Eight Healthy Work Habits for Cybersecurity Employees

Cybersecurity is a stressful professional field. An unrelenting workload, an ever changing landscape, and round-the-clock availability is a surefire recipe for high stress and burnout. It’s difficult to maintain your wellness as a priority in the face of all of these challenges.  

​That’s why I want to arm you with tips to create healthy work habits that are practical, powerful, and easy to fit into your already overloaded day. You are human, and that’s actually your greatest asset in this field. As a human, you have multidisciplinary expertise, intuition, and better communication skills. However, you don’t function at 100% when your batteries are running low.  
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I know: when the pressure is on and you have momentum you don’t want to stop. I know there’s an unrelenting workload, and it feels like you may never get caught up on it. I also know you will perform better if you take a break and reset yourself. The first thing you can do is learn to prioritize what’s on your desk.

1. Ruthlessly Prioritize Your Time and Tasks
If you don’t prioritize your time/tasks, they will be prioritized for you. So begin each day taking a few minutes to establish your priorities. What are the three most important things that need to happen that day? If these three things get done, then you know your day has been a success.  

This is easier said than done, and this can have a big impact on your confidence, your focus, and your bandwidth. 

But let’s not stop there; a decent amount of your job in cybersecurity may be putting out fires that weren’t blazing when you set your day's priorities, which throws off your ability to accomplish your priorities, or even prioritize at all. Some of these fires may be more important than the priorities you set for the day, and some may not be (even if they feel urgent).  Either way, you can navigate this: Define what constitutes a priority. When a fire comes to your attention, is it truly a higher priority than your other tasks for that day? If so, see to the fire. If not, focus on the priorities you set for the day and save this fire for another day or another team member.  

Here are some questions to help assess a priority. The more items you can easily answer ‘yes’ to, the higher the priority:

1. Is this important? (Does this matter? Will it continue to matter over time?)
2. Is this urgent? (Is there a pressing deadline for this?)
3. Will this help me learn, grow, or develop? (Will I gain knowledge or skill through this?)
4. Am I passionate about this? (Does this make me feel excited or do I enjoy this?)
5. Am I the only one that can do this? (Can this be delegated to someone else?)​

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​So, if one of your three items for the day is scored a three out of five, and a fire comes across your desk that’s a four out of five, you should see to the fire and allow one of your other priorities to be pushed down on your list. If this fire scores lower than the priorities you set for the day, then you should keep your focus on your priorities, rather than jumping to put out the fire.

2. Recognize Your Stress Indicators
Those of us in high stress professions, leadership roles, or with competing demands between work and home (read: most of us) have learned to ignore the indicators that our stress is rising. It’s like if we know we’re stressed, we will suddenly get overwhelmed and not be able to focus or perform, so we pretend we aren’t experiencing stress. Of course, this is the same as deciding the fuel gauge in our cars is a nuisance, so we ignore it, then seem surprised when we run out of gas.  
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Stress builds up until it makes us crash in some way (sleep, illness, injury, errors, fights, etc.), and only then do we concede that we may be “a little” stressed. However, ignoring our stress indicators doesn’t serve us because it’s easier to manage stress when it’s lower, just like it’s easier to calm down from feeling annoyed than pissed off, and calm down from feeling nervous than panicky. The fact of the matter is, we need to re-learn how to recognize how stress shows up for us to manage and prevent stress.

So, how does stress show up for you? Do you get irritable and impatient? Do you get headaches or an upset stomach? Do you crave certain snack foods? Do you get fidgety? Do you make more mistakes? If we learn to attend to our stress indicators, we can address our stress while it’s still manageable and small practices still have an impact. Have a plan for what you will do (breathing, meditation, walking, watching a funny video, etc) when you notice your stress levels rising. The rest of the healthy habits in this article are great strategies to try out when you recognize your stress level is rising.

3. Just Breathe.
Breathing is one of the most simple and most powerful things we can do to affect our physiology. Breathing can help us calm down, maintain our composure, or improve our focus.  We can take a few deep breaths, breathe slowly for a few minutes, or do a full guided breathing practice.  

