Recovery means finding time or space for yourself where you don’t engage in things that are work-related or stressful. Recovery is about bringing physiological responses, such as cortisol (a key stress hormone), back down to baseline levels. Proper recovery helps you feel more energetic and enthusiastic to face another day at work.
Interestingly, indirect exposure to nature (for example, even looking at nature scenes on a screen) can also have benefits for recovery. In a nutshell, getting some nature into your workplace makes you more happy and energized at work. If you don’t feel you have much control over your job, psychological detachment and mastery experiences have been shown to be the most effective for recovery.
Choosing the right habits
Not many people can completely let go of their phones when they’re at home, but they can take steps to protect themselves from intrusive work pings. “You can adjust your settings in a way that make your phone less appealing,” she says, including turning off notifications for things like email and Twitter. By Elizabeth Scott, PhD
Elizabeth Scott, PhD is an author, workshop leader, educator, and award-winning blogger on stress management, positive psychology, relationships, and emotional wellbeing. If you would like to learn more about our stress management programs for your team and organization, click the button below for more details.
Some companies have caught on and are building direct and indirect exposure to natural elements into the workplace. Indeed, research on direct exposure to nature, such as through park walks during workday lunch breaks, shows that it can enhance your recovery from stress in as little as 10 minutes. In addition to short-term how to destress after work effects, being exposed to nature at work contributes positively to your well-being and lowers the likelihood of burnout. Exposure to daylight and having a window view or indoor greenery at the workplace have been shown to have a positive impact on your sleep quality, perceived stress, and overall health.
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At night, she suggests keeping the phone, not on the nightstand, but somewhere out of reach, to avoid looking at it just before falling asleep or first thing in the morning. She also writes about a phenomenon that a psychologist studying the impact of our digital lives on our brain has termed as ”popcorn brain.” This part of the brain puts the body into flight or fight mode.
- If energetic and self-regulation resources burned up over the course of the day aren’t replaced, it comes out of our performance hide the next day and the next in the form of fatigue, researchers have found.
- All too often, people choose the latter option when the former—letting the drive home be a freeing experience—is so much more beneficial.
- ”It essentially means doing one task for five or 10 minutes and then you take a short break,” she explains.
- If your boss consistently gives you an ”unreasonably high workload” or ”expects you to be online off-hours,” that’s not a sign of stress addiction, she adds.