Episode 69: Small Business Owners’ Tip: How To Improve Your Posture Using A Simple Reminder App
Do you find yourself having bad posture because of your work setup? If so, you will find this podcast episode super helpful! If you’re interested to improve your posture and health overall, then listen now as Fiona shares her tip on how she becomes mindful about her posture as she works from home.
Topics discussed in this episode:
Introduction
Fiona’s experience
PostureMinder
A reminder on health
Conclusion
Resources mentioned in this episode
Episode transcript:
Hello and welcome to Episode 69 of My Daily Business Coach podcast, I'm Fiona Killackey, I am a business coach and I'm super pumped. How good is 2021 so far? Just got to say, after 2020, I feel like any year would be better. But yeah, I hope you are getting stuck into your small business and things are good for you wherever you are listening to this from. And also if this is the first time you're listening, welcome, welcome, welcome.
This today is a quick tip episode. These are really bite size nuggets of information that you can implement immediately in your small business. But I also have long episodes. So they're coaching episodes where I go into just one particular element of business in more detail. And I also have longer episodes which are interview episodes. And that's where I'm interviewing a small business owner on, you know, how did they start? What were the obstacles? What have they learned? Kind of really down to practical things like which technology tools could they not live without? So if this is the first time that you're listening or you've just been listening adhoc, definitely after today's episode, go back and binge on past episodes and then let me know what you think. You can do that by leaving a review on iTunes, or you can just hit me up on the DMs. I'm just at @mydailybusinesscoach and I'm always eager to hear from people who are listening to this and not just listening and learning, but actually implementing what they're hearing.
So thank you. All right. Let's get stuck into today's quick tip episode.
All right, if you're like me, sometimes, I mean, I think this is just everybody generally, whether you like me or not, you'll see a photo of yourself and be like, oh, whoa, and not in like a negative, you know, let's bag ourselves out or bad self-esteem or anything like that. But sometimes you'll see something and it could be, oh, my goodness, I look really good. It could be, oh my goodness. I look really old. Oh my goodness. You know, all sorts of things. And sometimes a photo can actually show that to ourselves. I don't know, something that we haven't maybe noticed as much. Now, I was recently on a photo shoot for a company.
I was doing some sort of business ideas for a campaign that they were running.
And the photographer actually said quite a few times, Fiona, could you just sit up a little bit straighter? Could you just sit up a bit straighter to the point where I was like, gosh, I really slouch. And because I work by myself predominantly in an office which is built in the back of our house, in the garden, I don't really see anybody else. I mean, I see people on Zoom, of course, but I'm not in an office environment. And I think sometimes when you're in that office environment, I've worked in those places before, you are near people who have really good posture.
And so you tend to just see them and be like, oh, I need to sit up. And posture is definitely something I need to be conscious of. I'm a tall person and my husband has quite often been like "Fiona, stand up straight." Because I do have a tendency to slouch. And I think partly that comes from I'm not blaming these people at all. I love my friends. When I was growing up, I was definitely taller than a lot of my friends.
And I think I took to, like, slouching to not look. So, you know, I mean, I'm not so tall, but much taller than them at the time.
So I definitely need to improve on my posture. And 2021, I'm all about new health things that I'm doing and a small thing that I'm doing is my posture. So if you are somebody who sits at a desk predominantly for your work or even you know, you run a retail store, but you're often behind the desk or the front point of sale in the store, then you might want to check out a new chrome plug in.
It's not new, actually. It's new to me that I've been using. I actually did try and use this a few years ago, and I think I just sort of got it put on too many notifications. So you've got to make sure the notification settings suit you. But I've been using it since January 1st this year, and I must say it is really helping. So it's just called PostureMinder and it is a free kind of chrome plugin that will pop up on your desktop to remind you to sit up straight.
And I know you might think, gosh, are you a child? Do you need to be told all the time. But it's just a quick thing to be like, yes, I need to sit up straight now, PostureMinder or anything that I ever recommend on this. I'm not getting paid to do so. I get no kickbacks. It's just one of many, many kind of apps or plug ins that you can put onto your desktop as you're working. That will alert you to various things.
But PostureMinder is just one. But it could literally just go into the App Store and look for posture, posture and see what comes up. There are also I haven't gone this far yet, but I might. There are these little kind of things I've seen where you sort of pop them on your back. And I think they like bugs you every time that your spine goes into a kind of slouchy mode. But PostureMinder that works for me.
It allows you to set up a posture reminder, really, and you can schedule in how long that is. So I have my own schedule to every twenty minutes, but the default I think is fifteen minutes or ten.
Now I found that too much, particularly if I'm on a Zoom call with a client. I do those twice a week and you know, if I'm on a Zoom call for an hour, I'm not going to be like, hey, let's get up. Maybe that should be something that I implement. Hey, we'll see. But for now, I have the PostureMinder every twenty minutes. I also have enabled the tic that you can have on here for a walk reminder. As in literally to get up, go outside, have a bit of a walk for me. It might even just be going into the house making a cup of tea, walking around the outside of my house and then coming back into the office. But these really small things do add up. I had sort of let my health slide for a little bit. I used to be quite fit. I used to run 10 kilometers and all of that.
And I kind of let it slide the last couple of years. And so last year I took up in 2020 mainly because of covid, and I needed to do it for my mental health. I'd already been walking a few mornings a week, but last year I really got into the mode of walking like every day.
And that's really, really helped, I think my mindset for the day to go out for a walk and this posture reminder or the PostureMinder app or chrome plug in is just another way to make small adjustments to my health that are helping me overall. Yes. In business, because, you know, as somebody who owns their own small business, I don't get sick pay if I'm sick and I can't do something or if my back is stuffed and I can't actually work, then I don't get paid, you know, I mean, maybe I've got passive income products, but generally if you run your own business, you are in charge of running it and being there and showing up and so you don't want to get sick.
So health is a part of business and this PostureMinder is just one small way that I can help my posture, help my back and keep myself healthy to be able to run the best possible business that I can.
So that is the quick tip today. If you are somebody who sits at a desk, predominantly, make sure that you are considering your posture, whether that's something that you just do yourself, whether you use something like PostureMinder or one of those plastic things that you can put on your back.
As I said, I'm not going that far yet. Maybe I will, but I really hope that these small tips can help you in business, but also in life. You know, your health is the most important thing that you have.
All right, so that's it. I will leave a link to PostureMinder and two other products that might be good for your posture. Again, we haven't tried any of those. I've just tried PostureMinder. Go at it with your own kind of due diligence. I will leave them in the podcast show notes which you'll be able to find at mydailybusinesscoach.com/podcast/69 again if you're new here, welcome, welcome, welcome.
If you're not new, but you've listen to just a couple, make sure you hit subscribe so you don't miss out on any future episodes. All right. I'll see you next time. Bye.
Thanks for listening to My Daily Business Coach podcast. If you want to get in touch, you can do that at mydailybusinesscoach.com or hit me up on Instagram at @mydailybusinesscoach.
