How to turn off work thoughts during your free time

Feeling burned out? You may be spending too much time ruminating about your job, says psychologist Guy Winch. Learn how to stop worrying about tomorrow's tasks or stewing over office tensions with three simple techniques aimed at helping you truly relax and recharge after work.

I wanted to be a psychologist
since I was a teenager,

and I spent years pursuing that one goal.

I opened my private practice
as soon as I was licensed.

It was a risky move, not getting a day job
at a hospital or a clinic,

but within one year,
my practice was doing quite well

and I was making more money
than I ever made before.

Of course, I was a full-time
student my entire life.

(Laughter)

I could have worked at McDonald's

and made more money
than I ever made before.

That one-year mark
came on a Friday night in July.

I walked home to my apartment

and got into the elevator with a neighbor
who was a doctor in the ER.

The elevator rose,

then it shuddered
and stalled between floors.

And the man who dealt
with emergencies for a living

began poking at the buttons
and banging on the door, saying,

"This is my nightmare,
this is my nightmare!"

And I was like,
"And this is my nightmare."

(Laughter)

I felt terrible afterwards, though.

Because I wasn't panicked

and I knew what to say to calm him down.

I was just too depleted to do it,

I had nothing left to give,
and that confused me.

After all, I was finally living my dream,

so why wasn't I happy?

Why did I feel so burned out?

For a few terrible weeks,

I questioned whether I'd made a mistake.

What if I had chosen the wrong profession?

What if I had spent my entire life
pursuing the wrong career?

But then I realized, no,
I still loved psychology.

The problem wasn't the work
I did in my office.

It was the hours I spent
ruminating about work

when I was home.

I closed the door
to my office every night,

but the door in my head remained wide-open

and the stress just flooded in.

That's the interesting thing
about work stress.

We don't really experience
much of it at work.

We're too busy.

We experience it outside of work,

when we are commuting,

when we're home,

when we're trying to rejuvenate.

It is important to recover
in our spare time,

to de-stress and do things we enjoy,

and the biggest obstruction
we face in that regard is ruminating.

Because each time we do it,

we're actually activating
our stress response.

Now, to ruminate means to chew over.

The word refers
to how cows digest their food.

For those of you unfamiliar
with the joys of cow digestion,

cows chew,

then they swallow,

then they regurgitate it back up
and chew it again.

(Laughter)

It's disgusting.

(Laughter)

But it works for cows.

(Laughter)

It does not work for humans.

Because what we chew over
are the upsetting things,

the distressing things,

and we do it in ways
that are entirely unproductive.

It's the hours we spend
obsessing about tasks we didn't complete

or stewing about tensions
with a colleague,

or anxiously worrying about the future,

or second-guessing decisions we've made.

Now there's a lot of research
on how we think about work

when we are not at work,

and the findings are quite alarming.

Ruminating about work,

replaying the same thoughts and worries
over and over again,

significantly disrupts our ability
to recover and recharge in the off hours.

The more we ruminate about work
when we're home,

the more likely we are
to experience sleep disturbances,

to eat unhealthier foods

and to have worse moods.

It may even increase our risk
of cardiovascular disease

and of impairing
our executive functioning,

the very skill sets we need
to do our jobs well.

Not to mention the toll it takes
on our relationships and family lives,

because people around us can tell
we're checked out and preoccupied.

Now, those same studies found

that while ruminating
about work when we're home

damages our emotional well-being,

thinking about work in creative
or problem-solving ways does not.

Because those kinds of thinking
do not elicit emotional distress

and, more importantly,
they're in our control.

We can decide whether
to respond to an email

or leave it till morning,

or whether we want to brainstorm
about work projects that excite us.

But ruminations are involuntary.

They're intrusive.

They pop into our head
when we don't want them to.

They upset us when
we don't want to be upset.

They switch us on
when we are trying to switch off.

And they are very difficult to resist,

because thinking of all
our unfinished tasks feels urgent.

Anxiously worrying about the future
feels compelling.

Ruminating always feels
like we're doing something important,

when in fact, we're doing
something harmful.

And we all do it far more than we realize.

Back when I was burned out,

I decided to keep a journal for a week

and document exactly how much time
I spent ruminating.

And I was horrified by the results.

It was over 30 minutes a night
when I was trying to fall asleep.

My entire commute,
to and from my office --

that was 45 minutes a day.

Totally checked out for 20 minutes

during the dinner party
at a colleague's house.

Never got invited there again.

(Laughter)

And 90 minutes during
a friend's "talent show"

that, coincidentally, was 90 minutes long.

(Laughter)

In total, that week,
it was almost 14 hours.

That's how much "downtime" I was losing

to something that actually
increased my stress.

Try keeping a journal for one week.

See how much you do it.

That's what made me realize
that I still loved my work.

