Yoga. Do yoga. Go to a Yoga Studio, not a gym or a DVD; a studio. Find your balance, find your inner peace and just let it go. Really. This is transformative for me. That and Zoloft.
Ask HN: How to not bring emotion from work back home?
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Re: Ask HN: How to not bring emotion from work back home?
#72Yoga. Do yoga. Go to a Yoga Studio, not a gym or a DVD; a studio. Find your balance, find your inner peace and just let it go. Really. This is transformative for me. That and Zoloft.
Do you happen to have a hole in your head, too?
Re: Ask HN: How to not bring emotion from work back home?
#73Self talk.
Nothing helps like talking to yourself. Build narratives and counter narratives and try to analyze the situation at hand. It's like taking a third person perspective for the sole reason of analyzing what happened, and why it happened.
Try to avoid getting into solutions mode. Don't even try to think about how you can improve or change the situation. Just understand and spend some time thinking about what exactly happened.
Re: Ask HN: How to not bring emotion from work back home?
#74Earlier quoted context omitted.
> learn to care less about your job. This. This 100x over. Present your opinions, back them up with data / rationale, and if they don't go with them: water off a duck's back. It's their mistake if it works out poorly, or you learn something new if it works out great. If you have employers that don't let you practice this "giving fewer fucks" attitude, or hold it against you wrt career progression, that's when you sta…
It is an important life skill, cannot be denied. However, I cannot stop noticing that all the worst traits of the software industry start with the talented professionals amoungst us "caring less" about their jobs; and then the bozos running the show are free to go around wanking their minds and fucking up everything for everyone. If you ask the authors of every monstrosity out there, they will claim the Nuremberg def…
Care not about the job outside the job. Care much about the code while at the job. That's the true skill and it is very hard to do. As a coder you never really turn off, at least that's my last 20 years of experience.
The best way to "train" for this is to take a long cruise or other far away vacation. I took a transatlantic, 7 nights no Internet. Well I could have Internet paid in minutes at legacy modem baud rates, but "legacy baud" says enough.
Re: Ask HN: How to not bring emotion from work back home?
#75Yoga. Do yoga. Go to a Yoga Studio, not a gym or a DVD; a studio. Find your balance, find your inner peace and just let it go. Really. This is transformative for me. That and Zoloft.
Do you happen to have a hole in your head, too? https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trepanning
I don't know how yoga compares in particular, but there is loads of research backing up meditation for stress relief. It's not mystical hoodoo. And of course mixing in physical exercise can't hurt.
Re: Ask HN: How to not bring emotion from work back home?
#76I was able to be a much happier person after I realised that it is just like any other skill. So for being happy you have to train your mind. I personally prefer stoicism and the book "Daily Stoic" will be a good start. A ready made plan to increase your mental resilience and in turn happiness :)
Re: Ask HN: How to not bring emotion from work back home?
#77This may not be the right situation for you, but worth mentioning generally. I find getting changed when you come home helpfully because it helps reinforce the divide between work and home, and I find it easier to forget the worries of the day.
Re: Ask HN: How to not bring emotion from work back home?
#78The thread is full of great answers and advices, but I haven't came across this one:
I was dealing with similar situation like you. I had a hard time to find peace after work at home. I was looking for advices around and once came across an article(I can't find the article) which recommended that you should not stop doing activities which you liked as a child when you are an adult.
When I was thinking about it, that was exactly what I did. I stopped doing things which I enjoyed when I was a kid. I used to play a lot of Age of Empires and loved that and did competitive swimming. So I started with the swimming and it helped me both mentally and physically. After a year or so, I started slipping back to the same routine as before and not even the swimming was helping. I tried to do some research on the Age of Empires thing and installed it to my laptop after 10 years or so. Since then the strategy for me in critical situations is:
1st - Go swimming/biking/running, try to sweat it out. 2nd - If 1. does not work(happens like once in couple of months). Play some freaking Age of Empires for 6+ hours straight 3rd - If 1. and 2. fail, talk with people
Firstly, this sounded really silly to me and I think once I have kinds this won't even be an option, but in my current situation this small hack works pretty well for me.
Re: Ask HN: How to not bring emotion from work back home?
#79That's not normal or healthy. See a therapist.
Also meditation will still help but what you're taking about is a broader and deeper issue with how you process frustrations and anger.
That needs professional help. No shame in it - it's quite useful! It's not like they teach it in school is it?
Re: Ask HN: How to not bring emotion from work back home?
#80The best way to not bring all that emotion home is not to have it in the first place. Anger is caused by frustration is caused by desire. People who dont give a damn about their jobs clock out at 4:56 and rest easy. The people who burn out or 'snap' are the ones whom take the most pride in their work. Learn to care less about your job. If you already have the emotions built up, then simply recognize that fact and tak…
Shifting to contracting helped me with this, as a contractor I was able to keep an emotional distance from the work, I always knew I only had a few more weeks or months and so if they wanted me to produce crap then so be it.