Do you take your work home? Everyone does, no matter if they’re working at home remotely or commuting to an office. If you’re one of those people that carry a problem from work over into your private life, this blog is for you.
How to Leave Office Problems at the Office
How many times have you tossed and turned, worried about going to work the next day? It happens to all of us. Ultimately, this can not only be problematic for your health, it can actually lessen your productivity at the office—which could potentially compound your problems.
Set Aside Time to Transition
The first step toward stopping this cycle of worry is to set aside even 15 minutes before you get home to “shake it off.” What would happen if you started a new process of walking around outside for 15-minutes before you got in your car to head home? What if you listened to a funny podcast on your commute home? (This same process can help even if you’re a remote worker, by the way.) The idea here is to draw a line of demarcation between work and whatever the problem is—and home.
Keep Work Out Of Your Home
Once you get home, limit your discussion of work—if you have to talk about work at all—to 15 minutes. Ideally, we’re suggesting you don’t discuss work when you’re at home, because you’re trying to leave whatever stress you had there at the office. If you bring up work when you’re at home, it’s too easy for your brain to reengage with whatever was stressing you out when you were at the office. If you and your spouse do talk about work, try setting the 15-minute rule and then try to not discuss or think about it again until you get to work the next day.
Sure, you’re thinking, this all looks good on paper. It’s true that it’s hard to change the behavioral and thought patterns to allow yourself to leave work at work. But top psychologists suggest these methods will help you learn new ways of handling stress. A recent article in Inc. calls this a process of “divergent thinking,” where you “subconsciously untangle work issues” from the rest of your life. They say, “if you leave work stressed, frustrated, or anxious, you’re going to continue uninterrupted on that psychological path unless you proactively do something to change your mood.”
Find The Right Activity
Sure, it’s easier probably to crack a box Twinkies (or a bottle of wine) to try to deal with your work stress, but in the long run you’ll just create more problems for yourself. Instead, exercising, listening to good music, or playing with your kids before dinner, may help get out some of the worries that are better left at the office. You could even work with a career coach to help iron out work issues that might be making you unhappy.
A side effect about these exercises is that it gives your head the mental space necessary that might allow you to actually come back to work and solve the problem that’s bugging you.
Find a Job That Brings You Joy Not Stress
With all this said, one thing to consider is that the same amount of work stress doesn’t flow across every job. Have you considered the option of a new position in a less stressful setting? Maybe the problem isn’t you at all but the work environment that you find yourself it. Today, good job candidates have lots of options for a better career path. That’s where People Plus can help. We work with candidates just like you to help them find new opportunities. Don’t settle for a role where you’re overly stressed. In today’s job market, you have options.
Contact People Plus. We’re here to help.
