
How to Leave Work at Work - wallflower
https://hbr.org/2020/02/how-to-leave-work-at-work
======
justatdotin
I'm a long-term remote worker. At first it was challenging. After a year of
trying to create boundaries, I gave up.

Twice I'd had a 'bad' friday, only to have solutions reveal themselves while I
was gardening over the weekend. I realised it did me no harm that my mind
strayed to work while gardening, and in fact I was glad of it. So I made a
decision to abandon attempts at erecting artificial structure, and quickly
realised that trying to impose separations had caused more stress than it
resolved.

I found it liberating to stop trying to 'leave work at work', and to not be
upset if my thoughts stray to work when I 'should' be off the clock. In
return, I stopped trying to block out the rest of my life from my home office.
I enjoy a busy life with various community responsibilities and being able to
give some attention to these (and family) during 'work hours' is something I
value highly. In return I'm happy to perform work activities outside office
hours as it suits.

I understand why this won't work for everyone, but for me, trying to set
boundaries - which many people had told me was the way to maintain balance -
was counter-effective. If anyone is having trouble setting boundaries;
consider not.

~~~
megameter
For me the most important thing has been recognizing that I respond better to
some boundaries than others.

Time boundaries are notoriously difficult to use well without a coercive force
dragging you forward. For folks with executive function difficulties that
often turns into the procrastination/anxiety brew that makes them seek out
pharmacutical help. But time is often sought after first because it has a
seductive simplicity: First you do this for an hour, then you do that...except
that you overrun one and have oodles of time leftover for the other.

Place boundaries, on the other hand, work relatively well for me. In that
instance the work literally is wherever you left it, and going about your day
means checking off a visit to different places. The places can be small:
Absolute distance and volume aren't really the issue so much as the perception
of travel, and organization emerges from this as a matter of ergonomics.
Computers actually make place organization harder because they tend to cram
everything together. It takes active resistance.

Social boundaries hold a kind of cross between time and place: Checking in
with a person can be challenging if you have to actively enter their space,
but easy if you agreed to show up at a common place and time.

~~~
james_s_tayler
Place boundaries are much easier for me for the same reasons.

Turns out it's really just different strokes for different folks and
everyone's inner world operates in a way that they absolutely require certain
things and absolutely should avoid certain others. It's just different for
everyone.

I worked out I needed to stop listening to other peoples advice before I
became aware of any executive dysfunction, because I realized that other
people's advice barely matched up with my personal experience and was largely
useless, so I should simply stick to trying things and seeing what works for
me vs what doesn't.

I get the feeling the range of inner world's is much more vast and varied than
people truly realize. Wish there was a good way to calibrate for that.

------
CarbyAu
Coming close to burnout, I realised the work game is bigger than me.

If _I_ have so much work that I am drowning and people are looking for me to
do more and more and more.....

that means _my manager failed_ their Real Time Strategy Game and they need
another worker at my level. Maybe that's because the _next_ manager up failed
their game, etc etc.

But it doesn't matter why.

I do 9-5. And I go home. That is the employment contract. That is what I do.

I try to make good on my 9-5 so my own self worth is fine. But I only do my
job.

~~~
Frost1x
Many however don't do this and it often reflects badly on those who do try to
work normal hours. They essentially set the bar higher and unless you're more
efficient, you fall behind in performance assessments or output.

One environment I interact with are all hypercompetitive and I probably look
like an idiot to some of leadership because I refuse to work 60 hour work
weeks like some of them grind away. If they decide to reduce or remove my
services, life goes on, but we're somehow rolling back on labor's mentality
about work life balance and being eaten alive by structures in place designed
to force us to compete for the lowest rates (by adjusting either work or time
in some way, shape, or form).

~~~
CarbyAu
I have managed to find a niche where others are not grind-minded either. I
won't pretend to tell you or anyone how to do this given the complexities of
everyone's life. I'm sorry, I don't know.

I am obviously not Startup material! :-P I am not management material. I am
not an entrepreneur par excellence. I won't die rich.

But I hope to leave the world a better place than it would've been without me,
even if only a little bit.

And enjoy it in the meantime.

------
mjlee
Personally, the biggest win was to learn how to leave tasks unfinished.

