I either start lifting or go running for a hour after my workday is over.
Ask HN: How do you switch off from work, particularly when working from home?
171–180 of 318 posts
Re: Ask HN: How do you switch off from work, particularly when working from home?
#172My workspace is also my entertainment space, where I watch Netflix and play games.
My trick is to cook. At 17:30 each day, I shutdown Slack, email, emacs etc and go to the kitchen and cook a meal. Then I eat and drink a few beers, either with my family, or at my desk while watching a movie. After that, I don't give work another thought until the morning.
Re: Ask HN: How do you switch off from work, particularly when working from home?
#173I would stop communicating. No more read/reply for emails or messages. No phone calls. No writing or reading of memos or other documents. No creating presentations, diagrams, or drawings.
On the other hand, it is really hard to stop thinking about work, and maybe not necessary or advantageous. Most of the really good ideas that I've had came to me while I was not working. Your subconscious can be working even while you are doing other things.
Re: Ask HN: How do you switch off from work, particularly when working from home?
#174Change clothes, take a shower, work out, take a nap, go for a walk. Basically any quick change of environment works for me when I feel too "on."
Another thing that helps me: I use a planner. I use it to plan my days and my weeks. The key helpful part is at the beginning of the week, I list what I want to get done at work. Then every day, I plan some work for it. Knowing that I'm on track to hit my weekly goal makes it less stressful to stop working. If I'mg gonna hit my goal anyways, why work more? I can do other stuff.
Re: Ask HN: How do you switch off from work, particularly when working from home?
#175Dedicate a work space and stay far away from it, when you're not working. Maybe get a large whiteboard to hide it from your field of vision when not working (bonus: whiteboard!). Separating work from personal is the most critical part of being able to work from home without always being "at work." I'm lucky enough to have been remote for years, so COVID hasn't changed my pattern but I know the pattern can be hard. Al…
The first part is great advice but unfortunately not always easy for those in small apartments where that space is precious. One thing that has worked for me is to instead try to detach my work space from being purely work, and give myself time in that space to do "me" things, whether it's reading, video games, creative endeavors... Also giving myself a specific window of "work time", with an alarm set to tell me its…
I started taking off my shoes at the office because it's helpful to let your feet breathe.
Re: Ask HN: How do you switch off from work, particularly when working from home?
#176I've had fewer problems with this than I expected. I think it's because I took pains to make a mental work/life divide a few years ago. The switch for me, whether working in the office or from home, is my work computer. In the office, the ritual start of the day for me was turning on my monitors and logging in for the first time. At home, it's connecting to the vpn, starting my remote desktop client, and connecting. End of the day is locking the screen and turning off the monitors in the office, or closing down the remote desktop client and vpn at home.
Just clicking the close button on the remote window and then disconnecting the VPN is enough for me to feel that it's the actual end of the day. Also, I've made it clear over the years that I don't monitor my work email or Teams chats when off the clock. That helps. Coworkers know that if there is an emergency I will respond to a text or a phone call but an email or a Teams message will go unseen until I login again.
Re: Ask HN: How do you switch off from work, particularly when working from home?
#177I'm not sure if I'm just weird, but I've never had any issues switching between work and home. When work is done, I close my work laptop and open my personal laptop, same desk, and I'm not at work. Or I go upstairs. I just... stop. I wear the same clothes around the house as I do at work mostly (except shorts vs. jeans, I don't like long sleeves or pants). There's so much non-work stuff that I typically have to do after work that work will never enter my mind again for the rest of the day after I stop. I have no problem ignoring Slack notifications until tomorrow... just swipe them away, they'll still be unread when I start in the morning. I don't even have work e-mail on my phone. The only exception to this is when I'm on my on-call rotation.
I suppose that having separate hardware for work helps, but it's on my personal desk and is connected to the second input of my personal monitor, and always has been... it even shares the same mouse and KB I use with my personal laptop. I was WFH most of the week pre-lockdown as it is, so it wasn't a huge change for me.
That said, I will be getting an "office" work space soon with an adjustible sit/stand desk that I will put work-related stuff on (including a new keyboard/mouse/monitor), but it's going to be next to the desk I already have for personal stuff.
The difficulty with a mental split between work and not-work escapes me. Either I need to do work, or I'm done and can stop... and I start and stop typically by the clock. If I work more time one day, I'll reclaim that time on a later day with the full support of my leadership.
Re: Ask HN: How do you switch off from work, particularly when working from home?
#178I live in a 2BR apartment where the second bedroom is my office. For me, I have two walls lined in desk with two completely separate stations set up. They use different equipment, different OS, different chair, etc. I also have Hue lights that I change from a brighter, whiter light while working to a more subdued, dark blue/purple after work. The only way I can do it is to completely leave my workstation and never ev…
Switch the blue to red, probably. Neat.
Re: Ask HN: How do you switch off from work, particularly when working from home?
#179The trick of leaving the house for a "fake commute" that others have mentioned, works for me as well. Physical movement and free headspace seem to go a long way towards "resetting" into a work mode or home mode.
Re: Ask HN: How do you switch off from work, particularly when working from home?
#180I have a work computer workstation setup in a spare room and treat it like going to work. Originally, I set it up on the kitchen table and I never stopped working. My wife said, "enough!"
The office signals that it's time to stop for the day, co-workers going home for the day, etc., are still hard to replace so, I now use cues such as the mailman delivering, the sound of the evening news that my wife always watches, and neighbors who do work at an office returning home, as signs to stop.