June 2, 2016 updated from August 16, 2012 post |
Shannan DuShane
Every day you get up,
have your caffeine or in my case a red bull and while you’re getting ready for
work, the morning routine involves checking your mobile phone for updates in-between
the hustle of the morning. You are on your email, social sites, and anything
else you have in your phone while you were sleeping. You drive to work and get
to the office and the first act of the day is to login to your Facebook, or
Twitter account while eating donuts supplied by the office and coffee that is way
too cold. That’s awesome you are utilizing
social media platforms, but what if you could use the internet for good and be
healthy in your ways too. Unless you are
a hobbit and never leave your house, most people do not realize that social
media is healthy and can be just as healthy as jogging every day in your local
park. We humans thrive on human contact,
sometimes we don’t want it but we most definitely need it and can’t live
without it.
Many people don’t know
that being social is one of the healthiest acts that you can do for
yourself. I’m not talking about spending
6-8 hours on a computer, and that is all you do is pretend to be someone you
are not, creating a profile on every different social media platform, and
posting pictures of your family reunions.
What you want to utilize is the search, network, group and company features
that get information out there to the public and get noticed via social media
platforms. Being social can be seen two
ways and needs to be utilized the same two ways, take advantage of the events,
forums, groups and networking to find places you want to visit and events you
want to attend, do not just sit at the computer and “like” pages and groups and
think it is the same thing.
Back in the early 2000’s
when social media came bursting out to the public eye, it was instantly a
success to the consumer, Facebook was introduced in 2004, Twitter in 2006 and the
earliest LinkedIn in 2002, as well as Photobucket, and Flickr in the early 2000’s
and the late comer Instagram in 2010, the internet was never the same. With what the internet can offer us today we
began to throw away those old heavy phone books and paper directories. You cannot write real time experiences in a paper
backed book and have any interaction with your focused target group of
consumers, there was no way to measure visits, your ranking or anything like we
have in the abilities we have today in order to keep a target market on our
radars. The fact that there are now to
many to count social platforms of all types on the internet from blogs,
micro-blogging, social networks from Match.com to Facebook.com, internet
forums, wiki’s and podcasting, I could go on forever; there is no reason you
can’t find a group or event that could get you out of the house.
So here are just some tips for having a
healthy social media addition (yes it’s an addiction and the first step is to
admit it)
1. If
you are going to sit at a computer for a length of time eat health and drink a
lot of water! Pick up a bag of carrots instead of chips and a cheese stick
instead of Milky Way.
2. For
each social media platform, you are on you have a unique following, take time
and get to know each one and what they do. If you don’t have a ton of time, give yourself
the time to just direct message them and let them know you are there to network
and connect. The initial meeting cold have amazing opportunity with networking
you never knew about.
3. When
you are at your desk, sit up straight, don’t crunch over you will be asking for
chest and back problems. Get a back
wedge if you need help getting straight.
Lean back with shoulders up the computers screen should be a minimum of
an arm’s length away.
4. Shoulder
rolls, when you are crunching over your desk, sometimes your shoulders crunch
with them, if you regularly do shoulder rolls/stretches this will help keep the
tension down and keep you loosened up and relaxed.
5. Your
monitor or monitors these days, if you are looking down for any length of time
this can lead to neck and eye issues, the top of your monitor should be eye
height to avoid health issues. You can buy
a wall mount or monitor risers to help aid this process. I found a double riser
for two monitors that are adjustable for $45 on Amazon.
6. Blink.
This sounds strange but it is proven that people that use computers blink less
so their eyes get dry and leads to eye problem in the future.
7. Make
sure you are in a position where your wrists are relaxed and not strained,
invest in a good wrist gel pad, this will help avoid carpal tunnel in the future.
I bought mine at Best Buy for $20. You should keep your mouse close to you and
hold it lightly you don’t need a death grip on it to work and this will lessen
the chance of getting carpal tunnel.
8. Sit
on an exercise ball (my favorite) This is a great way to keep posture, movement,
control and blood flow, and you can get them anywhere for around $30
9. For
every hour you are online try and stand up and stretch or just move around everyone
needs a sanity break when you are on the computer for 8-12 hours, or on your
lunch take a power walk to get your body going.
A body at rest stays at rest while a body in motion stays in motion.
10. Lastly,
if you love to listen to music as much as me, good news, it is proven to keep
your body moving, your brain charged up and awake and mental status more alert.
So pick your favorite playlist and get to working.
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