There's no doubt that the remote work lifestyle has a heavy impact on our mode of work. And as people struggle to readjust to this sudden shift, they've been caught in the web of certain habits.
That's working from your bed. According to a survey conducted back in the year 2020, out of 1,000 Americans evaluated, it was recorded that an incredible 72% work in bed. This shows that many workers are sitting on a keg of gunpowder and they're not aware of the adverse effects that accompany the increasing habit.
In this article, you'll understand the dangers, why you need to make a U-turn from this common flow, and how you can use the bed to live a perfect work and personal life.
Let's start.
What Makes Remote Working from Bed a Bad Habit?
You need to know that remote workers from bed expose themselves to multiple and unimaginable consequences. And the pandemic played a huge role in its sudden trend because these numbers were not this much before 2020.
As a result, the shift forced them to start looking around for where they can derive optimum comfort while working from home. This led to working either on their couches or in bed. Meanwhile, many of these workers are youngsters, they might not even know that the strain of working from bed is fast catching up with them until it becomes malignant.
On the other hand, some workers don't understand the gravity of the consequences. However, the fact remains that working in bed is not healthy for you. It might make you feel pretty comfortable at first, don't fall for it! Let's cut to the chase as we see the reasons why it's a harmful practice.
Your Posture Gets Distorted
For you to sit "comfortably" in bed as you work, you would have to sit in a tilted position. Some people have the impression that the best way is when your knees are clutched into each other in opposite direction.
However, the impacts of these sitting postures on your overall health are very alarming in the sense that they produce heavy strains on your back, hips, knees, and neck. Sooner or later, the postures will force you into developing a hunched back position, abs that's a bit problem for your performance to execute tasks.
Because you are active and young, you might not understand at this point but it will soon break loose except you retrace your steps back before getting addicted. Again, these sitting postures can make you feel extreme muscle pain.
To anyone that thinks working in bed is very warm and soothing, the reality is that you're sitting on an uneven and bare surface with no ergonomic support. So you need to agree that having your back in a state of curvature and your monitor positioned at an inappropriate height also puts your eye level in jeopardy.
Prone to Insomnia
Remote working from bed also creates hazardous effects on your brain activity and sleep cycle. And this is because the brain is wired to operate in particular successions often referred to as circadian rhythms. Let's break it down a bit further. The pattern through which the circadian rhythms are influenced depends entirely on how your brain reads your habits.
Since most of us are creatures of habit, it doesn't take much time for the brain to get tricked into falling in line with habits, though they're bad habits.
For example, if you cultivate the habit of waking early in the morning to have your breakfast, run some office chores, and check your emails while in bed, your brain will sense a signal that it's meant to stay relaxed every time you are in that position.
Hence, your circadian rhythms will be distorted, and you'll be exposed to a risk called insomnia or circadian rhythm disorder. Once this climax is attained, there's a high likelihood that you will become nervous and edgy anytime you are in bed.
You'll also start experiencing difficulty in sleeping. Most importantly, you should note that insomnia is like a portal that welcomes other health-related conditions and it will aggravate your physical and mental wellbeing.
Adverse Effects on Your Efficiency Level
Immediately your sleep cycle gets destroyed, you will start experiencing fatigue in diverse ways. You won't have much energy to perform your tasks nor will you be motivated. The worrisome part is that even if you decide to take a nap or walk around, there won't be any improvement.
Your body system will get weakened to the point that the most tolerant person will be easily triggered into wild mood swings more often. You'll also feel helpless even when you want to put your emotions under check.
Paired up with a crumpled sitting posture, all these mental and physical problems will finally cause you to lose every fiber of efficiency and productivity left in you. Let's check two more ways through which remote working from bed can negatively affect your productivity:
Limitations
This habit might strike your work-life with the final deadly blow by making you feel convenient with inconveniences. Don't worry, we'll explain what we mean by that statement.
Ideally, you'll have all the needed office supplies on your desk, your printer within your reach, and other devices and documents readily available, but your brain will keep telling you to stay in bed.
