One thing I’m sort of struggling with lately is thinking about work during the hours when I’m not on the clock. After a particularly tiring day, I just want to relax at home and go about my personal business. But the mind won’t let me! The happenings of the work day keeps replaying in my head, and there I go overanalyzing every situation. It’s especially acute on days when there’s a relatively big screwup, or many raging problems that still haven’t yet resolved themselves.
It sucks that I am unable to be completely at ease. It’s a rather useless exercise: reflecting on the the work day accomplishes nothing but bring needless stress and misery. What’s already happened cannot be changed. Anything to be done in the future will physically have to wait until the next day. Thinking about it during personal leisure hours doesn’t prepare me any better. It just brings more anxiety about tomorrow.
But there’s another problem: the classic difficulty of trying not to think about something. If someone told you to not think about an elephant, an elephant is what immediately pops into your head. Even knowing all the merits of not stewing on the events of a workday, it’s tough to shut it all down at once. The harder I try, the more it’s not possible to.
What does help are physical activities to keep me otherwise occupied. Of course, exercising is always a great way to elevate the mood. Other activities as well, such as cooking dinner, or reading a good book. I don’t have the mental space to think about work when I’m engrossed in those things. I guess enriching the mind and body is a great way to salve it from useless rumination.
Beautiful clouds.