Take care of yourself

Preface

It's important for people to maintain their ability to do the things they want to be doing with their days. It takes some planning and constant effort to ensure that you are at your best, and able to face the challenges of the day, but it is well worth it. Maintaining good health and taking care of your own well-being overall helps ensure you have the ability to deal with life, and have the energy for the things you value. On the other hand if you're not healthy or taking care of your well-being, it can be really hard to have the energy or headspace to deal with even relatively small problems.

If you feel tired during the day when you'd want to be accomplishing things, your problems feel overwhelming, or you feel like it's hard to focus, maybe you will find some tips here.

Work, and life in general, is a marathon - not a sprint. You want to optimize for a long term consistent performance, not for maxing out your output for a short duration. It takes planning, and practice, but you will get better at it over time if you consistently put in a bit of effort.

Most importantly: If you are interested in making long-lasting impact on your well-being, resist the urge to overhaul your entire life at once and decide to take all of these suggestions into use. If you try to change too many things at a time, you will likely just be overwhelmed by them and give up on everything. Instead pick a few things you find easy to start with, then come back for more ideas later.

Control the levels of Carbon Dioxide in indoor spaces

The level of CO2 in the space you're has a massive impact on your alertness level. It's very common for homes, offices, and schools to have CO2 levels of 1,000 ppm, often much higher (2000+ppm). These levels can easily cause drowsiness, making you feel slow, cause headaches, makes it harder to focus and so on.

The easiest way to solve the problem is ventilation - the outdoor air has CO2 levels around 420 ppm - get enough fresh air in to displace the CO2 generated by breathing creatures in the space. Cracking open 2 different windows to allow a bit of a breeze through is often enough for the home. If you don't have 2 windows, fans at the window can help force the air to move.

Even in the winter cracking the window open a little can help massively without turning your environment into a refrigerator. As a quick tip: you can often shove a piece of cardboard or similar between the window and the frame to stick it in place at the angle you wish if there is no integrated way to manage it, and the internet is full of other ideas for it as well.

Many homes are nowadays equipped with mechanical ventilation systems, use it if you have one, preferably with all the heat recovering capabilities and so on.

Maybe working outdoors is an option for you, or you can try to take breaks where you take a quick walk around the building or similar to get some fresh air, maybe just pop your head out the window. Try to ventilate the space more when you step out of it.

I aim for CO2 levels of <700ppm, any higher and I can feel its effects clearly. I regularly monitor the CO2 levels and typically they range from 550 to 650 ppm for me. If in doubt about the CO2 levels, you can find affordable CO2 monitors/meters from e.g. Amazon.de easily - get one with a temperature and humidity sensor as well, as those will be mentioned later 😄

Light

There's light at the end of the tunnel, and outside, and hopefully in whichever environment you inhabit. Light affects your alertness and mood a lot - whatever your sleeping rhythm is try to get bright light from your morning until the evening, and in the evening dim them down at least a few hours before going to bed.

I use 2 very bright (~20,000 lumen each) natural white LED lights pointed at my ceiling to scatter lots of light into my environment, and it helps - a lot. You might not need as much, but try to ensure you get actual bright lights in the space you inhabit, it is probably easier than you think - lots of very bright E14 and E27 LED light bulbs out there. I turn my lights down around 21:00, and have them pretty much off for at least 30 minutes before I aim to get sleep, but during the day I try to have a bright environment.

You can use various therapy lights, and just bright LEDs, or trying to get natural sunlight which is also bright, but the difficult part is getting it to be dispersed well enough that you don’t end up with like one bright spotlight with everything outside of it being in the dark creating pretty extreme contrasts. I’ve solved my issues with that with a few lamp shades and by pointing the brightest ones towards the ceiling with a reasonable spacing in between them.

Ensure you can disconnect from work and other responsibilities

It's not healthy to worry about your work all your waking hours, and it's not good for your output either. The same applies for your other responsibilities. Constantly thinking about your work will make you more stressed and less able to think, see solutions, or cope with difficult times. On the other hand giving your subconscious the necessary space to think about things on its own is a powerful tool to help solve problems and come up with new ideas.

