How often do you go to work?
If you’re like most people, your answer is “Five times per week.”
But that answer is almost certainly wrong. You probably go to work a lot more often than that because when you’re not at work, you frequently go there in your mind.
We all do it, and it’s certainly not making us any happier. Perhaps, by becoming more aware of it, we can learn to do it less.
Here are just some of the ways we go to work in our minds:
- We wake up, and immediately dread going to work.
- Then, we start checking work email instead of staying in airplane mode and completing a morning routine.
- On the drive to work, we’re stressing about all the things we have to do today.
- During lunch, when we should be disconnected from work, we’re still there in our minds, thinking about what we’re going to do for the rest of the day.
- On the drive home, we relive all the worst moments of our workday.
- And when we finally get home, we complain about what happened at work.
- We start making mental plans for the next day’s work when we should be relaxing at home.
- And as we drift off to sleep, we worry about the problems we’ll face at work tomorrow.
It’s true that this kind of off-the-clock thinking sometimes results in creative solutions to work problems, but most of the time, it just takes us out of the present moment and makes us unhappy.
So if you’re not currently at work, don’t go to work in your mind. You spend enough time there already. Stay here now.