You can’t work to rest: how not to think about business after hours (and why it’s useful). How tired of constantly thinking about work ... How to relax without thinking about problems

How often do you, dressing in a dressing gown and fluffy slippers with hares, with a mug of hot tea and cookies, remember that you didn’t finish the report at work and made a mistake, for which they will report you tomorrow morning. As a result, no rest is a joy for you, you cook dinner with tension, refuse your husband’s caresses, speak strictly with children, and think only about work. And the next day, having resolved all work issues, you remember about offended children and a quarrel with your husband. And the tape of life again shifts by one frame. How to stop thinking about working at home and finally start living in the moment?

Try to accept the idea that without you at work, nothing will fall apart. It is always pleasant to think that we are irreplaceable, that all the cases that are addressed to us are urgent and important, that without us there is simply nowhere! There is a law in business: 80% of the cases that you put off for at least an hour, then resolve themselves. A colleague looking for a lost document will find it himself if he does not get through to you. It turns out that an urgent response to the letter will not speed things up at all. Check it out!

4. Give yourself permission to finish what really bothers you.

Sometimes it happens that unfinished business is disturbing, like crumbs in bed or a pebble in a shoe. You can't find your place by remembering whether you closed the safe or whether your report got through. Do not fill your head with these thoughts, it will not get better anyway. If you have the opportunity, check / finish the job and disconnect from work until the morning.

Why are you thinking about work? Because it's more interesting for you. We are always thinking about what we are attached to. It turns out that you are not interested in the house! It's time to find a hobby, organize an interesting pastime with family or friends. Find something pleasant that will absorb your thoughts completely, and you will immediately forget about work. Try painting, getting a massage, going to karaoke, buying board games to play with your husband and kids.

6. Work on yourself and/or relationships

They say that a woman always gets more happiness from relationships. With her beloved man, she can forget about everything, not only about work. Therefore, if you “ran away” to work and constantly think about it, it means that something does not suit you in the relationship. Do not turn away from the problem, think about what should meet you at home so that you mentally remain in the family all your free time.

If you are single, then take care of your personal life. Work on yourself, think about what is preventing you from starting a family, develop yourself. Going headlong into work, you begin to live in an illusion, and for sure, lying under a cold blanket, you understand this. If you change priorities, thoughts about work will leave you. And maybe not just outside business hours.

7. Plan your working hours correctly

How to stop thinking about working from home

Thoughts about work often torment us at home due to the fact that we do not have time to cope with the entire workload in the allotted 8 hours. Why? The morning starts with coffee and gatherings with colleagues. Social networks are addictive: logged in for 5 minutes, logged out in half an hour. As a result, all work begins running after lunch.

Start working in the morning, make yourself a plan for the day, while leaving 20-25% of the time as a “airbag” in case a really urgent matter arises. And if it doesn’t, then you can easily devote this time to a smooth transition of thoughts from a work topic to a vacation topic. And experience shows an interesting fact: the less time we have to work, the faster we will do it.

8. Use the "switch" method

If you can hardly stop thinking about work, even when you cook borscht at home, then it's time to give yourself another load, during which you simply won't be able to think about anything else.

Take up dancing or join the gym, run. Any kind of physical training automatically clears the head of the Brownian movement of thoughts. You will also be helped by courses where homework is given, such as language or sewing.

But be careful that this does not become another substitute for your life in the family. People at home are unlikely to be happy that you have stopped talking and thinking about working at home, but at the same time you are constantly sitting at the computer with headphones on, trying to put yourself in French pronunciation.

It turns out that the inability to switch thoughts after work to a wave of rest, communication with friends and family is directly related to professional burnout syndrome. Coming or already existing. You can learn more about this from our video:

Lyubov SHCHEGOLKOVA

Let's be clear right now. If you're one of those lucky people doing what you love, you don't need these recommendations. Think about your work whenever and wherever you want. The main thing is to avoid overeating. After all, even the most beloved thing can get boring if you do not pause to recharge the batteries or let off steam.

Men are unlikely to be interested in these tips. As folk wisdom says, men at work think about women, and with women - about work. Of course, this is a joke, and everyone needs to turn off such thoughts. After all, when we spend our energy on thinking about work in our free time, we have less energy left for the actual work. Thus, a vicious circle is formed. There is no strength for anything, including work. The question is how to switch profitably.

So, if you feel that it is vital for you to free your brain from thoughts about work matters, use our recommendations.