If you have other responsibilities besides work, try to get some time off of those as well - e.g. if you have children try to ensure you also get the time for date nights with your significant other every now and then, or go camping or do other activities on your own.

Sometimes "rituals" can help break out of the work mode, so coming up with a pattern of actions you will perform when you are disconnecting from it to focus on the rest of your life. As an example, when you want to stop working, write down all your remaining todo items, tell your co-workers "I'm off for the rest of the day, bye", and close your work chat. This kind of "rituals" are powerful tools for your brain to understand that you now intend to not think about this for the rest of the day.

Hobbies, sports, games, friends, and so on can help you ensure you have things that help you disconnect and give yourself a bit of time to breathe.

Ensure you do not get instant notifications for all chat messages, work emails, etc. outside of working hours, but if you're in a critical role you can set up a backup method to contact you outside of working hours for when it's really important.

Hygge - feeling cozy and content

Hygge is about making you feel comfortable in the moment, making you feel cozy. It can be help you feel relaxed, and enjoy your life a bit more. It can be achieved with tastes, sounds, what you see around you, smells, and various other feelings.

The world is full of ideas for how to get some hygge in your life, but some quick tips:

• Wear clothes made of fabrics you enjoy, e.g. try bamboo socks.
• Maybe find a nice warm blanket and comfortable pillow for when you sit on your sofa or chair.
• Scented candles, aromatic oil diffusers, and so on - as long as the scent is not too powerful. Just be careful with fire, and be aware that they can release small particles into the air which are not healthy in large amounts.
• Make the environment you are in beautiful for you, maybe you like plants, maybe you like cat paintings or porcelain figurines, whatever it is - get some of it in your environment.
• Find a drink you really enjoy that isn't too unhealthy for you, mine is a mix of a specific brand of instant coffee with half a teaspoon of licorice powder in it. Don’t judge me.
• Some nice tasting snacks can be great as well - my current favorite is some green olives filled with bell pepper I can get from a local store, mixed with chili oil and freshly crushed garlic.
• Try e.g. warm white lights, or RGB lights if you enjoy them.

Get enough rest

A good indication of not getting enough rest is if you feel the need to sleep longer in the weekends, or need an alarm to get up for work.

You can try to wake up more naturally, by using e.g. a wake up light, or leaving your curtains open so the natural light will enter your bedroom in the morning, or one of the sleep monitoring gadgets. If you need an alarm to wake up at the right time, try to use more gentle alarm sounds, birdsong etc. - if they don't work, you haven't rested enough.

Temperature affects the quality of your rest, so make sure you consider the things mentioned about maintaining a comfortable temperature below.

Having a stable sleeping rhythm - yes, every day of the week - can help a lot. This might mean reducing the amount of partying you do on the weekends, and that's good for you in other ways too 😄

Get enough exercise

Like it or not, your body was not made to stay idle all day. If you do not get enough exercise it will have several negative effects on your health, your mood, and your overall well-being.

You don't have to run marathons, but you do have to move. I got a foldable treadmill under my height-adjustable desk to walk most days, some people hit the gym a couple of times a week, others practice martial arts, and so on - the "how" is not as important as doing something.

If you're currently fairly idle all day every day, try to find low effort ways to get started - find a park to walk to, maybe try VR games, start with e.g. just 5 minutes a day. Habits are strong here again, if you do it every day it's a lot harder to forget. Social connections can help as well - doing things with friends is harder to skip without a good reason.

Control your sugar intake

Sugar is a substance that shouldn't be taken lightly, it's literally addictive, and has serious consequences for your health. Try to avoid too much sugar, and take it responsibly when you do.

In the short term sugar rich treats and drinks can quickly lead to a heavy crash for you after a spike in blood sugar, destroying your energy levels. In the long term they can lead to insulin resistance, and various other more serious health issues.

Try to pay attention to what you add sugar to, and how much sugar (and carbs, which your body turns into sugars) there is in the things you eat - check the nutritional labels at the store, you will find some things have shocking amounts of sugar - e.g. yoghurt, canned food, granola, dried fruits, protein bars, and sauces.

Sweeteners can help, but they aren't always a perfect solution either. E.g. licorice and peppermint have naturally a pretty sweet taste, adding some in your coffee or tea can be an alternative to sugar and sweeteners.

