How to speed up your work day. I'm scared that time goes by so fast I think about work all the time

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Some people, even while on a fabulous sea coast, stubbornly scroll through their thoughts about work: they consider the last project, calculate the losses, bitterly recall unsuccessful negotiations. And then secretly look into the work mail. This is especially true for men: they are ambitious and it is more difficult for them to switch to vacation mode. But first of all, our head needs rest. And if we think about work during the whole vacation, there will be no sense from it. Let's figure out how to get rid of such obsessive thoughts on vacation.

All year long we dream of a vacation, and in it we cannot stop thinking about work. Why is this happening? The reasons may be different. Someone is afraid that without him the company will not cope. Or vice versa, he cannot even admit the thought that his colleagues will do without him, because then he will lose the feeling of his own indispensability. For creative people, work is often their main passion, and they are not going to give it up even for two weeks. Unfinished business or unresolved problems do not allow someone to sleep peacefully on the beach. And for someone - persistent colleagues who call for any reason. In any case, if during your vacation you dream about your home office every night, then you need to change something.

Get ready

First of all, you need to prepare for the holidays. Finish important things, transfer other tasks, assign responsibilities, appoint responsible people, promise a terrible punishment to everyone who decides to call you, break a laptop and a mobile phone.

In general, you should not plan a vacation during the period of active activity of the company, when work begins new project, important contracts are concluded or tax reports are submitted. The boss won't thank you for this. And you, instead of enjoying the rest, will constantly return your thoughts to work.

Learn new things

New information inevitably drives obsessive thoughts out of your head. This is one of the reasons why women on vacation like to go on excursions. While we are thinking about the features of the Venetian baroque, thoughts about the harmful boss Vasily Petrovich somehow fade into the background.

It's not just about excursions. The more new impressions and new interesting information we get, the less chance Vasily Petrovich has to settle in our head. Therefore, you should try to make your vacation as rich and interesting as possible.

Set sports records

Men have their own methods. Sports, especially extreme sports, often help them forget about work. Perhaps for this reason, among young workaholics today there are so many "adrenaline junkies" It is unlikely that thoughts about work visit them during a paragliding flight or extreme descent from the mountain. And during a difficult trip, you can even forget the name of your company and the name of your boss. And, of course, all work problems during this period seem distant and insignificant. Verified by myself.

Find a new hobby

In general, any activity that is not related to your work will help to distract. Get creative, try your hand at drawing, music or dancing. No wonder they say that the best vacation is a change of occupation. New activities will help you switch and relieve emotional stress.

fall in love

This is sure to instantly knock all thoughts about work out of my head. Love or even fleeting love generally knocks almost any thought out of your head. And if you already have a loved one, try to fall in love with him again. It improves mood, improves well-being and makes us happier.

Every week, The Village answers questions about the job. This time we asked experts about how to learn to switch from work to leisure - on vacation, on weekends or just in the evening after a working day.

Ivan Rubtsov

Deputy General Director for Key Customer Relations at Croc

The most cardinal way is to learn not to take problems or difficulties at work too emotionally and close to your heart. This will help not only to quickly switch and relax after work, but also make it easier to solve some problems. And you can also try to look at the problem from the outside: they say that it is always easier to solve someone else's problem than your own, because it is easier to look at someone else's problem soberly and without emotions.

More practical example. If a work problem or conflict is depressing the brain, it's best not to leave it hanging before the upcoming vacation. Otherwise, an evening, weekend or vacation may fly by in constant games of the mind, meaningless mental torment, and rest as such may not work at all. It helps me before the end of work planning for the next working days of specific events, cases, meetings that should help solve the problem. You can outline solutions with colleagues and put it all on the calendar. This noticeably calms the brain, as it will switch to the waiting mode for a solution to the problem. And, for example, it helps me a lot to go to the theater on Friday evening for a good performance. As a rule, he leaves little chance for thoughts of work, and they go away for a while.

Albert Mitsevich

Head of Human Resources Department "Honest Word"

Here are some simple tips that I recommend following in order to properly rest:

Leave the worker at work. 10-15 minutes before the end of the working day, carefully consider your work plan for the next day, draw it up on paper or in a special program and leave it at work. Do not take your thoughts about tomorrow's work processes home or to a meeting with friends. They want to see and hear you as a close person.

Choose the type of holiday that suits you. It is recommended to rest on the principle opposite to your main occupation: if you work passively, sitting at the computer all day, then active rest and movement will lead you to a better result. It also needs to be well planned, otherwise free time will fly by, and the feeling of renewal will not come.

