How to leave it all behind you at the end of the day
The keys to going home gracefully
It’s a myth that you will one day be able to go home from a clear desk. It’s never going to happen.
The plain truth is that there will always be work undone at the end of the day.
This gives you three options:
1) Go home, but take the work with you and spend your evening doing it. This ensures maximum friction at home, minimum rest, and returning to work next day tired before you start.
2) Drag your body away, leave the work, then spend the evening fretting over what you left behind. Same results for friction and rest. When you get back to work next day, you’ll be tired—and the work will not have been done either.
3) Leave the work behind gracefully, forget about it, and enjoy a relaxing evening. No friction, lots of rest, return next day refreshed and ready to tackle what’s waiting for you.
Here are some techniques to help you achieve the last of these three options: to make a smooth transition between work and home at the end of the day, have a pleasant evening, and get the rest and refreshment you need.
- Treat your commute home as a positive time to wind down and start the process of relaxation. Play some favorite music, if you can. Whistle or sing to yourself. Enjoy the drive or the train journey. You might as well, since you have to do it, enjoyable or not. Don’t catch up on the news. It’s bound to remind you of work or depress you.
- Match your journey time with the time you need to relax. If that means taking the long, scenic route, so be it. If it means stopping at Starbucks, that’s just fine. Your family and friends will prefer you half an hour later in a calm mood rather than half an hour earlier in a foul one.
- Never hurry home. If you do, every hold-up, traffic jam, late train, or missed bus will be a source of additional stress. Take it easy, even if you don’t dawdle.
- Treat your commute home as your time—a period just for you. All day at work, you’re at other peoples’ call. Now it’s time to to relax and be yourself. Don’t turn the people at home into imaginary “bosses” monitoring your progress along the way and eager to complain over every lost moment.
- On a bad day, leave for home early and arrive on time or later. The worse the day, the more time you will need to relax. The worst thing to do is stay late, then rush home. You’ll arrive like a grizzly bear with toothache.
- If you need to rant and vent, do it along the way. Curse the world in the privacy of your own vehicle. Park up and yell where no one can hear you. Walk to the station the long way, yelling and cursing (silently!) to yourself. Don’t walk in the door when you arrive and start into a rant. Who wants to welcome anyone like that?
- If you must take work home—and you should treat that idea as you would infecting yourself with a specially repulsive social disease—agree a set time to do it and stick to that agreement. Early is best. If you spend an hour or more working before you get into bed, you’ll be wide awake, probably sleep badly, and start the next day off on a poor footing. Besides, who wants to make love to someone running over budgets in their head at the same time?
- When you get home, pay full attention to whoever’s waiting for you. Never be present physically and mentally elsewhere—it’s an insult. Even the most insignificant domestic matters can wean help your mind away from work.
- Always keep your promises. If you’ve arranged to eat out, don’t cancel, pleading tiredness or extra work. If you’ve promised to help your child with homework, do it whatever. Firstly, people who break promises are teaching those around them a dangerous lesson. Secondly, though you may really, really not want to do what you promised, you may well end up enjoying it—and feel far more energized than if you slumped in front of the TV. And lastly, you promised, remember? Don’t be a jerk as well as a wimp.
- Be firm with yourself. In the end, leaving work behind, mentally and physically, is down to you. You have to want to do it, decide to do it, and then do it—and keep on doing it until it becomes the norm. Slowing down and clearing your mind of the leftovers from the day is an act of will. You may think that watching TV or distracting yourself in some other way is a short-cut, but it isn’t. The minute you ease up on the distraction, all the worries will be back.
Using a few techniques like this can help to send you home as the kind of person your family will be glad to see—the kind of person who spends an enjoyable evening with them, gets a good night’s sleep, and is ready to go back to the office to do a good day’s work the next day.
Guess what? It will all still be there in the morning. Forgetting about it for an evening will not cause the business to collapse, the markets to crash, or civilization to come to an end. Sadly, all of us are utterly expendable. If you went under the proverbial bus, the world would go on smoothly without you. Remember that when you’re burning the midnight oil.
Adrian Savage is a writer, an Englishman, and a retired business executive, in that order, who now lives in Tucson, Arizona. You can read his other articles at Slow Leadership, the site for everyone who wants to build a civilized place to work and bring back the taste, zest and satisfaction to leadership and life. Recent articles there on similar topics include The Law of Repulsion and What’s your Flyway Resort?. His latest book, Slow Leadership: Civilizing The Organization, is now available at all good bookstores.
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Comments
Paul says on September 3rd, 2007 at 6:10 am
Diamond!
Loved the post.
I shall be going home via an Ultimate Frisbee Game!
I can’t play as I rolled my ankle 3 weeks ago, so I’ll settle for shouting for the team…
Tag
Rich G. says on September 3rd, 2007 at 8:53 am
Where was this post 2 or 5 years ago?
The thing is, when I needed most to hear/read it I wouldn’t have ‘gotten’ it. I’ve sort of discovered some of it on my own, but not as gelled, and formally written out as this is.
Very nicely done.
Wish I’d have ‘gotten’ it sooner.
Amanda says on September 3rd, 2007 at 12:19 pm
Great advice, should be taken by everyone! Even if you are doing the most important research in the world, and you absolutely love your work, you still need to leave it behind! Your family will appreciate it, and you may just find life more fulfilling.
