This month we are talking about preparing for summer and any breaks you may be taking. For those working at home, it is challenging as the boundaries between work and home are so blurred. There is a feeling of always ‘on’. This year a lot of people are taking less time off, pushing their leave till late but it can be as important to take a break for your own mental health and well being.
To prepare for your time away from work, even if it is the weekend or a few days away then you need to work on removing the distractions. With a more flexible approach to working and technology we can fall into the trap of always being ‘on’. You will need to make some conscious decisions to avoid being caught up in work. Research found that these daily distractions can cause stress on our breaks, and we know that we can end up burnt out without a break. This feeling of always ‘on’ can lead to ‘continuous partial attention’ where we are in a state of alertness but not really able to give our attention fully to anything. In the long term, this is stressful for us as humans and leads to us always looking for the stimuli to meet the physiological alert state and this is why we can respond so quickly to those phone alerts.
So what can we do?
- Prepare for your break however long this may be (Weekend, week or even a day off). Inform those who need to know and arrange cover for those events that are needed.
- Set boundaries for others – do you need to be contacted? What are the criteria for contacting you?
- Set boundaries for yourself – are you going to check your emails? If so, when and how often? One tip I can share, is when I had a long holiday I removed all emails from my phone, but left them on my iPad and checked my iPad for a short while each evening. It meant I didn’t have to worry about missing anything important, but I could switch off during the day and enjoy the holiday.
- Switch off notifications. Easy to do and the lack of notification can stop that physiological reaction to check the phone.
- Delete social media apps. Even delete them for periods of time or from some devices. I delete Facebook and LinkedIn from my phone and only access them on my computer which means I only use them when in work mode. When busy I delete all social media from my phone during the week to stop the distraction loop of checking lots of apps.
- Set limits for time on social media – use it as a reward or when you are having time off from focused work. But set a limit.
- Take a break from technology if you can. Try a digital detox.
We also came across this image from @the_brain_doctor on instagram demonstrating how easily and often we can become distracted and fall into the cycle of distractions.
We have wrote a few blogs on time management and productivity so do check them out if you would like to read more:
