How to Stay Logged Off at Work

As we all head back to work and school after summer break it can be hard to maintain the habits we made during the holidays and stay logged off at work. Whether you were enjoying a 3-month university holiday, spent a couple weeks with family or only got away for a weekend, the culture of summer is hard to ignore. The office will inevitably be emptier than usual as everyone takes their annual leave (33% of people taking over 2 weeks!), and so, making concerted efforts to reduce your screen time, and spend time with loved ones is easier. However, as September returns and the workforce is back in full those habits are harder and harder to keep. So, we have put together some top tips to keep you logged off this autumn

#1 Go into the office

After a couple years of a pandemic, forced to work from home, many of us have become comfortable with this dynamic: rolling out of bed just before our first meeting, dressed in pjs from the waist down, generally more at ease. However, as we wrote about during the pandemic, this only exacerbates our issues logging off from work as the lines between work and home become blurred, leading to poor concentration, poor sleep and worse work-life balance! So, we recommend you make the effort and go in: it can be a far more enjoyable atmosphere we promise!

#2 Keep working hours

Along a similar line of attempting to maintain a differentiation between work and home we recommend you keep working hours! Whether you are working flexibly, compressed or a classic 9-5 it is important to have down time! You can mark this for yourself by going in to work, not using your work laptop after hours, or by moving to a separate part of your home. Whatever you do: try to recreate that summer feeling of disconnection at the end of every day.

#3 Separate communication

A good way to draw a distinct line between work and home is to separate your communication (most likely emails!). This could mean only having your work email on your laptop, setting slack to turn off notifying after 5pm or switching your devices to airplane mode at the end of a day. You could even add an OOO (Out of Office) each day to gently remind your colleagues/ clients that you are not working and will reply once you are back.

#4 Turn off notifications

During the summer holidays some of us are able to go whole days (or even weeks!) without constant reminders of work. But we don’t have to mourn that now it is Autumn! You can try to keep that culture alive in weekends, bank holidays and annual leave at other times of year by turning off your notifications. Let everyone know you will be away and then make sure you are logged off at work. One tip if you are worried about missing vital crises is to tell your colleagues to ring you (not text: ring!) if they need you. You’ll be amazed how all their worries cease once they have to call!

#5 Relax offline

Whilst we are on holiday we are able to relax both digitally and through analogue activities. We can play card games and watch Netflix without feeling the affect of the screens too greatly. However, with the average UK employee spending nearly 2000 hours of our annual working lives in front of a screen: after work we need to find other ways to relax.