How to disconnect from work at home office times?

Mainly in this period when the home office became more frequent, but not only in it, many people have had two difficulties in relation to work. The first is due to productivity: how to keep the focus? How to be more productive? How to work from home? As incredible as it seems, the second is the extreme opposite: how to turn it off? how not to work more than I proposed? how to finish and go do another thing? how to close the workbox and allow me to take a rest?

In this second post, we’ll talk of the second group, but if you are part of the first one and, why not to say both: with a difficulty of initiating, but after starting has the difficulty of getting out, I also recommend the lecture of this post “Home Office: para quem está cansado de dicas sem contexto )(Home Office: for those who are tired of tips without context)”.

What links you to work?

Before we talk about turning off from work, we need to understand what LINKS us to work. We can not talk about turning it off if we do not know what plugs we are talking about.

This analysis runs through recognizing everything that makes you feel with a focus on work. A good start is analyzing the contexts and environments that do it, for example; it gets harder to turn off from work if you consume a lot of social media and work on it too. Or even if you work a lot in front of your laptop and put your leisure moment also in there. Might roll that little scape from leisure to complete a task that is pending.

But, and when the thing seems more complex than this, Vanessa?

A lot of feeling may be involved in this contact link with the work. Mainly in this quarantine, we have been living a drastic decrease of jobs, with a lot of firings. This, in some businesses, generates a higher quantity of tasks that, when associated with the fear of being the next to be fired, generates this excessive worry related to the work. But think with me: this difficulty of yours is directly linked to the pandemics moment or it was already your way of relating to the work?

In both cases, it will be needed to verify the feelings in this relation. Anyway, if it is something that you notice that came out on the quarantine, we need to consider the relation with this moment of world stress, which brings insecurities and real fears. Now, if you notice that this is the way how you relate to the work for too long, it is important to know and explore more your relation with the work.

Some points which potentialize the difficulty of turning off from work:

• Bad priority management: being at home might bring difficulties in organizing the work time, making other demands to mix, like child care and home care.
• Activities/Functions Overload: whether due to a reduction in the workforce, whether due to new demands or simply not being able to say NO.
• Fears and insecurities in relation to the work: Not only due to the pandemics but also by remarkable situations, older frustrations, insufficiency beliefs.
• Escape from other contexts: in a whirlwind of feelings, work can be another refuge from what you don’t want to deal with. I have attended a client whose constant work focus was a way to get out from a violent life, hard and of poverty. And that after she feels that she has made it out, she can stop and realize that it was time to look at herself and what was affecting her.
• Uncertainty about the professional future: The anxiety around about what will come tomorrow might put pressure of the type “it depends on you only” or “if you are not 110% on the work, probably you’ll be fired”, what you do might ponder at every moment if you are not wasting time with leisure instead of working.
• Anxiety related to conquers: seeing your work running, growing, and bearing fruit quickly can give you reflections that “the world is running and will not wait for you”. The voice of inconstancy can take advantage of this a lot: “Do everything in your power because you don’t know how you will be tomorrow”. And so, day after day you are 110% on.
• External pressure: feeling externally pressed might amplify internal pressure and put us away from resting and leisure.
• Perfectionism in the relationship with work: maybe you think you need “to delivery everything perfect” and for this to happen you are every time thinking about how to do it better (even what is already done).
• and much more…

Recognizing your feelings around it…

The internal dialogue will be important for us to amplify self-knowledge about our relationship with work. If your difficulty in turning off from work is a long-term relationship, it’s through this self-knowledge and resignification (giving new meanings) to this relationship that we can trace improvements in this process.

If you notice that you are completely related to the moment that we are living or that it has aggravated, the ned of knowing what links us to the work is beyond this self-knowledge. We need to perceive what feelings are in-game and remind ourselves of the security we already gave in this relationship with the work.

Stop and evaluate:

• What are the voices that echo in you?
• What are the feelings around it?
• What have you been avoiding trying?

What can I do after recognizing what connects me to the work?

First of all, it is important to receive these feelings, these worries, insecurities, and fears. Understand what they are saying and comfort them. Make them feel as safe as you can by engaging them in conversations with others as well.

Sharing what you are feeling and going through with people who genuinely listened to you and tried to understand you better, might be liberating.

As well as saying yes to these voices, maybe it is necessary to have one extra hour at work to supply the tasks in that day, but that a limit is needed. Dialoguing that, even that your business needs you to grow, you need to disconnect a bit to experience what also depends on you: the relation with the people you love. In the midst of so many uncertainties, this may seem difficult, but it is necessary.

Also, explore what takes you out of work and link that to dialogues: internal and external.

I hope this content has helped you!

Vanessa Mattos
Psychologist CRP 12/19336