How to Relax After a Hard Day: Leaving Work at Work

You had a challenging, productive and sometimes stressful day at the office. You then battled traffic to make it home. Now you need to put your mind at ease, recharge your battery, and refresh yourself so you can do the whole thing again tomorrow.

Yet the house is a mess, the kids are restive, and your partner wants to know what you're cooking for dinner (yes, it's your turn).

Or perhaps things at home are relatively calm, but your mind is anything but. Try as you might, you just can't stop turning over the day's events - and obsessing about tomorrow's challenges. Your evening leisure hours have been stolen by work thoughts - and before you know it, it will be time to go back.

If either of these scenarios described your after-work evenings and weekends, you might need to work a little harder at something that seems like it should come easy. Taking a well-earned breather after a long day at the office.

Like most other tasks, relaxation is a skill - one that repays the effort of learning it. Mastering the art of relaxation off the job can make you more rested, focused, energetic - and successful - on it.

Does relaxing really matter?

If you're having trouble resting your mind away from the office, you already know it. But what are the consequences? Here are just some of the troubles the tired and relaxation-challenged face at work:

• Difficulty concentrating
• Bad moods and rising workplace conflict
• A lack of new ideas or fresh insights
• A loss of enthusiasm for, and enjoyment of, their jobs

Combined, these unfortunate tendencies can highjack the highest-flying career. Learning to chill might be your most urgent task!

How to relax

We suggest a three-pronged approach to relaxing after work, involving your body and mind, your home environment and what you do in your time off. It may take you a little while to set everything up for relaxing after work, but once you have you'll be able to enjoy your "down time" more as well as recharging your batteries so that you're raring to go the next morning.

Relaxation techniques

Start by deep breathing, progressive muscular relaxation and the relaxation response to learn how to relax your body.

Although relaxation is important, your body can only be truly prepared for the next day if it gets the amount of sleep it needs. 

Taking the stress out of your home environment

Clean your house, free your mind. If your relaxation problems stem from a stressful home life, you probably need to focus on making your house a calm haven. This will take some up-front energy - the actual act of changing habits may not be particularly relaxing - but it has potential to pay serious mind-clearing dividends.

The first step is to consider your messiness level. Most people find it hard to relax in a chaotic home. When you arrive from a long day at work, are there dishes piled up? Are clothes strewn throughout the bedroom? Adopt a house rule common to restaurant kitchens the world over: Clean as you go.

Much depends on dinner. Modern life has made dinner both a challenge and an opportunity. It's a challenge because modern working and commuting have made it difficult to share a leisurely, well-cooked home meal with family and friends. Yet it's an opportunity because there are multiple time-saving options for the evening meal.

One strategy for maximizing relaxation is to plan dinners for the week ahead. If this seems excessive, stop for a moment, and think about what you're doing from a project management perspective. You're sourcing materials, and creating deliverables for three or four people over a seven day period to a fixed schedule. Would you do this at work without planning ahead?

A plan like this opens time and headspace for real relaxation. As with your to-do list at work, keeping everything in your head is stressful. Once you've got it down on paper, you no longer need to remember every detail. Your mind can relax!

Engaging your mind

So, now your body is calm, you've sorted out housework and brought dinner to heel. What do you do with all the time you've opened up? The trick is to find a way to engage your mind, to take it away from work, so you can be more present at work when you go back.

For many people, the fast-and-easy way to forget work is to self-medicate with alcohol. But this solution muddles rather than clears the mind, and will return you to work feeling depleted, not refreshed. What's more, in excess, it can damage your health.

Here are some better alternatives:

• Indulge in a hobby
• Be a connoisseur
• Take up a sport
• Look to the East

Taken from Mindtools.com