Feeling burned out? You may be spending too much time ruminating about your job, says psychologist Guy Winch. Learn how to stop worrying about tomorrow’s tasks or stewing over office tensions with three simple techniques aimed at helping you truly relax and recharge after work.
- The more we ruminate about work when we’re home, the more likely we are to experience sleep disturbances.
- It may even increase our risk of cardiovascular disease and of impairing our executive functioning, the very skill sets we need to do our jobs well.
- while ruminating about work when we’re home damages our emotional well-being, thinking about work in creative or problem-solving ways does not. Because those kinds of thinking do not elicit emotional distress and, more importantly, they’re in our control.
- Ruminations are involuntary. They’re intrusive. They pop into our head when we don’t want them to. They upset us when we don’t want to be upset. They switch us on when we are trying to switch off. And they are very difficult to resist, because thinking of all our unfinished tasks feels urgent. Anxiously worrying about the future feels compelling. Ruminating always feels like we’re doing something important, when in fact, we’re doing something harmful. And we all do it far more than we realize.