1. Sign up for foreign language courses, floristry, landscape design. Any intellectual or creative activity will allow you to focus on business and stop the flow of thoughts about work. No wonder smart people say that the best rest is a change of activity.

2. Go to the gym, workout, swim, ride a bike, work in the country:. Give yourself such a physical load that your only thought is how to twist, walk, sit down and stand up ... Inhale - exhale, inhale - exhale, one, two, three ... Work? What job?

3. Schedule your evenings and organize meetings with friends (but first swear that not a word about work will be said), trips to theaters, movies, concerts, romantic evenings with your loved one. Even if in the evening there is no strength, it would seem, for nothing but TV, make an effort - and you will be grateful to yourself. A second wind will open, and communication will help get rid of obsessive thoughts about business, calls, letters. Communicate with nature: walk in the forest, listen to the birds, contemplate this beautiful picture. At some point, you will feel that the head has disconnected from the bustle of work, and the body has been filled with energy.

4. If you have children, give your free time to them, not to the computer. Children already know exactly what to do with your head while you are with them. Organize a children's party for your children and their friends. Believe me, if twenty kids are running around you, you will not have time to think about work - a lot of trouble.

5. Expand your network of contacts, make acquaintances at various events. We can often meet people with a completely different philosophy of life, not like ours, different from our dreams, deeds, happiness. Such communication helps to discover new qualities and new motivation for work. Who knows - maybe soon something will change in your outlook, and work will become not something you get tired of, but something you cannot live without.

Focus on your responsibilities. Although it may seem a little strange, because we already think about our work that way. If you're thinking to yourself, "This is the 35,098,509 sandwich I made today," then the job will seem lousy. The seconds will pass slowly. Instead, mentally imagine that you have already fed 35,098,509 people today. It got a lot better, right?

Set a goal. There is a term "break". Some time ago, a serial killer appeared among the post office workers. One of the arguments explaining his breakdown was the monotony of work at the post office. Why did this cause a breakdown? Every person needs motivation. Whether you're making your 100th sandwich or delivering your 100th letter, it's easy to feel like you're treading water day in and day out. Your boss cannot give you motivation. You must do this. What is your goal?

• If it makes it easier, then think about the goal, just the current day. Once you have set a goal for the day, try to set a goal for the week. This will help you to go to the intended goal and achieve your goal. And the more you do from what you have planned, the faster time will flow for you.

Ask your boss to assign you the things you enjoy doing the most. Most likely you have a number of duties and assignments that you need to complete. Naturally, among them there are those that you like. There may be assignments that you are afraid to take on. Do yourself a favor and ask your boss to start doing tasks that you enjoy. Time will go much faster if you enjoy the work you do.

• It's good for your boss too. A happy employee who enjoys what he or she does brings more value to the company in the long run.

Take breaks. You may think that you will lose momentum. However, the situation is exactly the opposite. Breaks will help your brain to rest, so that you can get back to work with renewed vigor. If your boss objects, show him the results of research in this area. It has been proven that people work better if they take 5-10 minute breaks every hour. Your brain needs a recharge, so why not take a break?

• If you sit during the day, be sure to get up and move around during your break. Go to the restroom. Walk or just stretch. This will help increase blood circulation.

At the beginning of each day, make a to-do list. Separate hard and easy tasks. After that, think about your body. What time of the day are you most energetic and when do you need to take a nap? Finish all your difficult tasks at the peak of your activity, and leave the simple ones for later. So you will use your time to good use and will not notice how it flies by.

• Each person has their own rhythm. Some people need only 4 hours of sleep, while others have a hard time waking up in the morning. Only you know your biorhythms.

Psychologist's answer:

Hello Viola!

In your letter, you ask what is causing your condition and whether it can be cured. Let's try to figure it out.

Based on what you wrote in the letter, I can assume that your condition is indeed related to the recent breakup of the first relationship. Plus, I think that you are a very sensitive and receptive nature, and because of this, your experiences were so long and difficult.

All people come out of failed relationships in different ways, with different baggage. Someone draws conclusions from what happened and in the future tries to act in accordance with what knowledge he acquired in past relationships, while someone, like you, begins to look for reasons for failure in himself, which leads to a decrease in self-esteem and depression. Which, in the future, can lead to an increase in the general level of anxiety, as a result of which fears like yours may appear. This is how our psyche works.

