It’s 6pm on a Monday afternoon. You’ve just left work (after working overtime again 🙄), and on your commute back home you decide to listen to a podcast about how Steve Jobs made Apple one of the biggest companies in the world.
It’s now 7pm, you’ve made it home, and you can’t stop thinking about how you can apply what you’ve learned at work tomorrow. It’s not until 9pm, when you open up Netflix, that you are able to stop thinking about work. Sound familiar?
Our research has shown that thinking about work during our free time makes us feel stressed. And you’ve probably read enough of our content to know that - stress - is one of the biggest contributing factors towards burnout.
We get asked a lot about how to stop thinking about work during our free time to reduce stress. Here are two simple things you can start doing differently tomorrow:
🔁 Replace Steve Jobs For Steve(n) Fry
It can feel tempting to listen to a work related media on your commute, when you are travelling from place to place, or on the weekend. After all, it’s a “dog eat dog world” and you “need” to “get ahead.” But we recommend spending this time doing something you enjoy (and unrelated to work). Read a book, listen to a podcast*, or pay extra attention to your surroundings. This ritual will help you disconnect from work. 👍
🏢 Leave Work At Work
The best advice is often the simplest. Leave all your work related assets at the office. This includes your phone, your laptop and your notebook. When the urge to check-in on work arises, you won’t be able to act on it. Over time, this urge will completely disappear and the stress will fade away along with it…💆
*Team Velbi highly recommends the audiobook “Mythos” by Steven Fry. If you like Greek mythology, history and the dulcet tones of a British icon, this audiobook is for you!
This Beating Burnout top tip was curated by everyone at Team Velbi. Go Team!
