Overcome Office Syndrome

How do you overcome the physical and mental stress of working in an office?

Defeat Office Syndrome: don't let your desk job stop you from getting healthy

Always tired... low energy... achy shoulders, neck and back... low motivation... stuck in a rut...

Do any of these describe how you feel after a long day at work? Oftentimes, the stress of the modern office can cause real physical, mental, and emotional effects.

I'm an English teacher. I spend a great deal of my day sitting at my desk grading papers, creating lesson plans, and marking homework. While I would never describe my job as pysically demanding, I often suffer from very real physical pain as a resut of my job. It has, at times, gotten so bad that I've been to see several specailists to help me overcome severe neck and shoulder pain. I've even had to undergo an MRI due to terrible headaches brought on primarily from the bad posture I picked up from sitting for so long.

What is Office Syndrome?

Office Syndrome refers to any of the negative physical or mental effects of working in a modern office or at a desk job. Office Syndrome can include, but is not limited to, ailments like neck and back pain, headaches, dry eyes, weight gain, loss of energy, depression, anxiety, stress, and more.

Office Syndrome is caused by sitting at a desk for hours in a day underneath artificial lighting and working in a physically and emotionally draining (either boring or exhausting) environment. The human body just didn't evolve to live in that sort of environment. And yet, hundreds of millions of us spend our lives living this way.

We have to work. We obviously have to have our jobs, and sitting in an office in an unavoidable aspect of modern life. That doesn't mean that we can't take actions to offset some of the worse effects of Office Syndrome through the introduction of simple modern habits into our daily lives.

How to beat Office Syndrome

Here are some of the ways that I learned to overcome my own office syndrome, both the physical and mental effects.

Get up and move around - I really try to limit the ammount of time that I spend sitting at my desk in a day. This means that I get up to walk around at least once every hour. I'll go visit a colleague, volunteer to get supplies for the office from the storeroom, or even just get up to make a cup of tea. I've found that getting up more frequently has really helped to reduce my physical discomfort.

Make a cup of tea - Part of my health problems were caused by consuming too much caffeine from coffee. I've since switched to tea, which is much healthier and just a delicious. I drink tea all throughout the day. Although it does contain some caffeine, tea doesn't dehydrate you the way that coffee or soda does. It also gives me a slight energy boost throughout the day (I really try to stick to green tea as much as I can). Drinking tea throughout the day helps me to move around in two ways: I'm constantly getting up to refil my cup, which gives me a few minutes of waiting for water to boil and for the tea to steep in the breakrom. It also keeps me well hydrated, so I get up a few times through the day to use the toilet (too much information, perhaps, but important).

Stretch - You know those inflight stretching and exercise videos that you can watch on long overseas flights? If you aren't comfortable doing yoga or stretches in front of your colleagues, you can pull one of those seated stretching videos up on YouTube and practice subtly at your desk. Be sure to stretch out your neck, back, and shoulders as well, though.

Exercise after work - This is important! Even if you feel as if you have no energy after getting home, try to schedule times for exercise a few days per week. Not only will it help to improve your mood and reduce muscle pain and physical stiffness, exercise will actually go a long way towards increasing your physical energy. You will notice a big difference in your overall energy after just a few weeks of regular exercise.

Take a walk during your lunch break - I have about half an hour after I finish eating before I have to start getting ready for my next class. During this time, I've started going for a short, brisk walk after lunch, especially when the weather is nice. This helps me to wake up and feel more energetic after eating (whereas I often get sleepy in the afternoon at work), and the extra Vitamin D and sunlight really do help to improve my mood and keep my happy. It also helps me to work out some of the stiffness, and helps to prevent muscle pain that I get from sitting for hours.