When you go on vacation for a couple of weeks, be sure to turn off your phone, do not check your work email. Of course, you can leave your contact number for an emergency with colleagues, but make it clear in what situation it is acceptable to disturb you. No thoughts about work! Say "no" to correspondence with partners and control calls to subordinates. Otherwise, you will not be able to fully relax, or work productively after leaving the vacation.

Ekaterina Gurkina

Deputy CEO of Peramo

When I turned 30, I made a promise to myself that Saturday is a sacred day. I turn off my phone, log out of all mail and disappear to the outside world. If I definitely need to do something at work, I leave the task for Sunday evening - this psychologically helps to immerse myself in the weekend and get distracted from rest on the border of the weekend and Monday.

Taking a vacation is even easier: I immediately tell my colleagues and management that I do not plan to remotely participate in office life, and I try to follow my own instructions. A good solution is to remove all instant messengers from your phone during the holidays, or at least turn off notifications. When I'm at a resort, I generally try to leave my phone in my hotel room whenever possible, checking messages once a day. A local SIM card can completely get rid of possible contacts with work, but still I leave it on Russian number in case of unforeseen situations.

Another important rule developed over the years is not to take work home. It is better to stay late, but come home with a head free from work affairs and devote at least a couple of hours exclusively to personal time.
However, these rules should not be taken to extremes. It may always be necessary to involve an employee in the work process, so it would be foolish to categorically refuse to help - it is unlikely that such behavior will benefit the career. However, in my opinion, it is necessary to draw a line, albeit conditional, between the office and leisure. The impossibility of such a distinction is one of the reasons why I am not very interested in working from home.

Daria Slobodyanyuk

PR-director of the network of fitness clubs "Fitness Territory"

To switch from thoughts about work, it is not enough to turn on your favorite series: you still won’t be able to fully relax. In my experience, I can say that lazy rest, unfortunately, does not allow you to fully switch. You look at the monitor, but you still scroll through work situations in your head - a new project, a change in leadership, a conflict with a colleague, and so on. As a result, stress only accumulates.

In my opinion, to get work out of your head, you need a new hobby. Real to really capture. For many, this hobby is sports. me and myself for a long time I went to yoga to relax after work. Once I mixed up the schedule and got into a kickboxing class. And it became a new and very important part of my life. When I'm in the ring, I completely switch - it's just an incredible release and the best stress reliever.

Of course, it is not necessary to go boxing: in Moscow now you can find a lot of interesting things - sommelier courses, barista lessons, unusual city excursions. They can do the most unexpected things!

And I also advise you not to let work into your personal life. Some people, after reading tips on personal efficiency, try to work non-stop: answering emails at breakfast and falling asleep with their phone in their hands. I consider this to be overreaching. I myself do not take a working laptop home and do not answer letters while in the family circle. Which is what I advise you.

Vyacheslav Tertus

general manager Delus Lls

After work and on weekends, the phone is put on silent mode. Call back only if you have time. In general, once, when I was forced to take work on the weekend, my seven-year-old son approached me and asked why I couldn’t go for a walk with him. From my confused mumbling about the need to earn money and so on, he made a clear and precise conclusion: “You don’t love me!” The son went to his room. I sat at the table and realized that my seven-year-old son was absolutely right. Now, if I do work on weekends, then only in the evening or at night. The rest of the time is for the family.

illustration: Dasha Koshkina

Imagine a warm sea, golden sand, blue sky... Or a gentle river, a green forest, the scent of herbs... and your own pale body, finally left to the rays of the sun. Or just your cozy apartment, a sunny balcony or the roof of the house - and you don’t have to wake up early or rush anywhere. It would seem, what could be more beautiful? And so, the body is relaxed, a panama is pulled over the forehead, and a lonely thought runs into the brain: “I wonder how it is at work now? Have you signed a contract? Have you looked at all the conditions? What if they don't find necessary documents?" A lonely thought turns into a wasp, then the same one flies, and a heavy, gloomy, stinging cloud begins to circle overhead. And that's it: the sky is no longer so blue, the aroma is not so pleasant, and I want to pack my things and rush back to work.

How not to think about work, So what's this? Psychologists call this phenomenon the weekend syndrome. It was first noticed at the end of the twentieth century, and now this term is known to all post-industrial powers, where they have ever heard of existentialism or the question of existence and the meaning of life. Why? Because the weekend syndrome is very closely related to the simple question "what am I living for?"

