in winter, and between 24ºC and 26ºC in summer, which is known as a thermal environment. Those margins can be hard to come by in a changing environment like a kitchen. If you have no choice but to spend the day in one, dress according to the temperature of your new office: cool clothes if it is very hot, warm if there is no heating in the kitchen. And although it may seem like a waste of time, ventilate well after cooking. Then shut down and allow some time for the temperature to return to being the closest thing to a workplace, even if it's not the best.
Covering up the noise with music: when is this strategy worth it?
Concentrating is difficult with the Cantagaroes in the background or the neighbor exercising on the other side of the partition. Wearing headphones with music helps to disconnect and focus, but not everything goes. If the activity requires concentration, look for rhythms that do not exceed 60-80 bpm. If they are faster they generate an inadvisable stress if what you want is to concentrate. "Volume also counts: above 85 decibels it can compromise the health of your ears, " say the hearing technicians at the Oi2 Centers. That you can't stand the external noise because of those? While confinement is mandatory, there is no other option but to change your schedules to quieter bands, look for earplugs or headphones that inhibit outside noise (such as those used by sound technicians at concerts) or bet on white noise (that of television). poorly tuned). Studies have shown that this type of constant sound masks others and improves concentration at times of high dispersion. Now do you miss even the heaviest companions?
Not all tables are worth a desk
The table and chairs in the dining room were designed to eat quietly for a couple of hours, unless you like the tables that extend until the snack. Even in those cases, digestives usually help make the experience more comfortable than it really is. This furniture is not intended to spend 8 hours a working day, the same as happens with kitchen furniture. But when there are several of you at home - your partner also telework and the children have to do their homework - and there is only one table, the imagination, as CNN showed a few days ago, one turns tables into the ironing board, the bar cabinet and even dirty clothes basket.
It is an example of how the coronavirus has turned upside down the slogans of the occupational risk prevention guidelines, which estimate that the screen should be placed at a distance of between 45 and 50 centimeters, slightly below the eyes, and that the wrists they should lean on the table with their elbows at an angle of 90º (and, nevertheless, it is good to do exercises to counteract the effect of spending the day sitting). Bad postures can end up making telework a painful penance, but if you have no other choice but to manage in the most improvised way, the slogan of the Doctor Rozalén Physiotherapy Clinic is to always try to rest your feet on the ground, with your knees slightly below the hips so as not to accumulate tension in the iliac psoas. If they don't work for you, grab a footrest or improvise one with boxes or old books.
Neither facing the window nor curled up next to the gooseneck
When they tell you that you have to work from home, it is easy to imagine yourself in front of the window with your gaze lost in the landscape, something that does not usually happen afterwards: the normal thing is to end up having the most bland views. But it is advisable to do everything possible to take advantage of natural light, and even when you have no other option than that of a patio, the window is a basic cardinal point: the Community of Madrid Telework Guide recognizes that it is always better natural lighting than artificial lighting. But nothing of "placing the screen neither in front nor with its back to the windows. Place it perpendicular to them to avoid glare and reflections". If you can, orient the table so that your dominant hand is farther from the window. In other words, if you are right-handed, try to leave the window to your left, so you can avoid making it shadow on the paper when you are writing with it.
If you need artificial light, it is best to leave out the side lamps and sad lamps in a dim room, as the contrast between light and shadow creates eye strain. The ideal is lighting from the ceiling and centered on the work plane (that is, it falls on the keyboard). The lighting company Faro Barcelona estimates that the lamp should be around 4,000ºK (degrees Kelvin), a measure that indicates that the color of the light is neutral white. "That color temperature allows for optimal color rendering, that is, the most true to color for the human eye." Avoid as much as possible the warm illuminations of life-long light bulbs.
The importance of looking up from the screen
You have the kids around you, waiting to see if you take a break. You choose not to leave the screen, because this way, in addition, you will finish earlier. But the truth is that spending several hours glued to a monitor generates eyestrain, every time you give up less and so it is normal to start feeling some discomfort. The symptoms are tearing, blurred vision, dry eyes, headache ... To avoid this, blink at least 7 times per minute and follow the 20/20/20 rule: every 20 minutes take 20 seconds to look into the distance (about 20 meters away to change the focus point), as recommended by the Official College of Opticians and Optometrists of the Region of Murcia. Do you have children around? They may be distracting you from the monitor themselves. These are interruptions that Thor himself does not escape: a few days ago, one of Chris Hemsworth's sons broke in the middle of an interview while the actor promoted his new film since his confinement at home.
Pauses that get too long
The law is clear regarding breaks: every worker has the right to a five-minute break per hour worked. The health authorities are less precise, and they limit themselves to recommending stopping for 5 to 10 minutes, and taking advantage to give the body some movement. Teleworkers are even less concise: when you do not notice the boss's gaze in the back of the neck, that necessary pause may lengthen. To take one example, the Airtasker company found that while the average length of work breaks among office employees was 18 minutes, home breaks were 22 minutes.
Suddenly, activities like turning on the washing machine and hanging laundry become great attractions when, in fact, they are staunch enemies of concentration. Seeing that confinement can lengthen, and that delays end up piling up, a good teleworker will find a way to time breaks without needing to have the boss's breath on the back of his neck. For this, there are solutions such as the Pomodoro technique, a method of organizing work in which one sets out a task, sets a 25-minute countdown and completely turns to work , without allowing a single distraction. After those 25 minutes, you have permission for a short break. Make it short, if not procrastinate. After 4 pomodoros, you have earned a break of 20 to 30 minutes (depending on the time of each one can be excessive). And there you can hang clothes ... or rest like in any other job. It is not worth the risk to end up hating until the breaks.
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