Psychological Detachment Strategies – You can’t “stop” work thoughts, but you can do THIS

After a long day at work, it’s finally dinner time. Time to be with your family, time to enjoy your meal, time to relax and recharge… but maybe most importantly, time NOT to work. You sit down, and are stricken with the realization that you forgot to send that email, or did you? Yes, you definitely forgot to send it. One quick email, then you’ll  relax. You grab your phone and open up an email and as you start writing, you realize you also forgot to send out the calendar invitation, phew, great save. Before you can send out the invitation you see an email from a co-worker asking if you could make a last minute update on a project before the deadline tomorrow. So close to escaping work, to that taste of freedom and recharge you know you need… but not this time.

This phenomenon and many variations of it are so commonplace that for many it might just seem normal. Normal or not, it is a problem that can negatively affect life, health, and ironically, career.

Despite knowing we need time for recharge, many struggle to have it. Even when we try to relax, the mind has other plans. What can we do?

One simple strategy is this: Commit to psychologically detached time, that is, time where you are not working and you are not thinking about work. You can read more on psychological detachment (here – link to blog 1).
There are two important principles that impact on that commitment:

1. you can’t control your thoughts, but you can influence them.

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1. your thinking and behaviour (almost) always follow a system.

Your thoughts:  In many cases, a big part of the problem is that when we think about work, some part of us is deciding “should I do this work, or should I stay with the non-work thing I was doing before? (relax, family time, gym etc.)”.

On average, we think  between 35,000-70,000 thoughts per day.  Can you remember all of the thoughts you have each day? Probably not, but there are some that you do and could probably write down right now or remember with a little prompting. Some of these thoughts stick around longer and are easier to remember, and others and some pass right through and we barely notice.

Which ones stick around? it’s the ones that we believe are important (consciously or unconsciously) that stick around. When we are worried for our jobs, our livelihood, our professional self-esteem etc. it becomes very easy for these thoughts about unfinished work to get extra air-time in our head.

The system:  The current system for dealing with work thoughts when not at work looks like this:

1. Work thought comes in.
2. Consider what to do with it… should we do the work? Write it down? Ignore it?
3. Make a decision about the work thought
4. Do it

Many people spend a lot of time, stress, and worry in step 2.  Making decisions about what to do about the work thought is harder when we are stressed.  One way to speed up the system is to decide ahead of time, “for this next hour, my response to work thoughts will be ____”.

New system.

1. Make a decision about what to do when the work thought comes in while at the gym (or at family dinner, while relaxing, etc.)
2. Work thought comes in
3. Recognize it as a work thought
4. Do the thing you decided to do ahead of time

Example:  when I have a work thought while spending time with my family, I will bring focus back to my family, take a deep breath, PQ reps, say something nice about my son etc.

This is effective because when we are stressed (which we usually are when we suddenly remember some work-task we had forgotten) our ability to recognize what’s important goes away. This is part of the emotional hijacking response (you can learn more about this in our emotional hijacking workshops, or read up about it in another blog).

Here is an example of the new system:

You commit 1 hour to no-work time while at the gym.

Decide that when the work thoughts come up, you will dismiss it as unimportant (e.g. “I will remember it when I need to” or  “that’s not helpful for what I’m doing right now”).

Execute, and you practice.

If you haven’t done this before, or in a while, it will be challenging. Your brain will try to convince you why attending your work is critical for your survival.   Every time you dismiss a work thought during your workout, for this 1 hour of the day, you strengthen your mental muscles and the neural pathways. You build a new mental habit and it gets easier.

Note: You can substitute “gym” for any non-work activity you want to be present and engaged in.

Step 1: Practice this for 1 hour per day.
Step 2: If Step 1 is too difficult to commit to, try it for 15 minute instead.
Step 3: If Step 2 is too difficult, consider seeking professional help from a coach.
BONUS: Write down a sentence or two about your experience each day so you can see how your thoughts and reaction to work thoughts change.

Some variations/adaptations:

• Start with smaller increments, e.g. 5 minutes.
• Evaluate the systems you use to not forget important items. Note:always being on and trying to remember at all times is almost never an efficient system.
• Schedule specific time to reply to emails, put out fires and handle emergencies instead of doing it as they come in
• Write down a short list of what the bona fide emergencies are. The things that would be so important that you would address them even in the middle of your workout. (This is a last resort).

Inevitably, you will think about work when you are not at work.  When you do, you already know what to do because you decided ahead of time- just follow the system.  Eventually, the neuronal pathways that relate to work and gym get weaker and weaker, and you will have less thoughts about work while at the gym.

You can try this in almost any area of life where you want to be more effective and present.

If you want to learn more about this, look for our other blogs or contact us with questions about coaching or workshops.