Distractions
At times, you might be in bed working on your PC, and you'll be tempted to put on your TV and have it in the background. Here's another way. You might get tired and think of calming your eyes. It could also force you into a series of unintended naps.
So if you intend to stay concentrated on the task at hand and perform optimally, choosing to work in bed does you no good.
Loss of Valuable Friendships and Relationships
As we have earlier pointed out, remote working from bed can push you into battling mood swings and anger issues. And as you most likely know, folks suffering from anger issues tend to have fights with almost everyone close to them, both within their work and personal life.
In such a condition, you will have a high temper and your partner, if you have one, will be left at the receiving end. Your marital life will start getting weaker, recording some minor crashes and it might eventually collapse if utmost care is not taken because you'll have more fights with him or her (your partner).
Furthermore, working from bed means that you will not be able to give your partner the full attention he or she deserves and that's more of an invitation to feelings of distrust between you two.
That is enough evidence to support a recent study that concluded that momentary neglect during a conversation with your partner while in bed can lead to reduced marital satisfaction. And in the worst case, your significant other might fall into depression.
The Best Way Out - Create an Ergonomic Office in Your Bedroom
At this juncture, you have seen the extreme degree through which working remotely while staying in bed can affect your life. It can completely kill your mental, emotional, and physical life, so that's enough to prompt you to look further for a long-lasting solution.
Right now, we have one for you - build an office right in your bedroom. We have also come to understand that many people working from bed adopted this method because they have no space where they can set up an office.
However, such people should be able to flow real well with a portable bedroom office and all they need is to make use of simple office design ideas. If you could pull this through, neither your health nor your partner or any other person will be affected by the pangs of working in bed.
And to actualize this, you'll need an office with ergonomic office furniture and office accessories. But the most important part is that you should go for the best home office desk and the best ergonomic office chair.
Why this type of furniture? They are specially designed to fit into your room without occupying much space. These furniture components also have various adjustable features that will give you a relaxing and sound work experience while using them.
For instance, an ergonomic reclining chair allows you to tilt backward and stretch but all these perks are not available with a traditional office chair. Even our height-adjustable standing desks are built by the best team of engineers and you'll proud to have such a classy and reliable piece in your bedroom.
The next line of action is to determine where you will place the home office chair and desk and that needs to be done in line with your bedroom's design. If you have a window, it is our opinion that you place them by the window side and you'll be a direct beneficiary of the cool breeze as you work productively.
However, you need to be cautious of distractions. We would not advise that you position these pieces of furniture close to a window that is directly linked to the next street where the humming and honking of vehicles will flow in.
If you could observe all these things and practice them religiously, you will experience a robust mental and physical life. They'll also eliminate all the negativities you've contracted while working from bed.
Get Ergonomic Height Adjustable Standing Desk
Whether you're a permanent remote worker or it's for some months, you need to introduce a standing desk into the bedroom office setup. In other words, it's not recommended that you shift from working in bed to working using the regular office desk.
It's as good as not leaving the bed. With an ergonomic height-adjustable standing desk, you are staying far away from back, neck, shoulder, eye strain, and other health-related conditions that could be gotten from working in bed or using a regular office desk.
Here are some suggested and highly reliable standing desks.
Kana Pro Bamboo Office Standing Desk
Designed by Flexispot, Kana Bamboo Office Standing Desk is specially made from original bamboo to give you a soothing and relieving work experience.
Due to the dual-motor lifting system that powers it, the desk is designed to give your body perfect support and stability as you work.
It's a ravishing sight to behold and it's one of the favorite standing desks that a remote worker with an eye for office furniture would love to have in his home.
Apart from being durable, flexible, and eco-friendly, the tensile strength of bamboo used in building it also makes the desk very sturdy for anyone who gets it.
The standing desk also comes with a control panel that holds a reminder feature and three-step adjustable height settings.
