4 Ways to Manage Your After-Work Hours Effectively

Keeping a healthy balance between work and home can be super challenging, especially if you’re also working from home or you’re expected to respond to messages when you’re away from the office.

Managing your time when you’re not at work is hugely important since it can have a ton of adverse effects on your well-being and your career if you don’t get it right.

So let’s talk about how you can finish your day in a way that supports your physical and emotional well-being.

 

 

Finish Work At a Set Time

It sounds super simple, but with so much modern technology at your fingertips, it can be tough to walk away from work at a set time – even if you physically leave your place of work.

You probably intend to do something other than work, but when an email hits your inbox, it can feel impossible to ignore. It sucks you right back in again.

And if you work from home, it gets even harder to avoid blurred boundaries. Before you know it, you’ve clocked in a ton of hours, and you still need to finish. Struggling to finish at a specific time is one of the biggest culprits for mismanaging your after-work hours when you work from home.

Wherever you work, managing your time so you can clock off at a specific time is the ultimate time management goal.

 

Prioritize Your Time

Not prioritizing your work time is a major culprit for not feeling able to stop working at a specific time.

Organizing your work time into blocks can be super helpful. Start completing urgent tasks that can cause serious adverse effects if not done on the same day. These could be things that will have financial implications, for example.

If other people rely on you to complete a task today, this is another factor in the urgent versus important dilemma.

Weighing things like this helps distinguish between urgent tasks and ones that are just important so you can prioritize your time better.

Breaking your time into blocks of 1-2 hours can be super smart for keeping you motivated, especially with breaks in between.

If you stop working at a set time and stick to it, working on the most urgent tasks for that day is super important. Once you finish, you can feel good about reserving after-work hours for yourself.

 

Spend Time Refreshing

Your entire working day demands a lot of mental energy (and perhaps physical energy as well, depending on your tasks), making it crucial to unwind and replenish that energy after you finish your work for the day.

Otherwise, you risk running out of energy and even burnout. Think of yourself like your smartphone – you never let the charge run down to zero there, right?

People often underestimate the significance of mentally recharging as an effective way to manage your time, enabling you to consistently start work with high energy and enthusiasm. The more renewed you are each day, the easier it is to be productive and keep after-work hours free for nonwork activities.

Switch to recharging your energy as soon as you’re done working – for a little while, at least!

Refreshing your mind and energy is a big part of this. Once you’re done, spend some time winding down and leaving work behind. Meditation is excellent for this, especially if negative thoughts are problematic.

Gratitude can be a game-changer here too. It helps you focus on the positives rather than dwelling on the negatives that crop up. Spending 15 minutes filling in a gratitude diary can train your mind to be more positive if you don’t love your work or get hung up on challenges and setbacks.

Reflecting on the day is another smart move. It helps you highlight what’s working for you and what isn’t so you can make changes where necessary. To take this up a notch, try involving your family or friends. They may have a different way of looking at things that can help you find solutions you have yet to think of.

 

Plan for Tomorrow

How often do you frantically rush to work out what you should be working on today first thing in the morning? It can take a ton of time away from work, and it’s another culprit for working in the evenings.

Sorting your plan the previous evening can save a lot of time and allow you to jump straight into work. No time wasted! It makes it much easier to finish your urgent tasks in the time you’ve got, without them spilling over into your after-work hours.

 

Follow me on Instagram for daily tips and motivation.

Looking for one-to-one coaching to get back to feeling your best after burnout? Click HERE to schedule a free Back-To-Balance Breakthrough call to see how I can help.