Therefore, work on oneself must begin not with the fight against these fears, but with the study of those problems that led to this state. That is, work on increasing self-esteem, learning to love and accept yourself and your life. And then, finding inner harmony will lead to a general harmonization of all spheres of inner psychological life, including anxiety and fear.

To begin with, try to figure out what qualities you stopped loving in yourself after breaking up with a young man? In other words, what are you scolding yourself for? What do you dislike about yourself? Take a sheet of paper and write down all your unloved qualities.
And then ... then you need to learn to love all this. Love unconditionally no matter what. After all, these qualities manifested themselves in a certain situation, with a certain person, which means that you could not be any other in that situation.
Yes, it is not easy to accept your qualities that seem negative, but it is necessary, because only you are the mistress of your destiny, you can live with yourself, therefore, your life is in your hands.

Viola, if you find it difficult to cope on your own, I recommend that you contact a psychologist who works with anxiety problems. Because it’s not always easy to deal with everything that happens in your life on your own. You can contact me or another psychologist on this site and have several sessions on Skype. You can look for a psychologist in your city for face-to-face consultations.

And do another exercise. Take a piece of paper and write down what you love about yourself. your good qualities. Not less than 10. Better than 15-20. When the going gets tough, reread this leaflet. These qualities are your support on the way to finding harmony with yourself!

Psychologists believe that only a life in which there is a certain balance between work and personal can be considered happy and fulfilling. If all that a person sees day after day is the office and colleagues, he will very soon experience professional burnout. Do you know how I realized that I was too close to such a state? I stopped switching from working moments to home ones and for the last 2 weeks I only think about our company and tax accounting. I even began to write less because I can’t “catch the Muse”.

Where did the handy ability go?

I used to forget about work at the very moment I left the office doors and lived by the principle: everything that happens at work remains outside its door. Now I constantly keep in mind the rules for filling out this or that report, I worry about the unfinished certificate and so on. Everything would be fine, you might think that I'm just a workaholic, but now even the long-awaited vacation has ceased to be joyful, because thoughts are far from friends and walks ...

Even on weekends, I'm just haunted by thoughts of work. I constantly think about what I will do, starting from Monday, I remember where I made a mistake, I worry that I could “screw up” somewhere else. As a result, I myself poison my day off with not the most pleasant thoughts. What to do?

How to stop thinking about working moments at least at home and start enjoying your life again? If you don’t learn to separate your work space from your personal space, you can ruin your relationship with your family, undermine the health of your nervous system, and incur depression and apathy. So, it's time to find a balance between professional activities and home.

Switching thoughts

Let's start with the simplest: if you notice the problem mentioned above in yourself, this is already good, now you need to learn how to switch your thoughts to the “new wave” as soon as the office door closes. You can turn on your favorite music on your phone, you can start an interesting audiobook. It is only very important to turn your attention completely to the book and music, and not to use them as a background for your work-oriented thoughts.

If you like to enjoy the world around you without the interference of extraneous sounds, you can simply pay attention to nature, to people passing by. Believe me, even with such seemingly strange things, you will occupy your tired brain and wean it from constantly thinking about work, completing things in your mind that you didn’t have time to do.

Apparently, the time has come for me to download another book to my phone, otherwise the same music no longer switches my attention and, going home, I think in what order and what exactly I will do tomorrow.

Get help from loved ones

Ask your family to stop you every time you talk about work. Your family is the first people to suffer from inability to switch. In addition, people who live near us are usually quite attentive and they will be able to understand by our appearance alone that we are again thinking about another project or problem.

Today I already told my sister not to let me tell anything about my work, otherwise even at the last visit of my girlfriend, I painted in all colors to her what solution I came up with for our accounting program. I can imagine how interesting and fun it was for her ... But I can’t help myself.

No work at home!

Tell me, do you also regularly check your work email, even when you are at home? Do colleagues call you after the end of the working day? If not, then you are lucky people, because I stop returning my thoughts to work only when I fall asleep.

In order not to suffer other aspects of our lives, we need to consciously limit ourselves: stop checking mail, learn not to discuss work issues with colleagues after hours. I generally think about turning off the phone after 18.00. I'm not sure that the authorities will appreciate my impulse, but you can try.