Where does it come from? The question is simple and complex at the same time. However, the answer to it is easy to deduce from our lifestyle. How much time does a normal person spend at work? The standard yuppie (the so-called young professionals working in the office, however, now almost all employees of various institutions who spend most of the weekday in the company) works on a nine-to-six schedule. Options can be very different - and from eleven in the morning to eight in the evening and from five in the morning to two in the afternoon. The only problem is that rarely anyone goes home exactly at the time indicated in the job advertisement. And this is not only Russian specificity. If we add to this the cost of the road, it turns out that work takes two-thirds of life. And at the same time it acquires incredible importance. There is another subtlety.

It is known that married people achieve less in professional activity than idle (if you look at the statistics as a whole). Why? This is easy to explain: imagine that free man wakes up on the weekend. It's good if he has friends with whom he can go somewhere. But this is in the evening. And from morning to evening he sits, watches TV, which is unlikely to cheer you up - it will rather bore you, read books or ... think about work or even do it. Gradually, week after week, he accumulates a phobia before the weekend, before the terrible “doing nothing”, and he passionately desires only one thing: for “Monday to start on Saturday”, so that he again finds himself in a circle of people, if not close, but not indifferent to him, to be needed again, necessary and important. And in the presence of the second half, the person is busy at least (this is in the worst case) swearing with his spouse. On the other hand, if personal life fails, where does a person seek solace? Of course, at work, and then the fear of the day off is associated with returning home, to quarrels, problems and a showdown. But a day off is one day. A vacation is a lot of days off. And gradually it turns out that you really don’t want to rest at all - you want to go where everything is clear and clear, where you are definitely needed. And the vacation turns out to be some kind of rehearsal for dismissal and mental trauma, which is not so easy to survive. The management team feels especially hard at such moments: after all, it is impossible to do without them. And if possible, why not replace them or fire them altogether?

How to deal with it?

There are several solutions to this problem, how not to think about work:The first method was suggested in one capacious phrase by Captain Jack Sparrow in "Pirates of the Caribbean": "Boy, find yourself a girlfriend". Of course, it sounds like a quote from a men's magazine, but love (or at least resort love) is a very powerful therapeutic tool, it allows you to switch to more everyday topics, and also contributes to evening meetings (that is, it gives you the opportunity to breathe fresh air), long walks (physical activity), writing poetry, or at least diaries and romantic letters (relieving intellectual stress, developing humanitarian thinking among technical specialists) and good mood(tonic).

Method two: cross-stitch (repair an old falling apart motorcycle, tidy up the roof in the house of your beloved grandmother, pick mushrooms, solve an eighth grade math textbook taken from a younger relative)- that is, a couple of days to work out handmade, which will relieve emotional stress gradually - on vacation this load disappears too quickly, causing a kind of decompression sickness. After that, you can safely draw up an action plan for the remaining time, or simply do nothing. The main thing is that the activity is enjoyable.

Method three: read several light books in a row. You just need to clearly understand that a light book is a very individual concept. For some, these are detective stories (of different levels of language and talent of the author), for some - Russian fantasy, and for some, love stories are to their liking. Light books, as a rule, do not leave a lasting trace, but at the same time erase the heavy information that has been stuck in the head since the pre-holiday period. You can, of course, watch TV, but this is fraught with depression from serials and irritation from TV shows, because on vacation you usually find out that, in addition to news and films after nine, during the day there is a huge number of channels great amount meaningless information that causes melancholy and does not give any work to the brain.

The fourth way came from logotherapy (meaning therapy), it is a paradoxical intention. Its essence is in the presence of a basic sense of humor (at least at the level of an amoeba): if you suddenly want to work on vacation, you need to strive to want it as much as possible: "I really want to work! I will show everyone how I want to work! Here you are in the last row you can see how I want to work? As a result, this thought will only cause a smile. The main thing then, after the vacation, is to return to a normal state and not laugh to the point of hysteria at the thought that you need to go to work. However, the paradoxical intention always has a reverse course: you can force yourself to not want to work as much as possible, and the dangerous effect will gradually disappear.

Method five: extreme. Even if you don’t lie flat on the beach on the warm sea, but go diving, surfing, sailing or going to the mountains, then such a variety and great physical activity will allow you to completely escape from office affairs, and then easily return to the team to work. Such hobbies, as a rule, stimulate the motive for achievement and the desire to grow above oneself, and this (at least in work) is for the better.

In conclusion, answering the question: how not to think about work, I would like to note: that if there is nothing in a person’s life other than his profession, then sooner or later this can lead to a loss of the meaning of life: either the job will be lost, or the position will be the same for too long. And if there is nothing else in the world to cling to, this blow will be tantamount to a global catastrophe, leading to depression and despair. Therefore, in addition to work (even the most beloved), there should always be something else very important and expensive - as a second support in life, allowing you to move through it more confidently and get more pleasure from the simple joys of life, without which it turns into a permanent deadline, for who never rest.

