No doubt many animal health pros checked work e-mail during the Thanksgiving holiday. Debra Bright encourages her clients to use end-of-day routines to create a psychological barrier between their two worlds.
According to a seven-year study on workers’ performance, an inability to make this break between professional and personal time ranked among the top-10 stressful situations that people were least effective at handling. Technology has exacerbated the problem, offering both convenience and imposition, by putting our workplaces just a touch screen away.
Source: Harvard Business Review, November 23, 2017.
Bright and her colleagues recently tested the following five strategies with a group of 26 managers. The percentage who said they were “effective” at making a clean break between work and home jumped from 40% to 68%.
- Do one more small task
- Write a to-do list
- Straighten-up your work area
- Choose a specific action (“anchor quick charge”) that will symbolize the end of thinking about work
- Start the evening on a positive note