The only thing I'm afraid is that I will be reproached for not taking my work seriously, because our director is used to the fact that we are ready to answer any of his questions at any time of the day. Recently, he asked the chief engineer to create something there, and to the quite reasonable remark of the latter that he simply did not have time for this, he replied that this “something” could be created at home. And the director does not care at all that his employee has a wife and two small children who need the attention of their father.

Work on your relationship

No matter how skeptical I am about this, I think that many women in the modern world get much more pleasure from relationships, and not from solving work issues and moving up the career ladder.

Psychologists even argue that when a girl has a beloved man next to her, her thoughts, as a rule, revolve around him. If you constantly think about work, it is quite possible that something does not quite suit you in personal relationships. It is better not to turn away from the problem, but to think about what can be changed in order to happily return home and mentally stay in the family all your free time.

A week ago, my sister and I had a very serious fight and for the first time I felt what it was like not wanting to leave work. And this is just a sister ... Conflicts with a loved one are experienced an order of magnitude more difficult.

If a woman is single, it's time to think about her personal life. Perhaps start working on your appearance, think about what exactly prevents you from finding a man. I know for sure that going headlong into work really saves, but, unfortunately, not for long. And then the obsessive thoughts about the office are mixed with no less obsessive thoughts about their own loneliness.

I think that if we change our priorities a little, thinking about work will leave us. Here it is important not to go to the other extreme - the lack of professional thoughts even during working hours. I know, I passed, I made a bunch of serious mistakes because of which I received a reprimand ...

Don't Forget Legal Rest

At the moment, I have accumulated more than 40 days of annual leave, but do you think I use them? No, because I just do not understand how I can leave the enterprise to its fate.

For those who, like me, cannot switch from work to home, you need to try to accept the idea that nothing in the office will fall apart without you and me. Of course, it is insanely nice to feel like an indispensable specialist, but I know for sure that there are no such people! So, you can ask for your legal leave with a clear conscience and enjoy the company of family, friends and relatives.

Organize interesting leisure

Why do you think people think about work even at home? Maybe one of the reasons is banal boredom, when it’s simply not interesting in a homely atmosphere? If this is the case, then it's time to find a hobby, organize an interesting pastime with loved ones and friends. Try to find something so pleasant and exciting that it will completely absorb your thoughts and beat the work out of them.

Only personally, I advise you to choose some kind of "live" and by no means monotonous activity. For example, I recently tried to embroider with beads - it's beautiful, but elementary mechanical movements do not help to switch. Rather the opposite.

Almost everyone has two days off, which means that at least one of them can be spent the way you want. Spit on everything and draw positive emotions from what was so lacking during the working week. One is perfectly helped by nature, another by an interesting book, the third by going to a club. For example, I decided to spend the next Saturday entirely on the beach without a phone, Internet access and all alone.

By the way, you can even just lie on the couch, the main thing is that it brings you pleasure.

It is very important to relax not only on weekends, but also after a hard day's work. You should not grab a rag and a vacuum cleaner with huge eyes, start preparing a complicated dinner. No, of course, you can do it, but only if such activity brings you pleasure. It doesn’t bring me, so I clean only on Saturdays, and cook only 2 times a week, but a lot at once. If you spend the whole weekend doing household chores, you will not only not rest, but you will hardly get up on Monday for a boring job.

Rational use of working time

Very often, thoughts about work torment us even at home due to the fact that we did not have time to cope with piled-up cases in an 8-hour day. Why is this happening? One of the reasons is the irrational use of time, when the morning does not start with the most important thing, but with coffee and a conversation with a colleague.

For me, such gatherings often dragged on for 30-60 minutes (when the director was not at the workplace). More social networks ... They are so addictive: it seems to have gone in for only 5 minutes, and spent at best half an hour in them. Because of all this, recently the peak of my work fell on 2 hours and lasted only up to 5. Honestly, I don’t have time for anything during these hours, but it’s my own fault!

It is very important to start “doing things” in the morning. It is even more important to make plans for the day, laying in them the real number of cases. When every minute is occupied in your schedule, you will be able to do much more, which means there will be no problems that you will think about after hours.

In general, thinking a lot about work is even unhealthy, because spoiled nerves and a bad mood have never made anyone happier. So, it's time to eradicate this problem from your life.

I know that the majority of those present here are freelancers, who, most likely, do not have a clear line between work and personal time. But I think that you definitely have something to advise those who do not know how to switch. How do you do it and do you do it at all? Or are you ready to respond to customers at any time of the day, without thinking that your family and friends also require attention?