The year is almost over. Here’s how to properly switch off

Start decking the halls because the year is finally, almost, nearly over. We’re on the home stretch of the calendar now, with the finishing line within sight when the whole nation takes a collective deep breath over the Christmas holiday break.

For some lucky people, this break will extend into long and muggy January, right up to Australia Day. Others will keep working over the break, taking the bare minimum of public holidays off to try to rest and recharge, but these upcoming holidays are the only time of the year that you can feel the entire country slowing into a soft hum.

Burnout manifests itself in three ways: occupational exhaustion, depersonalisation, and a decrease in feelings of personal accomplishment. Sound familiar?Credit: iStock

We’ve all earned it too. It’s been an intense year, and Australian workers have taken it especially hard. Recent research by Edelman Data and Intelligence, commissioned by retailer lululemon, showed that of the 15 markets they surveyed, Australia took out first place as the country with the highest levels of burnout when people were asked about their physical, mental and social wellbeing.

It’s a sad reality that burnout has been on the rise, across all levels and all industries. Researchers like Dr Michael P. Leiter and Dr Christina Maslach say that burnout in the workplace occurs when there’s a mismatch between employers and employees in one or more of the following areas: the amount of control a worker has, fair treatment, a sense of community, workload levels, the provision of rewards, or company values.

This manifests itself in three ways: occupational exhaustion, depersonalisation, and a decrease in feelings of personal accomplishment.

The first is where work drains you so much that you desperately need a big break – like the upcoming Christmas holidays – just to recover from it. The second is where you care little about the people you work with, and the third is when you feel generally ‘blah’ about your job.

Take your re-entry in January a bit slower if possible, and enjoy the first few days of sharing and reliving holiday memories with your colleagues.

If any of those sound familiar, then you do need some proper time off. But even if you’re not on the road to burnout, learning how to take a good break from work is one way of ensuring that you don’t get there. So here’s how to do it well.

It’s best to think about your Christmas break as before, during and after.

Before you go on holidays, spend the days leading up to it preparing as much as you can. Go through your to-do list, completing tasks or allocating them for the new year. Don’t forget to set your out-of-office email that lets everyone know what date in the new year they can officially begin hassling you once again.

After your holidays begin, one of the most effective things you can do is to rearrange your phone’s home screen. Create a folder called “Work”, and move all the relevant apps, like email, Slack and expense software, into this folder then drag it to the last page of your phone.

This simple act will remind you that you’re no longer in work mode every time you pick up your phone, and is easy to un-do at the other end. Of course, if you have any notifications for work emails on your phone (and really, you shouldn’t), turn them all off too.

Once your holidays have begun, aim to break the usual programming of your life to focus on different areas. Enjoying family time without distractions, working your way through books you’ve been hanging to read, or jumping on a flight to explore new locations is usually enough to quickly forget about work.

Edelman and lululemon’s research found that taking a social media break can increase your wellbeing by 9 per cent, moving your body throughout the day by 16 per cent, and using physical activity as an opportunity to socialise with others gives you a wellbeing lift of 23 per cent. As counterintuitive as it feels, being active on your break helps you properly switch off.

Once the holidays are over, you’ll return to work in the new year. If you’ve recovered well, then this shouldn’t be too painful. Take your re-entry in January a bit slower if possible, and enjoy the first few days of sharing and reliving holiday memories with your colleagues.

Then it’s time to pick up your to-do list where you left it, and face another year ahead with the knowledge that there’s really only 350 days left until the next Christmas holidays come around.

Tim Duggan is the author of Work Backwards: The Revolutionary Method to Work Smarter and Live Better. He writes a regular newsletter at timduggan.substack.com

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