If you’re currently using a lot of sugar, and you want to reduce your intake, expect the taste of things to change as your system is retrained. Previously good things may taste way too sweet, and previously bland things may start tasting good or even sweet.

It's a good idea to get your blood sugar checked with the rest of your health checkups.

Consider how you eat, what you eat, and how much you eat

The word is "diet", but it has a lot of incorrect and negative connotations that it's no longer super descriptive. Do not think that whatever fad diet popular on TikTok ("eat only sponges") will solve your problems. Today there are a lot of people trying to get their share of the lucratice market of dieting, so there's a lot of scams out there.

What is important however is to eat healthy amounts, of healthy things, at healthy times. What is healthy for you of course may depend, you may have food intolerances, you may have different needs due to your lifestyle in general, but there are some general guidelines worth considering.

• If you feel tired or bloated after eating, you probably ate too much, or the wrong things.
• It's a bad idea to eat at times when you will be inactive - so e.g. before going to bed.
• If you need clothes larger than "XL", you're likely eating too much, and the wrong things, especially relatively to how much you move. Or you’re very muscular, in which case you probably don’t need my input on this.
• Fats are essential for you, but your food likely shouldn't be drenched in it.
• If you need snacks, try to pick the more healthy options - olives, pickled vegetables, seeds and nuts, some dried fruits without added sugars, fruit, air-popped popcorn (maybe sprinkle some spices on it, curry, herbs, black pepper, garlic powder), some tasty but healthy drinks.
• For some it can be a good idea to try and ensure there's a longer 14+ hour period of the day when you do not eat anything.

If you find yourself stress-eating or eating because you're bored, try to find more healthy outlets - e.g. exercise, hobbies, maybe drink tea instead, things from hygge can help in general.

Try to limit how much you eat junk food, sugary snacks, and so on, try to keep your diet varied. I can warmly recommend eating mostly plant based foods.

Maintain a comfortable temperature

Depending on the person, a comfortable temperature typically is somewhere between 20°C and 25°C, I personally prefer something in the 21.5°C to 23.5°C range. When the temperatures is outside your comfortable range, you will not be able to focus as well.

The most important temperature is of course your body temperature, not the air temperature, and you can do things to help your body stay cooler/warmer as needed. This applies to both when you're trying to work, or e.g. sleep - if you are waking up because it's too hot/cold, you're not resting well.

There's a massive amount of things you can do to help regulate temperature overall, and Google can tell you a lot more about these in detail, here are just the most effective ways I can think of.

• Drinks and food can help regulate your temperature. If it's too hot, drink cool drinks, and eat cold food. If it's too cold, drink warm drinks, and eat warm food.
• Adjust your clothing, there is little limit to how many warm layers you can wear in the winter (make sure to focus on blocking wind on the top layer), but in the summer you may find that breathable white linen, and ensuring your skin gets to breathe while heat from the sun is reflected away, can make a big difference.
• Fans, small desk fans, large fans, ceiling fans, just getting air moving in general and especially getting some airflow on your skin. I generally recommend trying to find fans with stepless speed control so you can find a speed that isn't too noisy for you.
• Cooling or well breathing blankets, as well as e.g. various evaporative cooling towels, and electric blankets
• Insulation - maybe buy or rent an IR camera, a simple USB-C one for your phone is enough, check all your windows if they are leaking, replace the insulation if they are. Try bubble wrap on windows, it can help insulate while letting light through.
• Solar films on your windows to block some of the heat from coming in, or leaving your indoor space. You can get many that are easy to install and remove on your own, or get them professionally installed. The professionally installed ones tend to go on the outside and can tolerate weather and thus are more efficient.
• Control the energy use at home, change the power limits on your computers, and so on - power used is often converted to heat. Carefully choose when and how you cook, or dry your clothes.
• Shading, sometimes it is possible for you to ensure there is shade around your home, especially windows and other exposed surfaces. Parasols, awnings, trees, blinds, and countless other solutions can help create shade for you. I set up shade mesh tarps on my balcony, the impact was significant. Even blackout curtains with a bright surface facing the outside can help reflect some heat from the sun.
• Plants - while they might not have a huge impact, they can help absorb the heat energy from the sun and convert it to something more useful, and help is help. They can help your mood as well.
• Heat pumps, have some of the best efficiency for cooling and heating, installation is often not trivial but new more portable heat pump solutions are starting to come into the market.
• Air conditioning, if you get a portable unit at least get a fabric window seal, they are easy to install and help a lot even though the portable units are kinda garbage. In some cases you can put a split system with the outdoor unit on your balcony, or out the window. It's nowhere near as impossible to get AC in Europe than most people seem to think.
• Water cooling for your bed, it's a thing, it can help a lot with your bed heating up from your body heat etc.