But ruminating was destroying that love

and it was destroying
my personal life, too.

So I read every study I could find,

and I went to war against my ruminations.

Now, habit change is hard.

It took real diligence to catch myself
ruminating each time,

and real consistency
to make the new habits stick.

But eventually, they did.

I won my war against ruminating,

and I'm here to tell you
how you can win yours.

First, you need clear guardrails.

You have to define
when you switch off every night,

when you stop working.

And you have to be strict about it.

The rule I made to myself at the time
was that I was done at 8pm.

And I forced myself to stick to it.

Now people say to me,

"Really? You didn't return
a single email after 8pm?

You didn't even look at your phone?"

No, not once.

Because it was the '90s,
we didn't have smartphones.

(Laughter)

I got my first smartphone in 2007.

You know, the iPhone had just come out,

and I wanted a phone
that was cool and hip.

I got a BlackBerry.

(Laughter)

I was excited, though,

you know, my first thought was,
"I get my emails wherever I am."

And 24 hours later,

I was like, "I get my emails
wherever I am."

(Laughter)

I mean, battling ruminations
was hard enough

when they just invaded our thoughts.

But now they have this Trojan horse,

our phones, to hide within.

And each time we just look
at our phone after hours,

we can be reminded of work

and ruminative thoughts can slip out

and slaughter our evening or weekend.

So, when you switch off,

switch off your email notifications.

And if you have to check them,
decide on when to do it,

so it doesn't interfere with your plans,

and do it only then.

Cell phones aren't the only way
technology is empowering rumination,

because we have
an even bigger fight coming.

Telecommuting has increased
115 percent over the past decade.

And it's expected to increase
even more dramatically going forward.

More and more of us
are losing our physical boundary

between work and home.

And that means that reminders of work

will be able to trigger ruminations
from anywhere in our home.

When we lack a physical boundary
between work and home,

we have to create a psychological one.

We have to trick our mind

into defining work and nonwork
times and spaces.

So here's how you do that.

First, create a defined
work zone in your home,

even if it's tiny,

and try to work only there.

Try not to work on the living room couch

or on the bed

because really, those areas
should be associated

with living and ... bedding.

(Laughter)

Next, when you're working from home,

wear clothes you only wear
when you're working.

And then at the end of the day,

change clothes,

and use music and lighting
to shift the atmosphere

from work to home.

Make it a ritual.

Now, some of you might think that's silly.

That changing clothes and lighting

will convince my mind
I'm no longer at work.

Trust me, your mind will fall for it.

Because we are really smart,
our mind is really stupid.

(Laughter)

It falls for random associations
all the time, right?

I mean, that's why Pavlov's dog
began drooling at the sound of a bell.

And why TED speakers begin sweating
at the sight of a red circle.

(Laughter)

Now those things will help,

but ruminations will still invade.

And when they do, you have to convert them

into productive forms of thinking,
like problem-solving.

My patient Sally is a good example.

Sally was given
the promotion of a lifetime,

but it came with a price.

She was no longer able
to pick up her daughter

from school every day,

and that broke her heart.

So she came up with a plan.

Every Tuesday and Thursday,
Sally left work early,

picked up her daughter from school,

played with her, fed her,
bathed her and put her to bed.

And then she went back to the office

and worked past midnight to catch up.

Only, Sally's rumination journal indicated

she spent almost every minute
of her quality time with her daughter

ruminating about how much
work she had to do.

Ruminations often deny us
our most precious moments.

Sally's rumination,
"I have so much work to do,"

is a very common one.

And like all of them,

it's useless and it's harmful,

because we'd never think it
when we're at work, getting stuff done.

We think it when we're outside of work,

when we're trying to relax
or do things that we find meaningful,

like playing with our children,

or having a date night with our partner.

To convert a ruminative thought
into a productive one,

you have to pose it
as a problem to be solved.

The problem-solving version
of "I have so much work to do"

is a scheduling question.

Like, "Where in my schedule can I fit
the tasks that are troubling me?"

Or, "What can I move in my schedule
to make room for this more urgent thing?"

Or even, "When do I have 15 minutes
to go over my schedule?"

All those are problems that can be solved.

"I have so much work to do" is not.

Battling rumination is hard,

but if you stick to your guardrails,

if you ritualize the transition
from work to home,

and if you train yourself
to convert ruminations

into productive forms of thinking,

you will succeed.

Banishing ruminations
truly enhanced my personal life,

but what it enhanced even more

was the joy and satisfaction
I get from my work.

Ground zero for creating
a healthy work-life balance

is not in the real world.

It's in our head.

It's with ruminating.

If you want to reduce your stress
and improve your quality of life,

you don't necessarily have to change
your hours or your job.

You just have to change how you think.

Thank you.

(Applause)