The Physical Weight of Working Alone 🫀

Hello, solo workers,

Turns out, working alone all day isn’t just making you weirdly excited to see the Amazon driver.

Isolation can show up in your body too.

This week, we’re looking at what too much solo time can do to your nervous system and physical health, plus simple habits that help protect both.

Because remote work should give you more freedom, not quietly take a toll on your health.

— Ric & Shellie

P.S. Know someone whose most consistent human contact is waving at the delivery guy? Send your unique referral link their way. 🙌🏼

Working alone doesn't just get lonely. It raises your blood pressure, lights up your inflammation and quietly deletes two hours of movement from your day.

By Andy Naylor

I coach business leaders around the world. Almost all of them work alone in some capacity.

Not lonely, they'd tell you. Busy!
Ten calls a day, four hundred unread emails, a team across three time zones. Alone is not the word they'd choose.

Me?
September 2019. Five and a half years as an in person PT, surrounded by people all day. I got sick of opening someone else's gym, so I took the business online and called it freedom.

What I'd actually done was swap a room full of humans for a kitchen table and a screen.

Andy shares his story about fitness and loneliness →

By Becca Marshall

Resourced Living is a monthly column for remote workers, weaving practices and tools as lifestyle medicine– so you can stay balanced, clear, and supported in everyday life.

Working alone and feeling isolated are not the same thing.

Many of us genuinely enjoy the autonomy of remote work. But whether we're leading distributed teams, working independently, or contributing within them, there's a quieter risk worth noticing:

When we work alone, it can become surprisingly easy to carry everything alone.

Habits form. We work before or after the clock. Push through lunch. Problem-solve solo rather than ask for help. We may even wear our ability to handle it all as a badge of honor.

And connection can slowly become optional.

Becca shares how meaningful connections reduce stress →

🤔 Factors Influencing Reducing Sedentary Time in Home Office Employees. We all don't sit too much because we’re lazy, we sit because we don't feel permission to move. Waiting for a manager's approval to take a walk isn't autonomy, it's a Gap. Our take: movement is infrastructure, not a break you have to earn. Somatic Sovereignty means building your own accountability, your own short-break cadence, your own culture of standing up, without waiting on an employer who was never going to grant it. You run your own operation. Act like it.

🤔 Loneliness and Isolation in the Era of Telework: A Comprehensive Review of Challenges for Organizational Success. This confirms what we all already sense: isolation and burnout share one root cause, blurred boundaries and unmanaged energy, not weak willpower. The data ties reduced face time directly to burnout, technostress, and eroded focus. Our take: this isn't an HR problem to outsource, it's a discipline gap to close. Somatic Sovereignty means treating energy management, movement, and contact minimums as professional infrastructure, not self-care. The fix isn't fewer remote days. It's building the systems the office used to provide for you, on your own terms.

Next week: Accountability With No One Checking Your Work - Without office structure, remote workers often struggle. Discover self-tracking systems and peer networks to stay productive without managers, surveillance, or guesswork.