It's however important to remember the second law of thermodynamics - there is no free lunch. You probably can't buy a device that sits on your desk and magically cools the air around you, while swamp/mist coolers can help in dry climates. There's a lot of scammers out there trying to sell you a free lunch.

Don't forget about humidity

Humidity is another critical aspect of a comfortable environment in addition to temperature. A comfortable temperature can be made uncomfortable if the humidity is outside the comfortable ranges - which do somewhat depend on the person. For me it's pretty clearly in the 40-60% range, and I believe that to be the case for most people.

If the humidity is too high, uncomfortable temperature will feel even worse. If it is too low, you will feel dry - skin, eyes, the mucuous membranes in your nose, mouth, and so on.

Many basic thermometers also check for humidity, and if you get a CO2 air quality monitor it likely checks both for temperature and humidity as well.

If the humidity is too high - e.g. dehumidifiers are an option. If it's too low, well .. then there's humidifiers. They can be a bit annoying to maintain but they are 100% worth it for me. You can filter even plain tap water in most places just fine to use in humidifiers.

The internet is again full of alternatives for how to deal with this as well.

Be in control of your own focus

Sometimes it can be hard to maintain focus just because there are too many distractions, sometimes however, distractions are a benefit as well. Having your focus constantly interrupted leads to not having the time to think about solutions and losing track of where you were - losing the context, but staring at the screen and thinking "how do I solve this" rarely leads to good solutions if the problem is at all difficult. Maintaining the right balance is crucial.

I've seen entirely too many people who get a notification or screen or sound every time there's a message on Slack, or with every email. It's probably not that important - you can leave an indicator for unread messages on the screen or check them occasionally, but if something is interrupting you every few minutes it can be incredibly difficult to focus on anything productive. I am going to get distracted by your phone and computer pinging while I'm on a telco with you, and I can only imagine what that does to your ability to stay focused on our conversation.

Some people, myself included, can benefit from having the right amount of "distraction" to maintain focus on the important things and block your attention from drifting to other things. Listening to music and walking at my desk can help me maintain focus for longer and not have any temptation to check the messages. Some people benefit from fidget toys. While writing this I'm listening to Hubba Hubba Zoot Zoot and singing along, it helps.

When I know I'm working on harder problems, I intentionally ensure I have strategic levels of distractions throughout the day - just not too frequently. I put the dishes in the dishwasher so I have to go open it in a few hours, same with washing clothes. I take breaks to go give my cats treats, lift weights, or clean a bit. Taking some short breaks while working on a problem can give your subconscious the precious minutes to come up with new ideas - just make sure you quickly write those ideas down when you get them 😄

If you need to be available immediately when there is an urgent need, provide people with an alternative channel for doing so with e.g. Signal, Telegram, just a phone call, or whatever works for you, but you really can't treat everything as potentially urgent.

You often hear people talk about "being in the zone" or "flow", and it can be beneficial to be able to reach the flow state, but you don't need to obsess about it too much as long as you can get things done.

Stay connected - not to the internet, but to people and the community around you

In the modern day it's pretty easy for people to get sucked into the online world, and forget their actual surroundings. It can be immensely motivating to find a connection with your surroundings, get to know people around you, and participate in your local community somehow.

If you are currently in a place where you feel completely disconnected, the internet is again full of ideas on how to get started, ranging from things like volunteering at the local pet shelter, to game and book clubs, going to events, gyms, workshops, courses, classes, meetups, picnics, and participating in the local politics to e.g. improve your park.

If you have past relationships that are damaged, try to mend them. It's probably not as difficult as you believe.