It would seem that there is nothing easier. The working day is over, you briskly pack your things and, finally, go home to rest and gain strength after a busy eight hours of work. You're having dinner with your family, going to the gym, or planning to watch a movie... But what if there's an unfinished report in the office? Or a few unread emails?

Are you really able to do what you want to do in this case? Or are you just pretending to take a break, when in fact you are constantly scrolling through your head all the upcoming tasks at work, planning tomorrow's tasks, or worrying about missed deadlines?

As a rule, in this case, we are well aware that constant thoughts about work will not help current affairs in any way, because at the moment we are at home, and all reports, letters and other tasks have remained there, in a closed office. But even if you value your free time enough not to take work home, these thoughts alone can ruin not only any particular evening, but your entire career. As it turned out, the ability to efficiently plan your working day is worth nothing, if at the same time you do not know how to abstract from office affairs in your legal (!) Free time.

What's happening

You can get your legs to carry you out of the office at the end of the day, but it can be much more difficult to “negotiate” with your brain. As a result, you rightly begin to feel that you are thinking about work 24 hours a day and seven days a week, however, despite the uninterrupted thought process (many people dream of their work even at night, and this is also not a good sign), productivity and efficiency only decreases. Why?

you lose focus

In 2011, experts from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign empirically proved the harm of continuous concentration on the same task. The participants in the experiment, conducted by scientists, were divided into several groups, and each was asked to focus on a monotonous computer task lasting 50 minutes. Before this, the subjects were asked to memorize a few numbers and name them as soon as they were asked.

The first team worked without breaks for 50 minutes, while the second team was given the opportunity to take two breaks. It was during this free time that they were asked about the numbers, after which the participants of the experiment again returned to the problem. As a result, the psychologists noticed that while the performance of the first group dropped significantly towards the end of the task, the performance of the second group, which was twice distracted by a completely unrelated topic, did not change at all. So, once again, scientists managed to prove that “switching” is actually useful.

You lose creativity

Meanwhile, their colleagues from the University of British Columbia (Canada) even said: to improve your efficiency at work, you need to think about everything except office matters. As it turned out, it is enough to give your thoughts freedom and allow yourself “not to think about anything” in order to activate several parts of the brain at once and, in the end, unconsciously come to original solutions. “We used to think that wandering in the clouds is a synonym for laziness,” commented its author, Professor Kalina Kristoff, commenting on the results of the study. “However, data shows that our brains work more actively when we allow ourselves to think about seemingly unimportant things.”

you burn out

What to do

A few useful hacks on how to "deceive" the mind and free it from thoughts about work, which will be especially useful for those who work on reports even while driving home and check mail, waking up convulsively in the middle of the night.

Make a plan for the week

Schedule each of your working days with the obligatory consideration of all your legal breaks, clearly calculating the time that you will need to complete a particular task ( read also: "How making a to-do list pumps your brain (even if you don't complete the tasks themselves)"). The key to success is to start from your own speed of work and only then set the norm for the number of tasks (you may have to discuss this issue with your superiors).

The road home is not working time

It will not be possible to reshape a dangerous behavioral pattern if the time is public transport or in the car to perceive as an organic part of the working day. Exactly from the moment you leave the office, a period begins that you can (and sometimes even have to force yourself to) devote exclusively to your desires. If there is nothing to do, and books, music and the Internet do not please, then it is better to simply do nothing and go in your own thoughts (remember the benefits of “walking in the clouds”).

Come up with a pleasant ritual

And do it every time you come home. It is important to establish positive associations with your own home. Talk to your family (but not a word about work!), take your dog for a walk, take a bath, or turn on your favorite TV series - if you have no incentive to return home, create it artificially and convince yourself that its value is many times higher than the unfinished business on work that could well wait until the morning.

Let's make promises

Another incentive to postpone things until tomorrow and switch to a new task. Do not upset the child if you promised to take him for a walk in the evening. Don't let your friends down if you've arranged to meet at a bar. A lesson with a coach, a lesson with a tutor or an appointment in a salon are also promises that need to be kept and for which you (whether you like it or not) will simply have to leave work.

unplug

If you're brave enough, turn off all your devices and warn co-workers that you don't intend to reply to their messages in the dark. work time. Leave your phone in another room while you sleep, or put it on "night mode" so you don't wake up with every incoming message. You will be surprised, but when you wake up in the morning, nothing catastrophic will happen to your work.