This pays off in two ways - firstly I finish work when I planned to instead of
"just five more minutes", which inevitably spins off into a series of open
ended diversions. Secondly, it means I can start the next day with something I
can sink in to, avoiding the feeling of procrastination and guilt that comes
along with that, ultimately resulting in working later to pay back that lost
time.

~~~
klenwell
I was going to suggest a variation of this idea that I learned about here on
Hacker News and have applied successfully since:

 _Try to stop on a bug or error._

Same reasoning you cited with a bonus: when you come back in the morning,
you'll have an error message to help you quickly pick up where you left off.

~~~
adamjb
Reminds me of the "meanwhile back at the ranch" school of screenwriting:
switch to your B story when your A story is at its peak of interest, and
switch to your A story when your B story is at its peak. That way when you do
switch back you won't have to work (too hard) to keep the audience's interest.

~~~
cthonicthulu
Love this whole thread. I thought I'd add a bit more for those who ended up in
the same position I ended up in a little while back: if you're ever stuck in a
position where you're forced to use an environment where you iterate so slowly
that it takes days to a week to get from one error to the next error: take
notes along the way as you go. Take notes about things which could be done
differently if they weren't stuck a certain way. Not only does it neatly
manage deadline anxieties, but it helps you build a map of friction points
that are keeping things slower than you'd like, and it gives you the detail
you need to slowly build cohesive and persuasive plans for improving the
situation.

Of course, the optimal plan at that point could easily be for you (as it was
for me) to leave the situation, but even so -- at least it makes that clearer!

------
tayo42
The thing i struggle with isn't really working extra hours or getting off hour
messages. I think those are obvious problems and easy to be aware of.

My biggest problem is just having work thoughts come up, in the shower, eating
dinner, on the commute, falling asleep. One time i was on vacation on the
other side of the world and out of nowhere i suddenly realized I knew how to
handle some problem i was having at work. I wouldn't get back to it for a
week, i would need to take notes on my aha moment...

~~~
userbinator
I wouldn't really call that a problem, much like "non-work thoughts" will
occur while you're "at work" too.

~~~
Frost1x
I'd say I have a lot more work thoughts invading my personal life than vice
versa. When I'm at work I'm expected to pump things out and the cognative load
leaves very little room for thoughts to creep in.

On the other hand when I'm relaxed and enjoying free thought, I sometimes
can't help but use some of that freetime to think through work problems to
reduce work stress. I suppose if my personal time was spent with high
cognative load as well, it would be a fair trade off, but after working at
high cognative function 40+ hours a week, my personal time tries to be as
mentally relaxing as possible.

------
politelemon
To help with the 'defining' bit, I've been making a conscious effort to
separate work from home over the past few months in a few ways. Even though
I'm at home and nobody sees me most of the time, I get into "work clothes",
even if it's just a T-Shirt or polo, and trousers.

At 5-6PM, I'll shutdown the laptop and put it away, out of sight, and get back
into "home clothes". The acts, despite its placebo effect, helps immensely in
switching to home mode.

~~~
momokoko
For people new to working from home, having work clothes is one of the most
beneficial things I do personally. I would say over the last 15 years of
working remotely this is the most impactful intentional thing I do for my
productivity and work life balance.

Plus, it’s a super easy thing to try for a few weeks to see if it works for
you.

~~~
chrshawkes
I tried it, I don't need it. I guess I understand the point but honestly, I've
hated work clothes since jump street.

------
dijit
Tangentially related question for the hackernews audience: When you learn, do
you do so on company time or personal time?

I often feel like if I'm not "working" (IE; actually producing something) then
I'm somehow cheating the company. This doesn't apply for the simple "trial-
and-error" stuff that kind of comes as a part of the job, but sitting down to
read a book or watch some tutorials etc; I could never imagine doing in the
office.

But this _is_ work according to my long-term partner.

~~~
_dwt
Have you ever been able to solve a problem at work that nobody else could, or
solve it faster, or cleaner, or more robustly, by virtue of having learned
previously about some random topic which you had no idea would one day be
applicable to your work? I think most programmers have, and I'd hope that a
good boss at a good organization would understand that - as long as you're
accomplishing everything that's required of the job - independent learning is
a great use of (a reasonable fraction of your) time that will benefit both you
and the business.

~~~
leghifla
I once "solved" a tricky issue with a random bug in an FPGA processing data
from DDR. The issue was hardware "malfunction": DDR can flip some bits if
accessed in some ways.

No one on the team did know about that, no one believed my fix could work (a
one line for a bug we investigated on and off for months). It did. I had read
a computer security article about how row hammer can be used to gain privilege
or something and made the connection.

During my yearly evaluation, I mentionned it as the most impact that year. I
was nearly laughed at. This bug precluded the product from functioning more
than a few minutes, and we targeted at least several hours without any glitch.
No one noticed that without me in the team, the product was dead for a few
more month at least.

I left a year later. The company is dead now.