Having meaningful connections to other people can help in many of the other areas, helping you disconnect from work, giving you company for exercise, etc.

Direct your own mood

You may have heard that if you're happy you are likely to smile, but also if you just force yourself to smile you may start feeling happier. In general the same principle works with a lot of different tools - you can adjust your surroundings and do things that might be normally responses to mood, to direct your own mood to where you would like it to be.

Maybe force yourself to smile a bit, listen to music that puts you in a positive energetic mood, and try to do things that you believe happy people would be doing. See how it works for you. If your mood is completely unaffected, maybe other suggestions from this list will help.

Take a placebo

Placebo is real, that is to say - you can achieve real effects with placebo, even if you know it's a placebo. Need a magic pill to disconnect from work? Try taking a specific breath mint while telling yourself that's going to help you disconnect from work. Want motivation to exercise? Tell yourself that your electrolyte drink boosts your drive to exercise. Need a mood booster? Tell yourself peppermint tea is an anti-depressant.

It's worth a try, maybe you'll be surprised.

Get your health checked

This is going to be a bit more generic advice, but if you're not healthy, it can have a wide impact on your energy, and ability to cope with things.

If you're not sure if your health is great, maybe go take some wide blood tests to check your basic health, and go to an everyday family medicine doctor for a checkup - they can tell you if you have any obvious issues you should consider with e.g. your cholesterol, hemoglobin (blood iron), creatine, vitamins, blood sugar, and other such things.

If you've ever suspected of having food intolerances but haven't had them checked, it's a good idea to check. Food intolerances can have wide effects, and e.g. for me dairy products can make me immediately feel sluggish and tired.

Stay out of the sedentiary mode

Our bodies evolved to stay upright and active, if you sit or lie down for long time your body goes into a low energy rest mode. Spending extended amounts of time unnecessarily in a sedentiary state is harmful for you in a large number of different ways. Unfortunately a lot of office workers are taught to get an office chair that maximizes comfort to the degree that it feels like you're sitting on a cloud, but a better option is to find some way to be comfortable enough while staying lightly active.

There's a great many options available for you can do at a desk job to try and stay somewhat active, here's just some ideas:

• Fidgeting, bouncing your knee, etc.
• Walking with a standing desk and a compact treadmill
• Sitting on an off-balance stool
• Sitting on a gym ball
• Taking regular short breaks every 30 minutes to stand up and walk around a bit, take a look outside the window, and so on
• Various small foot pedal exercise machines under the desk

Manage your stress levels

All of the topics covered above are a part of this, but it's important to be cognicient of stress as its own entire topic. If you are stressed, your body is often stuck in the fight-or-flight -response. Your immune system suffers, as does your decision making, and many other capabilities.

Stress has a purpose and it can be good, but being in constant stress is purely a negative thing and you should take it seriously before you burn out, have a meltdown, or suffer serious medical consequences.

Take a good honest look inward, are you stressed?

If you are, why is that? What stressors are there in your life? Are they really that important? If so, what are you doing about them? What then if things don't work out perfectly for you? What can you do to reduce the stress you feel?

Even if they are important, don't forget it's important to be able to disconnect and think about other things as well to maintain your ability to deal with the stress in a productive manner.

A lot of the pressure people are under is self-imposed, setting unrealistic goals, or forgetting that people who you admire have likely spent a lot of hard work to get to where they are, or had outside help to boost them there. Try to maintain realistic goals, and make sure you focus on the short term - what can you actually do today, this week, this month, maybe this year.

Honest conversations with people can often help resolve stress about things - have difficult conversations if necessary, but don't forget you can prepare for them. In general if there are people in your life causing you stress, try to see what you can do about them - sometimes cutting them out of your life is necessary for your own well-being. Sometimes it means moving. Sometimes your workplace really is toxic and beyond help, in which case you should find a new one.

Meditation and mindfulness

While often in popular culture it's often seen as some sort of mystical energy humbug for adjusting your chakras, meditation and mindfulness boils down to spending time with your own thoughts. People can disagree on the exact meaning of the words, but it really doesn't matter. I tend to consider them as two distinctive ways of being more comfortable with yourself and thinking through your own behavior.

