Switch-off

How to switch-off after work and boost your productivity

By Michael Johnson
Photo by Ustem Gurler

In the modern working world, people wear the overworking habits like a badge of honor; however, your knack for staying in the office (or at your home laptop) until 9 p.m. and answering your emails late into the night does not make you a good employee. Research has shown that a happy employee is an efficient employee, and those that have perfected the art of a suitable work-life balance are 28% more productive than those who haven’t. A willingness to work all hours of the day and not draw a sharp distinction between your work life and your personal life can have a detrimental effect on your well-being, and impact your performance in a negative way.

The ideal way to stay productive is to make the most of your time in the office or online and to draw a line between your time in the workplace and your time outside of it. Here’s your brief guide to switching-off after the working day ends, and boosting your productivity as a result.

9 to 5 means 9 to 5
The most important way to keep a good line between work and personal life is to ensure you have a disciplined schedule and a firm cut-off point for when it is no longer acceptable to continue working. If you have standard US office hours of 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., then those are the hours you should be working, no more. Set a timer on your email account to make sure notifications are switched-off once you leave the office, and be firm with colleagues about when it is acceptable to discuss work. The important thing is to be assertive.

How to Transition from Work to Play
Switching-off after a busy day at work is easier said than done, so make sure that you have some tried and tested activities in place to do once you clock out, in order to ease your brain into a post-work mode. The best time to do this is during your commute home or during your first hour after work, and the best activity is a solitary one. You could try reading a book, or better yet, playing some online games to ease your mind. With the accessibility of online games and casino games, in particular, being more accessible than ever, simply popping open your laptop on the bus ride home and playing some table games at William Hill is an example of an easy way to erase the stresses of the day and get into a post-work state of mind. Working your post-work activity into your daily schedule is key, so make sure to keep at it until it feels like second nature.

Maintaining a Healthy Work-Life Balance
The internet giant Google has invested serious resources into establishing a work-life balance for their employees and has found that the happiest and most useful workers are the ones that can maintain that balance effortlessly. It usually takes a few weeks to be able to get into the habit of forgetting about work once your paid hours are over, so commitment and plenty of tried and tested activities are the ultimate way to go.

With hard work and exhaustion acquiring a position as a kind of status symbol, it’s more important than ever to remember that your real life is more important and that you should work to live, rather than living to work.