Close your eyes for a second and dig deep into your psyche. I want you to be truly honest with yourself. Can you do that for me? Ok. Do you truly believe that one day you will actually go home from work with a completely clear desk? No projects left incomplete, no phone calls left to make, no emails to follow up on, no documents to edit, and no meetings to book? The honest to dog truth is that there will always be work left undone at the end of your busy day. Admitting this gives us three options: We can go home, but take the work with us and then spend our evening doing it (or actively suppressing the urge to do it). This ensures maximum tension at home, unrestful rest, and then returning to work the next day tired and resentful.Drag your ass home, leave the work on your desk, then spend the evening fretting over what you left behind. Same results ensue involving the tension and fitful sleep. And when you get back to work next day, you’ll be tired and resentful—and the work will not have been done either.Take a deep cleansing breath, leave the work behind gracefully, truly forget about it, and enjoy a relaxing evening. No tension, lots of rejuvenating rest, plus you return the next day ready to tackle what’s waiting for you. Newsletter Before we dive deeper down this magical list of alternatives, I want encourage you to sign up for the Workplace Hero email newsletter over at workplacehero.me. The sign up form is on the righthand side of the page. Please know that because I believe strongly in the idea of Inbox Zero, you will only receive an email once per week, and it will be short, to the point and easy to delete. Best of all, just for signing up, you will receive a coupon code for 10% off at the online health and fitness store, GreenfieldFitnessSystems.com. Over there they have a huge array of supplements, gear, plans, coaches and clothing that will help keep you healthy and fit. So sign up for the newsletter at workplacehero.me and get your discount code for GreenfieldFitnessSystems.com now. Now back to leaving it all behind OR what happens at work, stays at work. Here are some techniques that I found at Lifehacker.com and crew.co that will help you achieve the last and best of the three options I mentioned. Like a cool down after a hard workout, treat your trip home as positive time to wind down and start the process of relaxation. Play some of your favourite music, or listen to your favourite podcast. I would suggest not catching up on the news or scrolling through social media. Choose something you really like and enjoy and that won’t remind you of work or bum you out about how truly crappy humans can be to each other. There’s a perception that more work equals more productivity, but that’s not always the case. So you never take a sick day, or a vacation, and you are always ‘on-call.’ You also put in about 70 hours a week, so that will pay off eventually I’m sure…oh wait, except it doesn’t. The Economist looked at the data from OECD (Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development) countries found that the more productive workers were actually those that spent less time in the office. Lifehacker takes it one step further and puts an actual number on how many hours we work before we begin to see diminished results (hint: it’s about 30 hours a week). If there was ever a reason to leave work at work, this data should be it. You are actually making yourself more productive! This one is more of a psychological one - match your journey time with the time you need to relax. If that means taking the long, scenic route, so be it. If it means stopping at a park on along the way, that’s just fine. Your family and friends will prefer you half an hour later but in a calm and pleasant mood rather than half an hour earlier but in a foul one. Never be in a hurry to get home. If you do, every hold-up, every traffic jam, every pedestrian trying to cross the street in front of you, every late train, or missed bus will be a source of additional stress. Try to take it easy, and I don’t mean you have to drive under the speed limit. Simply treat your commute home as your time—a period just for you. All day at work, you’re at other peoples’ beck and call. Now it’s time to to relax and be yourself. If you need to rant and/or vent, do it before you leave work or do it along the way. Curse the world in the privacy of your own vehicle or yell at the wind as you ride your bike home. Go to the noisiest part of the subway platform and rant where no one can hear you. Just don’t walk in the door when you arrive home and launch directly into a rant. Who wants to bring a cocktail and slippers to that? Take a minute at the end of the day to write down your accomplishments because it’s easy to get bogged down in everything that you still have to do that you forget everything that you have already done. What good is working if you never take pride in those accomplishments that you put...