Sometimes it can be helpful to try and avoid thinking at all. All of this can be called "meditation". To meditate many find it helpful to block outside distractions, close their eyes, maybe have some calming music, and just focus on their own breathing. Taking a moment to relax and calm down can often help. No need to cross your legs, wear yoga pants, nor do you need any chants. Perfection is not necessary either.

Many can also find a lot of help from taking a bit of time to be more aware, think about what they're doing and why, think about their responses to others, and if they are reasonable. Thinking about your own situation, aware of your own actions, and the reasoning behind them. Maybe you want to think about how you want to treat others, or how you want to be seen, then consider how do you achieve these things. Taking some time to think about these things can be called mindfulness. It's perfectly ok to e.g. use a notebook to organize your thoughts for this as well.

Explore philosophy

Sometimes it can be helpful to consider how life can be experienced, and what kind of attitude you can have towards it. We have a history with thousands of years of philosophy on these topics, from people who have had a long time to think about these things. You may find it helpful to study e.g. a few schools of philosophy that sound useful to you. Youtube is full of short intros to them, some of them are even helpful 😄

Once you've figured out what you might be interested in, then maybe explore books in various forms on the topic, or podcasts - I can e.g. warmly recommend the Philosophize This -podcast as a way to explore some of the topics.

Exposure to some ideas of how others may have solved especially the big problems in life can really help you see what kind of solutions you have available.

Nurture your relationships

Make sure you reserve the time in your weeks to keep your relationships healthy. For some people family is important, for others not. If yours is important, make sure you stay in contact and talk to them, and try to spend some time together when it's reasonable. If you have a special someone, make sure you have some 1:1 time on a regular basis away from other people.

We are social creatures, we need friendships, people we care about, and who care about us. Maintaining those relationships takes effort, so don't forget about them.

If you find relationships difficult to maintain while you do spend the time on it, maybe consider working on improving yourself first, and setting small goals.

Get support - consider therapy, and coaching

It can be hard to solve all your problems on your own, it's good to ensure you get some support to deal with your problems. Sometimes your friends and family are a good source of support, but with some problems a neutral 3rd party can give you more useful support.

You can find therapists and coaches for all kinds of things, and it may be worth considering finding one that can help you process your thoughts, focus your attention, identify issues, and come up with solutions.

It's however important to remember that you should primarily look for advice from people who support you, and not just externalize your life decisions to someone else. You should make the decisions, while ensuring you can get the necessary feedback to make good decisions.

I however must say that some therapists are reckless and do not treat your personal information with the care required. Nobody wants their private thoughts exposed to the world and e.g. be a victim of extortion after a hack. Before talking about sensitive matters with therapists and similar, make sure you confirm with them that they either do NOT write down everything you say, or that at the very least it is not centrally stored in a juicy treasure vault for malicious people to target. If they can't guarantee that, they are simply not trustworthy and should be considered dangerously reckless.

Limit your use of substances that make the other things challenging to do

There's a lot of substances people take on a regular basis, caffeine, alcohol, melatonin, and so on. Many of these have a negative effect on your overall well-being in multiple ways - particularly if taken in too large amounts and too often.

Too much caffeine causes you to crash and messes with the quality of your sleep. Alcohol use often messes with your sleep schedule and also reduces the quality of your rest, and can cause other issues with your health, mental health, relationships, and so on. Melatonin may help you sleep at times, but it may also mess with your alertness during the day, and if used all the time it can have many negative effects. In general there are a lot of substances that for some reason or another are popular among the populace but you should really be careful with taking.

Some people are able to take these and other substances in manners that are not disruptive for their life, others will have more problems with them. Figure out what level of use is appropriate for you, or if you need to completely stop using some or all of them.

Final thoughts

Remember, there are a lot of tools at your disposal, and lots of sources for support when you need it. Experiment, figure out what works for you. If you have a lot of work ahead of you to improve on, it's ok for it to take time. It's ok to occasionally stumble and fail, just get back up and try again, or try another option if it feels too hard.

Also keep in mind that the world is full of self-help gurus and snake-oil salesmen who want to sell you their latest new "invention" to solve all your health and well-being related issues. Most of them do nothing but relieve your wallet of its contents.