There are many different styles of breathing practices out there, and ultimately you should use the one(s) that feel most comfortable and impactful for you. As we get stressed, our breathing gets more shallow and our inhales get longer than our exhales (which triggers fight or flight).  Start with just breathing slowly, with your belly (not your shoulders).  
Use the links below for some guided coaching on different breathing techniques so you can learn which are most effective for you:

• Box Breathing (great for focus and composure)
• Rhythmic or Yogi Breathing (great for balance and relaxation)
• Alternate Nostril Breathing (great for balance and focus)
• Physiological Sigh (great for decreasing fight or flight)
• 1:2 Breathing (great for deep relaxation)

4. Move Your Body
Our bodies are pretty amazing machines that put up with us sitting in weird positions and staring at screens all day long. One of the best things we can do is get more movement into our day.  When we stay too still or are sedentary, our bodies get really tight. As a result, we develop trigger points and muscle imbalances, experience more pain, and have a greater risk for injury. Moving our bodies increases blood flow, aids digestion, helps us think more creatively, increases the distribution of oxygen and nutrients, clears stress hormones and waste, and releases endorphins.
  
Find ways to get the type of movement you like most throughout the day.  You can get it in longer exercise sessions, and you can also get it in micro-activities that fit nicely into your day. These micro-activities can include:  

• Parking farther away
• Using a sit/stand desk or a walking desk
• Going on walks between meetings
• Doing yoga at your desk
• Exercising before or after work.  
• Keeping a weight at your desk and doing bicep curls while you’re trying to find a solution
• Doing squats, pushups or simple movements at your desk

Just get more movement throughout your day. You and your body will notice a difference.

5. Rest Your Eyes
Most, if not all of your work is in front of a computer screen. You can do things like change the brightness and use blue-blockers, but your eyes are still taking the strain of staring at a screen all day. It’s important to rest your eyes periodically. Do that by:

• Refocusing your eyes to stare at an object or the wall about 20 feet away for at least 20 seconds (you can practice your breathing exercises for that 20 seconds, too!)
• Rubbing your hands together to generate heat and place your fingers gently over your closed eyes to soothe them
• Focusing your eyes on an object about six inches away, then cupping your hands over your eyes so you can see only darkness (but keep your eyes focused as though they can still see the object about six inches away)  

6. Get Outside
Most, if not all of your work takes place indoors. It’s even possible you’re in a room with no windows. Getting outside, especially in the sun, can improve mood, focus, concentration, and even lower anxiety and depression. These benefits come from a combination of fresh air, movement, sunlight, and simply changing the scenery. Getting outside also helps anchor you to the time of day which helps you maintain your circadian rhythm. When you’re disoriented about the time of day, your sleep will be negatively affected. Get outside by:

• Eating a meal or snack outside
• Standing outside and doing a breathing exercise
• Walking outside and around the building between meetings
• Basking in the sun

7. Eat Good Food
When you’re working on an intense project and building momentum, it’s easy to forget to do things like stop and eat. It’s also harder to make healthy food choices at that moment (especially if/when you’re limited in what is easily available, or often don’t realize you’re hungry until you’re starving). Also, when we wait until we are starving, then shove down a lot of food, we encourage a roller coaster experience for our blood sugar. The more we overload our system, the more intensely we may crash later.  

To keep this at bay, we need to have readily available healthy snacks: fruit, nuts, granola bars (anything that’s ready to eat and not too messy or complicated). Eat at more regular intervals so your body knows it can process the food as you go. Bonus points for eating away from your workstation.

8. Leverage Technology and Gadgets
There are all sorts of tools and gadgets to help us get the most out of our focus and productivity, such as:  

• A smartwatch or fitness tracker to alert you if:
  • You’ve been sedentary for too long and need movement
  • If your stress or heart rate is increasing and you need a break (go do a breathing practice)
• Time tracking apps like Pomodoro and Toggl can help you see where your time goes so you can use your time more efficiently
• Apps like Calm, Breakthru, or Headspace  can guide you through evidence-based practices to lower stress and improve confidence and focus.  
• Biofeedback tools like Muse or Inner Balance can help you recognize increased stress or decreased focus and guide you towards a better performance

 
It’s easy to get caught up in the frenzy of your day and forget to engage in healthy work habits. But if you take the time to assess priorities and focus on recognizing stress indicators as well as instituting daily healthy habits, you will help prevent cybersecurity stress and be able to focus on succeeding in your field.