Dawn says on September 4th, 2007 at 2:22 pm
A-freaking-men. My problem is that I work so late and so many weekends that I am useless during the work day because I want my time back, damn it. The cycle never ends!
parmbir says on September 6th, 2007 at 10:46 am
it was since a month i wanted to go for a break.but this article made my mind to go undoutbly immediate
unclesmedley says on September 8th, 2007 at 11:27 am
re-freaking-diculous. I mean, it’s a nice thought and all but, as John Lennon said, “life is what happens when you’re busy making plans.” A policy that calls for mandatory disengagement every day is plausible perhaps for single people, but try selling your spouse on the idea of unwinding at an ultimate frisbee game on the way home…
nona says on September 13th, 2007 at 6:56 am
It’s a good reminder but I hasten to point out that it completely assumes that we all own cars and commute to work alone. Most urban workers take subways, busses and other places where you can’t grab a moment to yourself (let a lone play frisbee) unless you also take the liberty to blast your headphones to the further misery of your fellow commuters. In NYC the commute alone is enough to ruin an otherwise pleasant work-day. I’m much more interested in how to leave work behind for urban and communal workers who neither drive nor feel like getting junked up on starbucks or blasting music.
CactusHeart says on September 17th, 2007 at 4:49 pm
….Except if you have kids…Which will, instead of using that time to commute home to kick-off relaxation-time, will really become just a transit to A NEW SHIFT at a DIFFERENT JOB. Where’s the ‘down-time’ from the job of tending to domestic chaos, particularly after tending to a long day of corporate chaos? *buzzer* There isn’t. That’s one of the freedoms you sign away when you decide to have kids….Which is reason #1,001 why I decide not to. Try explaining to husband and children why you couldn’t be there because you just HAD to take ‘the long scenic route’ home, pull over and park midway to rant, vent, yell & curse out your stress, then make a stop at Starbucks because it was essential for you to relax from a day at work.
One line that reminds me of tending to kids & domestic life that I’m sure wasn’t intended: “If you must take work home—and…treat that idea as you would infecting yourself with a specially repulsive social disease—agree a set time to do it and stick to that agreement”
…Like 18 years, perhaps?? *LOL*
It’s clear this article was written for single working people….and child-frees like myself.
Yurtdisi Egitim says on February 23rd, 2008 at 4:41 am
does anyone knows if there is any other information about this subject in other languages?
Duvar Kagidi says on March 2nd, 2008 at 10:59 am
est il availible en Francais, my English not good
kurye says on December 27th, 2008 at 12:03 pm
thank u for this topic. its very important for us.
Yurt disi Egitim says on December 28th, 2008 at 6:20 pm
Hi, I am Yurtdisi Egitim from Turkey. On this web site i have found answers to most of my questions. Thanks to everyone for your time.
yurtdisi egitimi says on January 15th, 2009 at 9:16 pm
yone knows if there is any other information about this subject in other languages
Consultant says on May 31st, 2009 at 7:06 pm
Yeah, sure. I’ll just go ahead and tell my management I’m not going to work evenings because… I don’t want to. Because it resembles a disease (true enough, it does).
I’m sure that will go-over just fine! Ha – it’ll float like a lead balloon.
Mr. Savage, that you have been a part of 2 classes of people is not surprising:
1) Writer — This class of people tend to be thoughtful, but slackerly.
2) Business exec — It never ceases to amaze me how short-sighted executives are. They believe that the same set of incentives apply to their peons as apply to themselves; that their hard-working underlings can set their own hours, hit the golf course at 4PM, expense dinner regularly as long as it can be claimed as having a “business purpose”, etc.. As J.M. Keynes said, “most men live quiet lives of desperation”, due, in no small part, to clueless, short-sighted business execs.
You’re as worthless in your advice as people like Penelope Trunk. You obviously have never tried your own advice on people who matter — and the few people who have done what you suggest are typically fired – I know, because I have seen, firsthand, this happen to others.
Welcome to American capitalism. What is needed in this country are a rigid set of labor laws barring unreasonable overtime work, for ALL employees, both hourly AND salaried, like Europe and Canada have. But don’t hold your breath waiting for it.
Dil okulu says on June 3rd, 2009 at 8:38 am
Many answers to my questions are here. Thanks everyone.
Vize says on June 3rd, 2009 at 8:40 am
Awesome suggestions for a healthy being. Great site thanks to the authors.
Amerikada egitim says on July 1st, 2009 at 7:05 am
Awesome content, we really rush home, and get stressed about everything in life which we sometimes forget about all the rest. My motto is Take it easy all the way…
Yurtdisinda Egitim says on July 14th, 2009 at 4:52 am
Awesome content.. Cheers :)
vize says on August 2nd, 2009 at 8:14 am
Great site thanks to the authors. :-)
Kanser says on October 20th, 2009 at 11:43 am
Many answers to my questions are here. Thanks everyone.
Çilingir says on October 20th, 2009 at 11:49 am
Awesome content, we really rush home, and get stressed about everything in life which we sometimes forget about all the rest. My motto is Take it easy all the way :=)
Haber says on November 9th, 2009 at 6:56 am
Thanks for sharing good :)
Burs says on November 9th, 2009 at 6:57 am
hımmm… good