How To Recover From A Bad Day At Work

Some working days finish when you leave the office, but all too often work can follow you home.

You may find yourself replaying a difficult conversation, worrying about something that went wrong, and mentally working through everything you still need to do.

Yes, your working day has officially ended, but mentally you're still sitting at your desk.

Now, sometimes there isn't even one major event to blame.

It may have been a succession of minor problems, a demanding workload, several interruptions throughout your day, an uncomfortable meeting, an impatient customer, or just the feeling that despite working hard all day, you just didn't seem to achieve much.

By the end of the day, you might be physically tired, but mentally alert.

Your shoulders are tense, you're more irritable than usual, and you can't quite settle into the evening.

This is a normal response to pressure.

It doesn't mean that you lack resilience or are bad at coping, but if difficult days regularly spill into your personal time, they can gradually affect your sleep, relationships and general well-being.

So how can you help yourself recover after a tough day? The first thing to understand is that recovery doesn't necessarily mean forgetting what happened or forcing yourself to feel positive.

It means giving your mind and body an opportunity to move out of work mode.

Researchers sometimes describe one part of this process as psychological detachment, but simply this means mentally disengaging from your work during non-working time.

Now, that can be difficult, especially when something remains unresolved.

The brain has a habit of returning to unfinished problems as if repeatedly thinking about them will eventually produce a solution.

Occasionally it does.

More often, though, we go over and over the same ground in our head without learning anything new.

You might be replaying what someone said or imagining a conversation you wish you'd handled differently, or perhaps just worrying about what could happen tomorrow.

This can feel productive because your mind is busy, but there is a difference between useful reflection and rumination.

Useful reflection leads somewhere.

It helps you identify an action, make a decision or understand what you could do differently.

Rumination simply repeats the problem over and over.

One way to separate the two is to spend a few minutes deliberately closing the working day.

Before you finish, write down anything that is still on your mind.

Note what needs to happen next, when you will deal with it, and if possible, the first action you're going to take.

You might reply to the client at nine tomorrow morning or ask my manager to clarify the deadline.