Woman sitting at desk in living room with plush carpet doing work and holding a pen.
Image: © Jacob Lund/Stock.adobe.com

Why it’s so important to disconnect from work at the weekend

5 Jul 2019

If you find yourself stealing a glance at work emails over the weekend, here’s why you should reconsider doing such a thing.

Hopefully, no one reading this needs to be told twice to unwind at the weekend. Yet even if you do unwind, you may occasionally find yourself checking in with the office or even finishing other projects on what should be your days off.

There are a lot of reasons this could be happening. You may struggle with time management at work and so your tasks bleed outside your standard hours. You may have pressure coming from on high to clock in extra time. You may possibly have some workaholic tendencies, which you may need to review for the sake of your health.

Whatever the case, denying yourself the necessary time to disconnect from work is not only bad for you personally, but can also harm you professionally.

You may think that if you put in the slog now you’ll end up more productive, but in the long term you aren’t doing yourself any favours. The human brain simply wasn’t designed to work continuously without rest. You need to take regular breaks and have sustained periods where you aren’t thinking about your career in order to ensure that when you are at work, you’re being the best version of your professional self.

Not to mention that after a certain point, you risk developing burnout. Aside from being very personally unpleasant, burnout may lead to reduced productivity and even missed time at work. Though the grind may seem initially appealing, it’s actually a better strategy to ensure you unplug from the office.

So, how can you ensure that you disconnect at the weekend? First, turn off any work devices once you leave the office on Friday. Refrain from keeping work-related apps on your personal devices.

If you work from home, it may be a good idea to establish a section of your home where you work and keep it separate from where you unwind, if that’s possible.

You could go further and turn off your notifications entirely at the weekend. Professional or not, a constant barrage of notifications can prove distracting and may leave you with a surplus of mental clutter, which can hinder your mental wellness.

For more advice on how to disconnect from work at the weekend, check out the infographic below, brought to you by NetCredit.

disconnect from work infographic

Infographic: NetCredit

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Eva Short
By Eva Short

Eva Short was a journalist at Silicon Republic, specialising in the areas of tech, data privacy, business, cybersecurity, AI, automation and future of work, among others.

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