Everyone brings work home with them occasionally. Telling your partner about your workday, discussing a mistake, or a win, these are normal amounts of bringing your work home. However, sometimes worries from work can come home and invade our personal lives, completely ruining the precarious work-life balance we are all attempting. You don’t have to live like this. Below are three simple ways that will help you to leave work at work so that you can enjoy your life with those you love.
Start building rituals that will signal to your brain and body that you are changing over from work time to personal time. This could be something as simple as listening to a favorite playlist on the way home, tuning into an audiobook or podcast while you sit on the train, or making a personal phone call that will force you to focus on someone else. You may have to play around with your rituals until you find the right one, or you may end up with a few that you can switch around.
Sometimes the problem with coming home from work is that your brain is still whirling from the stimulation. Try to find ways to channel that stimulation into personal and productive pursuits. This may be deciding what to cook for dinner, making a mental grocery list, or working on a personal creative project when you get home. All these things will allow you to work off that extra brainpower while moving you away from the occurrences of your workday.
Setting aside time to prepare for the coming week will give you an established time to do your thinking and allow you to compartmentalize. This can be an hour on Sunday afternoon to schedule out the week or thirty minutes in the evening to pack your lunch and organize your work bag. The important part is to leave the thoughts of work to that specific time frame and to spend the rest of your time not thinking about it.
Sometimes we can’t help but bring work home, and that is fine. However, if you feel like your workday is coming home nightly, causing problems with your relationships, and interfering with your personal life, it is time to consider taking steps to separate the two areas of your life.
