We spend so much of our adult lives working that we can sometimes become consumed by the pressures of our everyday professional tasks and lose sight of our own personal needs and well-being. It can be easy to push something like self-care to the back burner in order to keep up with today’s fast-paced, high-pressured work culture — but you shouldn’t. 

Self-care is crucial for our physical, emotional and mental well-being. While on the job, being mindful to care for yourself can improve productivity and overall performance. For these reasons, it is extremely important, especially for working survivors, to make self-care at work a priority. A recent article published by The Job Network, titled “Ten Ways to Practice Self-Care at Work,” lists some great tips to help expand a self-care regimen into your workday. For employed survivors or those looking to return to the workforce, here are three key takeaways:

1. Set boundaries. First, you have to be honest with yourself and know your own limits. Once you’ve determined what those are, you need to enforce them. It can be difficult to say no to requests to take on a project or help a coworker, but it’s important to remember that doing so can help you become a better employee.
2. Be proactive about what you need. Understand what you require in order to do your job well. Do you need a reasonable accommodation? An accommodation can be a change to your work environment or to the way in which your job is typically performed. It may be within your right to request a reasonable accommodation, and therefore something worth exploring. Just remember that, in order to access an accommodation, you may need to disclose some information regarding your health status to your employer.
3. Take breaks. Breaks are essential in helping employees de-stress and re-charge for the rest of the workday. For survivors who experience fatigue and/or cognitive side effects following treatment, taking short breaks can be crucial for productivity and ensuring the quality of work produced. 

Work can be overwhelming, and, for those in treatment or dealing with lingering side effects from treatment, it’s important to learn what the right balance is between managing your cancer and managing your work.

For additional tips, consult the At Work and Looking for Work sections of our website. And be sure to check out our free tools, webinars and publications.

To read the complete article on The Job Network website, click here.