How to Leave Work at Work for Better Work-Life Balance

How many weeks, months, or years would you gain back if you didn’t waste time stressing, worrying about stress, and more stress? Humans are sometimes hardwired to reinforce anguish or fear with unnecessary mental repetition. It’s part of our otherworldly survival kit. That is why it is not the case after the work is done. You are still working in your head, repeating the tension and pressure. We don’t know how to leave work at work.

The stress replay machine makes it hard to do what the whole point of the job is: live your life and be present for it. However, you can leave work at work and drop the embellishment that makes all non-work seem frivolous, crowds out free time, and makes you feel guilty about enjoying your all-important free time.

Why you need a consistent break from stress

Here’s the problem: Stress suppresses the gaming devices in your brain. The last thing the fight-or-flight response wants from you when it thinks you’re on the verge of life and death in a moment is to have fun.

Luckily, the science of work recovery is here to help us break out of this rut. Researchers in this little-known branch of organizational psychology say the key is psychological detachment from work when we’re not working.

The idea is to take your mind off the sources of tension, stress and fatigue by engaging in regular recreational activities. The revolutionary finding of this science is that stepping back, relaxing, and having fun are not signs of slacking off, but essential tools for productivity, health, and life. Indeed, she are your life.

On the productivity side alone, studies for a century have shown that performance increases after a break. Consistent rest periods through breaks reduce fatigue and reduce the rate at which productivity declines with increased stress. In a Cornell University study, reminding employees to take breaks increased productivity by 13 percent.

Most of my coaching clients have trouble detaching themselves from tasks and feeling good about it. They’ve been trained to derive value from what they do, if it’s just a piece of identity. The truth is that output needs fuel – input in the form of life, curiosity, learning, fun, movement and attention. All this is exactly what rest and relaxation offer. Those are the power engines.

There’s no arguing about physiology

It’s hard to feel guilty about the physics of your own body. We are all subject to the so-called effort recovery model. Energy used up by strain and stress needs to be replaced. Your physiology is born for it – if you let it through the resting and digestive functions of the parasympathetic nervous system. You can’t stay up for a week and do the presentation brilliantly. You can’t stay on a task very long — no more than three hours, some say — without your attention sinking. This is called the time-on-task effect. Concentration wears off over time and the brain has to detach itself from the task in order to restart it.

The same reboot is especially needed after the work day. If strain and stress are not turned off, the mind and body cannot turn off battle stations and replenish nutrients and energetic resources to bring the physiology back to pre-stressor levels. Otherwise, you face the health setback that occurs in a moment of survival — increased heart rate and blood pressure, stalled digestion, elevated bad cholesterol, and suppressed immune system — all of which can lead to heart disease, stroke, high blood pressure, and many other side effects.

The recovery process is essentially a proactive process. Rather than fret, scroll, or vegetate on autopilot, schedule time outside of work demands to do things that relieve mental stress, restore energy, provide a sense of control, and create a positive vibe. You can take a break from work every few hours, go for a walk or exercise in the afternoon and pursue free time and hobbies in the evening – not to mention the experiences you enjoy at the weekend and the use of holidays.

Positive detachment is key – and so is a plan

Studies by recreation leader Sabine Sonnentag and colleagues have shown that people who don’t leave work after the day’s work experience increased levels of stress during the day. You have more fatigue and negative activation – e.g. stress, bad mood and poor sleep. The negative side effects follow them until work the next morning. It’s a cycle that can go on for a long time if recovery doesn’t occur.

Charging and refueling are then essential, no frills. However, it’s hard to make them come true unless you’re doing something you don’t normally do in your free time – plan it. Downtime is usually ad hoc. Maybe you’re taking a break today or meeting up with a friend next week. Commit to putting opportunities for respite from work on your to-do list and calendar. Treat them as seriously as you do your job to-do list.

You can choose your strategies from a mix of the main recovery categories listed below and incorporate them into your evenings and weekends.

relaxation strategies

The goal here is to reduce the activation of stress, muscle tension, and strain through mind-release practices. A great technique to do this is progressive muscle relaxation, a very effective process of tensing and relaxing different muscle groups in the body that takes about 15 minutes.

From breathing mindfully to repeating a phrase in your head, mindfulness meditation can provide deep calm and reduce stress by training the mind to focus on a goal. Meditation also dulls the brain’s self-referential fear center, which constantly asks all the survival questions: What’s going on? how will i make it What will happen?

You can also relax the mind with activities that lift your spirits, such as listening to uplifting music, going for a walk, or doing yoga. The goal is to suppress negative thoughts.

exercise strategies

Bodywork is a great way to get out of your head. Lifting at the gym, running, cycling – these physical activities take the focus out of the thought factory and into the world of action. Aerobic activity is especially good for wiping the mind clean. It is also known to release endorphins that create a calm and positive mood.

mastery strategies

Most of us stop learning things unrelated to work when we are busy with careers. Big mistake. Learning a skill with a new hobby is just what your mind wants. Brain researcher Gregory Berns says that we need two things for long-term fulfillment – novelty and challenge. Mastery experiences give you both and something better. You’re satisfying your competency need, one of your most important psychological needs, and this makes coping activities one of the most effective weapons for reducing stress.

Of course you are not very good at the new job at the beginning. That’s enough to discourage many from trying something new. As an adult, you’re supposed to know everything, so it makes you feel stupid if you’re a chump at salsa dancing or letting a 12-year-old beat you on an orienteering course. Once you’ve overcome the learning curve, you might find yourself in a passion that can add eight hours of enjoyment to the week.

Additionally, if you have something you can do well outside of the job, it provides a haven when things aren’t going well at the office. Your self-worth is maintained no matter what happens during the workday because your identity is no longer confined to a single domain.

To activate work recovery practices, you must override guilt, busyness, and most importantly, thoughts of work that cause stress. You can do the latter by raising your awareness to spot negative ruminations in the act and reminding yourself that they are just thoughts. thoughts are not real. Only experience is real.

You can also use science to prevent reflex rumination with cues of intent and commitment to change the pattern. Dutch researcher Jan de Jonge used these statements to help subjects in a study of burned-out medical workers change work-related thoughts. tell yourself:

“After work, I put all thoughts of work aside.
After work, I put aside all the emotions of work.
After work, I put all physical exertion aside.”

Joe Robinson is the author of Work Smarter, Live Better: The Science-Based Work-Life Balance and Stress Management Toolkit and a stress management trainer and coach at worktolive.info.

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