Forget work when you are not working

These days people are obsessed with the work they do and they keep carrying the baggage of pending tasks in their mind all the times, even if they are not working. I was also one of them and still sometimes possess the same trait. A few months back, it was really difficult for me to answer a simple question: "When was the last time I was actually away from the work?" It's a question for everyone who is reading this post.

Here I am not talking about the work we do in office only( We spend 8-10 hrs in office, and after that work stays in our mind during travel, eating etc and keeps us restless sometimes), but we carry the same baggage with us all the time. So, getting away from work, here, means, getting away from all the worries and thoughts of the work we keep carrying.

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Benefits of getting away from work.

• It's like steemit voting power. When you keep yourself free for some time, your efficiency refills.
• It allows us to give time to complex problems in a fresh different perspective.
• It gives our brain a space to find efficient ways.
• A worry-less mind always in better shape to make good decisions.

There might be many more benefits of getting away from work, but we find ourselves helpless in doing so.

If we work for a longer period for many days in a row, the work mostly achieved is “fake work” - sitting at our desks without actually accomplishing anything or very less. For the sake of sitting, we sit, not for the sake of actual achievement. A task which can be achieved in x hours with a fresh brain can take the multiple of x hour time when done with a pre-occupied mind.

Even if we know the benefits of getting away from the work, still, we can't refrain ourselves from reading the reports at home, thinking about what we did at work before we go to bed, checking emails while people are on leave etc.

When we can’t let go of work while we’re out of the office, we don’t get to enjoy the benefits of time away. Here is how we can develop some fundamental habits to keep ourselves from work when we are not working.

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Focus on what to do, instead of what not to do:

People generally make a goal like, we won't work after our office hours. For few days, these people end up wasting time on thinking about this and doing nothing and then come back to the same routine of working or thinking about the work when they should not be working.

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So, to overcome this, we must choose what should we do after our work hours are finished. This gives us a motivation to achieve that and a sense of accomplishment once we complete that out of work task
Example: I use to play table tennis after my office hours for an hour. It keeps me fit and give me sense of achievement when I hit multiple hard smashes during these games. I love hitting hard. :) Other people might set a target for going to gym, reducing weight, learning a new language. writing on steemit or anything they like.

Change your environment:

A person who wants to take steps towards betterment of work-life and personal-life should not take the carriage along all the time after office hours which tempts a person to get involved or think about the work. Example: Keeping your phone all the time with you which has your professional email account added, will tempt that person to look into those emails again and again whenever a notification comes.

Willingness to disconnect from work:

People must be willing to disconnect from the work. We might miss an important email which needs an urgent attention or sometimes no action at all is required and it's just in our mind to revert to these.. These cases might happen and can develop anxiety. For this, some experiments can be done:

• Don't check email for a night and do this as a first task in the morning. Repeat this for few days and see if it suits or require some changes
• For first few days, leave aside the habit of frequently checking emails. At night check it once ( define a 10-15 mins time duration).
• Try to spend an entire day of the weekend without checking emails and see what happens

After doing these things, we will start realizing, there are few things which are just in mind and in actual world it has no or very less impact.

After doing all these things, still situations will come, where we will have few things about the work which will bug us all the time and will tempt us to jump into the work even if we are not working. In this case, try to write down the things which is bothering you, this helps in reduction of anxiety and also puts us in a good shape to decide if we should work on these tasks even outside our office hours.

Thanks for reading the post!!!

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