You finished your work, got a cup of coffee and trying to relax. However, you are still thinking about the work — what you have done today, what you are going to do tomorrow, how to make is better and faster, etc. And unsurprisingly it prevents you from relaxation and resting. What to do in this situation and how to move from work to relaxation?

Context Switching

The main reason why you can not easily do that is called human context switching. It is a concept of human multitasking that describes switching between different activities. For example, when you are finishing one project and starting another, you need some time to turn your thoughts and attention to the new project. Or when you are entering the car and start driving, you need to start paying your attention to road signs and pedestrians.

Context switching itself is not an issue. It just allows you to change what you are doing right now. The complication is in the time needed to do that. Depending on the person and activity, complete context switching may take up to several hours. And this is an exact reason why you can not immediately relax after work — you need some time to switch to it.

But before talking about the way to deal with this situation, let us see what forms a context.

Anatomy of Context

A context consists of multiple factors, but to make things simple let us split them into several groups. 

Sensory factors include visual, hearing, smell, and other stimuli. These are the room interior, the music you are listening, the coffee you are drinking and so on. 

Communication factors include people you are talking to and topics of discussion. For example, you have a boss, and you speak to him/her about the salary.

Mental factors include your thoughts, emotions, intentions, and everything inside your head. You may think about your job, hate your boss, you just talked to and other similar things.

Now let us see how to use these context factors to switch a context quicker and smoother.

Best Practices

There are multiple ways to switch faster, but most of them are concentrated on the disabling the factors connected to the previous action and enabling the factors related to the next action.

Sensory factors are the easiest to handle. You can go to another room or apartment — that is why moving from office to home works that well! You can also change the level of light or music you listen to. 

Another good idea is to change the type of activity — from mental to physical and vice versa. For example, if you are an office worker, then you can go to the gym to relax. And if you have some physical excursion, then you can get a book and spent some time on reading it.

If we are talking about a software engineer, then changing the computer can help — for example, one laptop for work and another one for everything else. If you are using the same PC, then you may have two separate users. One user for work with all the required applications available, and another one for relaxation where all work activities are blocked. Then you can do the same trick with a smartphone and other electronics.

Communication factors are more complicated. If you are facing your colleagues only at the office, then everything is fine. You will not see them at home, so it works exactly like sensory factors. 

However, you may want to get a beer after work and relax there together with your colleagues. In this case, you may agree on limiting the topics of discussion and do not talk about professional activities. Moving to another place (or bar if we are talking about a beer) helps as well as it weakens the connection to work because of sensory factors.

Software developers, primarily who work remotely, can use this approach as well. They can disable all the messengers, stop checking corporate email (you have to have a separate email for work) or go entirely offline. Another good idea is to have separate calendars with different reminders.

Mental factors are the hardest to address. You can not force yourself to stop thinking about the work — you should switch to something else instead. Family or hobby is an excellent place to start. If you use emotions a lot — you may try to stop being so emotional after work, and vice versa. You may also have two different to-do lists and avoid the same items there. Virtually, you may try to become another person after leaving the office.

A situation in the software engineering area is a bit harder — developers often continue working even at home. The apparent recommendation “stop doing that” does not always work. Instead, developers may try to check if the salary boost compensates time spent on work. Overtime should be paid several times better; otherwise, it merely pointless. Sacrificing your health and private life for extra money is not worth it.

Live Your Life

You should learn to switch context quickly to be able to relax after the work properly. The more factors from different groups you involve, the quicker and smoother you can do it.

Remember that work is only one of the activities in your life that should not become primary. So, stop worrying about pointless things and live your life!