9 Tips on turning off work mode when you're not at work

Most people have a hard time switching off the tension and thoughts of work at the end of the workday. The mind seems determined not to let go of the day's events and worries. We just can't stop thinking about work.

What keeps the tension going is a side-effect of stress. The stress response is triggered when demands overload your ability to cope with them, switching on a part of the ancient brain that believes there is a threat to your life and limb. As a result, it constricts your brain to the perceived emergency of the moment, causing that loop of worry to spin round and round. 

Even if you are not physically working, you seem to be working mentally 24/7.   

• You are dwelling on the people issues you are facing while commuting after work to pick up your kids after school.
• You find yourself zoning out at the playground, lost in thoughts about how to facilitate a big meeting you have the next week.
• As soon as you wake up in the morning, a list of work to-do’s rushes into your head. It’s as if your brain was working in the background all night solving issues.
• On the weekends you still wake up thinking about the past week, about some things you wish you had done differently. 

You may say, “Well, no wonder you are thinking about work all the time. You have a lot of responsibilities.  It ‘s really normal for you to have this level of stress, given your job.”   I would actually disagree with you.

Here are five disadvantages from over-thinking about work:

You are draining your brain – When you think about work all the time, you are not letting your brain rest enough to be 100% the next day and you can’t perform at your best the next day.  
It's impacting your health –  Thinking about work all the time is an indulgence that will affect our physical health in the long run.
You are not enjoying your life – You may be physically present with your family on weeknights and weekends, you are not always mentally there.  
You start to hate your job  – You start to get tired of work because it’s in your head all the time. Most of the time you are unable to stop thinking about work and it’s completely self-imposed.
Unproductive Use of Time  – Although you may be thinking about work at home, you are not actually doing any work.  Your brain is only repeating work thoughts and scenarios.   And it is actually an unproductive use of your non-work time.

Unproductive work thoughts:

• Unfinished To-Dos
• Unresolved Work Issues
• Dwelling on Past Events
   

  9 Tips on How to Stop Thinking about Work

Here are some strategies you can practice:

1. Be Self-Aware - Instead of letting your brain run away with all these unproductive work thoughts,  start identifying them every time they occur. It will give you control over your brain. And after you start catching yourself, you can do something about it.
    
2. Don’t bring work home. Implement a 10 Minute Buffer – Finish up at the office if you possibly can, preserving the rest of your time for other things. It might even be worth it to put in an extra hour at the office in order to avoid carrying things out. If you do need to bring work home, be sure to pack it up and put it away once you finish. It’s hard to relax and enjoy dinner when a pile of paperwork is sitting off to the side.
   Dedicate 10-15 minutes at the end of each work day to think about what still needs to be done, and then write out a to-do list. This can help you “park” your thought at the end of the day. You can also arrive 10 minutes earlier in the morning and take that time to get into work mode and prioritize what you must do that day.
    
3. Use your daily commute as a bridge - Try using your commute to let the worries of one side go and hone in on the priorities of where you’re heading.
   When you’re on your way home, imagine that you’re on a bridge, leaving the troubles and concerns of work behind you. You can do the same thing, in reverse, in the morning. Everyone complains about commuting, but it serves a purpose: creating space between “work” and “home.”
    
4. Take a mental break - When the well starts to run low, you need to take a little break in order to let it fill back up again.
    
5. Give Your Brain a Different Problem to Solve –  None of us can actually multitask.  Our brains can only focus on one thought at a time.   One of the best ways to stop thinking about work is to focus on something else, preferably something fun and creative.  
    
6. Practice Forgiveness – Regret seems to be an instinctual emotion for all of us.    Instead of trying to suppress your feelings of regret, look at it differently by giving yourself the freedom to leave the past in the past, and start fresh every day.  It’s better to focus on what we can do right now, and what we can learn today and in the future. Also, by forgiving yourself, you can forgive others — after all, no one is perfect
    
7. Give Yourself a “Worry Time” - Schedule a later time to stress. Think, “I’ll respond to that email tomorrow morning over coffee, and I won’t think about it until then,” or “That awful meeting is set for Tuesday, so I’ll set aside two hours on Monday to prepare for (freak out about) it.” As Vanderkam puts it, “Often, your brain just needs to know that there’s a time for thinking about that issue—and now is not that time.
   When you’re no longer actively thinking about a problem, that’s when those great solutions come to your head.
8. Learn, Practice, & Grow – That this experience is just part of the journey of life.   Believe in the growth mindset — we can all change for the better every day.  
   The more we do something, the more it’s part of our routine and our mindset, and the easier it is to do. As you gain practice and experience with detaching from work when you’re not physically there, you’ll find it’s easier and easier to do.
    
9. Remember what’s most important - At the end of the day, your job is just your job. Your personal life matters a great deal as well, and giving that part of your life solid focus, time, and attention is really important. Hold your priorities firmly in your mind, and don’t let yourself get swept up in our crazy culture of overwork.