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How to turn off your thoughts during your free time
Feeling burned out? You may be spending too much time ruminating about your job, says psychologist Guy Winch.
Guy Winch, Ph.D., is a psychologist, author, and keynote speaker who advocates for integrating the science of emotional health into all aspects of our daily lives. In his TED talk, he shares helpful advice on how we can all improve our quality of life and our work-life balance by changing the way we think.
The issue with rumination
As Winch explains, rumination means ‘to chew over’, and the reason that doesn’t work in our favour is that we tend to chew over ‘the upsetting things, the distressing things’, in unproductive ways.
This, predictably, leads to stress. And what’s interesting is that we usually experience work-related stress outside of work, instead of at work. At work we’re busy doing our job, so only after (or before) work do we have time to ruminate, thus increasing our stress instead of recharging, as we should.
As ruminations are involuntary, they often invade our minds in the worst moments – when we’re spending ‘quality’ time with our family, partner, or friends.
Fighting your ruminations
Changing habits is challenging and requires a consistent effort, but it’s doable and Winch offers several ways to fight your ruminations.
The first step he proposes is setting clear and strict guardrails. Set yourself a time to disconnect from work every night. As technology can facilitate ruminations, he also suggests turning off email notifications on your phone at that time, and be mindful of how your phone can bring your thoughts back to work during evening and weekends.
Another issue is disconnecting from work when you work from home.
Remote working is continuously growing, and with it, the lines between work and personal life get more and more blurry. To help your mind create a barrier between your work and home spaces, Winch recommends setting a defined work area in your house and only working from there. You can also change into ‘work’ clothes while you’re working, and then into ‘home’ clothes when you’re done.
Make ruminations productive
The above-mentioned tactics will help, but our minds will still sometimes be invaded by ruminations. In this case, Winch explains that we need to convert them into productive forms of thinking.
For example, a common rumination is ‘I have so much work to do’. Its productive version would be a scheduling question: 'When can I fit these tasks into my schedule?'. This way, it becomes a problem to be solved, instead of an unproductive thought that increases stress when you're supposed to be relaxing.
By fighting ruminations, you'll not only decrease stress and burnout, but you can also improve the quality of your life and start enjoying your work again.