3 Tips for Creating a Healthy 9-5 Work Lifestyle in Tech

Let’s be real: In the tech world, we spend a lot of time sitting at our desks. Oftentimes this equates to long hours staring at a screen and ends up not being the most comfortable experience. However, there are some ways to help combat this and create a healthy 9-5 work lifestyle. Here are three tips that have helped me feel more energetic and motivated and less sore throughout the workday.

1. Focus on your posture.

Having good posture is so important. I always thought it would be something that I wouldn’t struggle with since I’m still young, but a year into working, I started getting bad neck tightness/pain. This really made me more cognizant of my posture.

After further examination, I realized that I was often working slouched over my desk, staring way too close at the monitor screen. This made me more aware, and I started researching the proper workplace ergonomics for posture. Here are a couple of easy tips you can implement right now.

Adjust the height of the chair.

One of the easiest ways to improve posture and limit lower body pain is to make sure your chair is at a height where your legs are at a 90-degree angle. This evenly distributes your weight across the chair limiter and can help with soreness.

Adjust the height of your desk.

Having the right desk height can greatly improve your posture by allowing you to comfortably rest your arms without needing to lean or put extra pressure on other parts of your body.

The perfect height for your desk is where your arms can rest on the desk and your elbows create a 90-degree angle.

Adjust the height of your monitors.

The height of your monitors is a significant factor that can contribute to neck pain. If your monitor is too high or too low it may cause you to have to change the position of your neck to see the screen.

The ideal posture is to be able to see the entirety of your screen with your neck perfectly straight and at a 90-degree angle. (90-degree angles are everything!).

This ends up being the point where the top of your monitor is at your eye level where you should be able to see your entire monitor by only moving your eyes.

Sit up straight and back in your chair.

With all of the previous adjustments, the last step is to sit straight and back in your chair. This allows you to keep those perfect 90-degree angles that we talked about before while keeping your back and neck straight.

This creates the best posture, minimizing body pain for those long work sessions and maximizing your long-term health.

Implementing these changes may seem small but over the long run, they can greatly help with improving your posture and helping make it easy to maintain your posture. Better posture can help reduce long-term body pain and create a more comfortable working experience.

2. Drink lots of water.

Well duh… right? Everyone knows that you need to drink water. But in reality, do we actually do it, though?

We’ve all been there. It’s halfway through the work day, and you realize that you’ve only been drinking coffee the entire day. You wonder why you’re feeling tired and miserable, and this is most likely due to dehydration. It’s okay to drink coffee but it’s also important to drink water alongside coffee. The next time you’re in the middle of a workday, try to count the number of cups of water you drink and you might just be surprised.

Health experts recommend drinking eight 8-ounce glasses of water per day. Where do you stand?

As an added bonus a great way to think about drinking water is that it gives you more opportunities to take breaks. This is what I mean.

The more water you drink, the more you have to use the bathroom, and the more breaks you are forced to take from work. This forces you to get up from your desk and walk over to the bathroom. This is, oftentimes, exactly the break you need and helps you stay active.

3. Hold off on the coffee until an hour later.

Most people don’t know this, but the best time to drink coffee isn’t right when you wake up. Before you reach for your cup of coffee, consider this!

Scientists say that the best time to drink coffee is an hour after you wake up. This is due to a natural chemical that your body releases called cortisol. Cortisol is the same chemical that is released when you feel stressed and is often called the “alertness hormone”.

Cortisol naturally puts our body in a more alert state. When you wake up in the morning, your body naturally releases cortisol in an effort to wake you up.

When you drink coffee when your cortisol levels are at their peak, the caffeine can clash with the cortisol and cause you to feel jittery. This effect can lead to higher levels of anxiety and can lead to you crashing earlier.

Thus the best time to drink coffee is when your cortisol levels are at a lower level, often an hour after waking up. This allows the caffeine to have its full effect and gives you the boost of alertness you need to get through the day.

Creating a Healthy 9-5 Work Lifestyle in Tech

I hope these tips will help you get started creating a healthy 9-5 work lifestyle. Watching your posture and your liquid intake are easy tips to implement to keep you feeling better throughout the workday.