~~~
violetgarden
Wow that’s an incredible fix! What an awesome connection to make.

------
AnonHP
As the article describes, many points apply to the specific team and team
culture.

One of the best things that I did (which was triggered for other reasons) was
to remove my work email from my smartphone. When you only have a laptop to get
work done and cannot get emails or chat on the device you carry or check
throughout your waking hours, the matter of leaving work at work becomes a lot
easier. Shutdown your work laptop around a specific hour everyday and you're
(mostly) free.

If you're not compelled, I would strongly recommend doing the same. This
doesn't mean that you will not work after working hours (there may be times
when it's required), but you certainly won't be distracted by notifications
and slipping into work unnecessarily when it's clearly not urgent. If you do
not have a work provided smartphone and are using your personal device, then
this is also safer for you since MDM policies are applied even on employee-
owned devices and (depending on the OS) give a lot of information about your
device/apps/usage and control on the device to your employer. I don't see any
reason why I should do that with any employer.

Once you stop sending emails or responding to emails at odd hours (meaning,
post normal working hours), others will usually get the hint and stop treating
email with the same urgency as phone calls.

------
wildrhythms
tl;dr

Step 1: Define “After Hours”

Step 2: Have Mental Clarity

Step 3: Communicate with Your Colleagues

Step 4: Get Work Done at Work

And I will add my own personal experience:

Step 5: Realize you (probably) work a B.S. job[1].

I realized I was dedicating my precious life to the pursuit of profit for
people at the very top to the detriment of my own well being. If my job
disappeared tomorrow, would society be negatively impacted in any meaningful
way? No, in fact it might even improve. Realizing this, I just stopped caring
about expectations to sacrifice any more time than necessary to my job.

[1] [https://www.jacobinmag.com/2018/06/bullshit-jobs-david-
graeb...](https://www.jacobinmag.com/2018/06/bullshit-jobs-david-graeber-work-
service)

~~~
thecrumb
#5. Amen. My blue collar friend has a saying - "8 and gate". I used to spend
lots of time at work trying to get something finished. Or started. Or
whatever. But at the end of the day I'm not getting paid for that, or praised
for that. And if it doesn't get done today, or tomorrow - the world won't end.
And I could be doing something more productive like exercising, spending time
with my kids, etc. etc.

------
IRegretNothing
I encouraged my girlfriend to get a separate cellphone. As a kindergarten
teacher it doesn't seem obvious, it is incredible how much they plan and
discuss after hours. Now she switches off her phone and enjoys her leisure.

------
TrackerFF
One way to avoid work from home, is to pick a profession where your work is
simply unable to follow you home.

Sounds obvious as hell, but it's true - some professions, even in tech, come
with the benefit that you're not allowed to bring your work home.

Some people will probably say "but that just makes you stay longer at work",
well - yes and no. Completely depends on your work guidelines. Some workplaces
have stringent rules, and will practically shoo you home/refuse you OT if you
work too much OT.

------
dvasdekis
I'm a solo founder working from home, and even though I'm kicking goals with
the startup, I'm really having struggles with separating work from the rest of
my life within my headspace. For quite some time, I've been waking up at 3am
with work thoughts perhaps twice a week, and will struggle to go back to
sleep.

Does anyone have any advice, beyond what this article mentions?

~~~
violetgarden
Sometimes I wake in a panic with something I need to remember to do. Keeping a
notebook by the bed really helps me. I jot down whatever it was, which makes
me feel like I’ve “dealt” with it, even though that only means it’s on my to
do list or just out of my head so I won’t forget it.

I’ve also found making a list of things I want to do tomorrow and writing them
down helps me not have those panic wake ups in the first place.

------
winrid
The reason you should leave work at work is it keeps work out of play, which
is the most efficient thing to do

------
RyJones
I’ve found partitions helpful. Slack is work, Discord is personal. Email is
personal, Twitter is work.

~~~
paulryanrogers
This helps on mobile the most IMO. While Android can have separate profiles
it's just so convenient to switch apps instead. At least for those who don't
already have a separate work phone

------
sunstone
Are you working from home or are you _living at work_?

