I "end" the workfay by either reading a book for half an hour or listening to a book on tape while I walk my dogs. After working my brain is still going a mile a minute and letting it feast on some fiction makes the transition out of work mode a bit more pleasant for me. Back in Before-Times my wife and I would go do Yoga after work which was a great way to /workday.
Ask HN: How do you switch off from work, particularly when working from home?
181–190 of 318 posts
Re: Ask HN: How do you switch off from work, particularly when working from home?
#182Physically go out to do non-work related tasks. Go to stores, go buy a drink, jogging, biking, go around the neighborhood, listen to non-work podcasts, video call friends, etc.
Actually here’s a thought. Someone can set up a service like meetup.com but for virtual social meetings. It sets up schedules for gatherings that people can join. It’s a good way to pull people away from work in after hours. It can even be called videoup.com
Re: Ask HN: How do you switch off from work, particularly when working from home?
#183[deleted]
Re: Ask HN: How do you switch off from work, particularly when working from home?
#184This trick might sound strange, but it worked well for me: Just dress the same in the morning as you would if you would go into the office, and at the end of the day, take off the work clothes and dress as you would normally at home. Some makes this even further and go out for a walk around the block so they "arrive at the office" and walk again at the end of the day to "walk home". Really sounds strange and funny, b…
I learned this hack from Mr. Rogers. :)
Re: Ask HN: How do you switch off from work, particularly when working from home?
#185Very relevant CGP Grey: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=snAhsXyO3Ck
Re: Ask HN: How do you switch off from work, particularly when working from home?
#186Everyone seems like they have this all figured out. I am basically working from 9am to 10pm because I can't get enough work in during the day with a 6yo and 4yo. I have to make up the time after normal work hours.
With kids the status quo now is to wake up, interleaved work and childcare and housecare for 14 hours - doing all poorly, get ready for bed.
Re: Ask HN: How do you switch off from work, particularly when working from home?
#187I've been working on a tool called Amna (getamna.com), and it's been effective at helping me out with this. It has a concept of headspaces. So it makes it easy to separate the context from Work and Home.
It acts as a daily task manager and has a calendar, so once I write down all the tasks I want to get done in a day for a headspace, it's nice to know that I can switch-off. It helps because it gives me a daily goal to work towards.
Re: Ask HN: How do you switch off from work, particularly when working from home?
#188Easy, start drinking heavily before your work day is supposed to be done, and eventually you just can't work. Hah. I kid. I have a dedicated home office, so when I'm done I just leave the room and don't go back until the next day. But, you don't have that option, so that's not fun. You need to stick to a schedule. Don't work in pajamas. Do everything you'd normally do to get ready to go to a job and be on time (it's…
> If you work on a company laptop, pack that thing up. Shut it down, and put it in a backpack or whatever. The day is done.
If you don't have a separate work computer, get an external bootable drive, and do your work booted from that drive with your internal drive not mounted. When done with the work day, boot back to your internal drive and put the external drive in a drawer or closet.
Re: Ask HN: How do you switch off from work, particularly when working from home?
#189Doing something time consuming and fraught with problem solving is a great way to switch off.
Slow fermentation bread making is very popular.
Woodworking is my go to. Wood is dynamic. In the grand scheme of things, even hardwood is a soft material. It moves by non trivial amounts with the seasons. Timber/lumber has jargon and standards over which one can geek out, and that’s before you get into any of the tools. Knots and shakes make you stop and think. Grain patterns have to be taken into account when visualizing the finished piece. There’s a lot to think about.
Then, when you’re set up, there’s just as much leg work as there is problem solving work. I’ve spent 10 hours over the past few days just sanding up some barn dried oak getting ready for constructing a rustic garden table. Outdoor furniture should ideally avoid any of the finer arts of joinery, as the wood movement wouldn’t allow it. This is great news — I’m as much a joinery fine artist as I am a leet coder, so it suits me.
Hand and power tools, packed carefully into stacking boxes with a set of castors on the base, allow you to move tools out of the way when not in use. Hand working with pull saws and a miter jig is a great way to get started, especially indoors. Power tools in 2020 have excellent dust extraction. It’s tractable to use them indoors for hours and only have a single pan of dust to tidy up, as any of the Festool hipsters will gladly tell you. If you have outdoor space, you can just wheel your entire workshop in and out of the French doors in between rain showers.
And when it’s pissing it down for days on end, that’s when you go play on Sketchup to create next week’s grand design, taking regular breaks every hour or so to lift and fold your sourdough.
Re: Ask HN: How do you switch off from work, particularly when working from home?
#190[deleted]