You can barely think of any other ergonomic desk that surpasses our Kana Bamboo Pro Desk in terms of sophistication.
Seiffen Laminated 4-spliced Standing Desk
The Seiffen 4-spliced Standing Desk is one of our best standing desks when it comes to lifting speed and sharp stability. You can load up the weight up to the maximum point which is 220lbs. Even at that, the desk will remain stable.
It has a USB charging port where you can charge your mobile phone and other gadgets. To help you build modern office space with perfect cable management, this standing desk is for you. The port is right in the keypad with large electronic compatibility that ensures all your cords are not messed up.
With a dual-motor, Seiffen Laminated Standing Desk is capable of giving you two-fold power and performance. The desk also has a set of desk hooks (2) - one on each side. You can use it to keep your accessories within reach.
We've also gone a mile further - the hooks are strong enough to house your jacket, headphones, backpack, and lots more. The icing on the cake here's that it has an anti-collision security feature to ensure your safety while using it. How does it work?
If the desk senses any strange and unexpected obstruction while working, it has an anti-collision feature that will immediately stop and backtrack the desktop to prevent damage to whatever you have on it.
Invest in an Ergonomic Office Chair
Like working in bed, using an unergonomic office chair is capable of robbing you of your physical and mental wellness. It can also lead to serious health problems, ranging from back pain to joint pain, and wrist and forearm pain.
But when you have the best ergonomic office chair at your disposal, you can maintain your work-life balance, and improve your sitting posture and level of productivity. We assure you that your comfort in the office is guaranteed when you use our ergonomic office chairs.
Let's check out the following.
Back Support Ergonomic Office Chair OC13
The Back Support Chair OC13 is built by the best of minds and it gives you the ease to tilt the headrest as high as 2.36 inches. You can also adjust the headrest to your preferred level as it perfectly relaxes all the muscles around your neck.
How about moving it from one section of your bedroom to another? The chair is designed with 5 multipurpose castors and 360° wheels that'll help you move it quietly and quickly around with ease. Furthermore, your lumbar structure and spine will be well guarded.
The chair gives your entire body a high level of flexibility and that's a route you can explore to permanently escape from back pain. And you can adjust the height of the mobile lumbar support up to 3.4 inches.
You can make your order here.
Ergonomic Office Mesh Chair 1388
Since you are recovering from the pain and other health conditions caused by working from bed, you should know the worth of a chair that keeps you relaxed and pain-free always. You can trust the ergonomic Office Mesh Chair 1388 to help you wage war against back pain and spine fatigue.
Thi chair gives you a perfectly healthy work-life through the backrest, multipurpose headrest, and 3D armrest. Meanwhile, having the ergonomic office mesh chair 1388 in your bedroom office is an assurance that your lumbar region will be given the needed support.
The seat pad is also wide enough to fully accommodate your natural curves. Most importantly, the transparent mesh material used in designing the entire backrest will prevent your back from getting exposed to heat. How possible is that?
It has some ultra-breathability elements like a double mesh pad cushion that allows proper ventilation.
How Your Bed Can Promote Remote Working?
We cannot create a full boundary between remote working and your bed because you can only work efficiently after you've had quality sleep time in bed. So we can agree that the bed sets the path right for your work life to operate smoothly. And if you're not getting good sleep, it will reflect in the quality of your performance.
To achieve a hitch-free career trajectory, job performance, and chain of thought, you need to make sure that you only use your bed for two purposes - sleep and intimacy. And you should always use a high-quality mattress to help you unwind at night and stay fully recharged for the new day.
Final Thoughts
Sleep is too sacred and essential to compromise, and we will not advise you to do so by turning your bed into a mini-office. We hope that you'll have a restful and peaceful sleep with what we have discussed so far. And it's our conviction that this guide will help you break the addiction of remote working from bed into pieces.
As your head hits the pillow at night, you'll be grateful that you read this article all through. Lastly, you can check Flexispot online store to see more ways you can use to build a home office right in your bedroom.
